We have discussed this before, but college football polls are worthless. Even when the season is in its eighth week or whatever, it’s easy to identify the frauds. For example, last week’s No. 1 team had only played a strength-of-schedule ranking that was in the bottom half of the nation (83rd). And then, lo and behold, that team lost to a one-loss team with a much better SOS rating, and everyone acted shocked. Only the foolish …

It’s hard to trust some of the maths, too, when devised by ESPN, as the entertainment giant is confirmed to have been complicit in the corruption and fraud the sport has experienced in the last two decades-plus since it got into bed with the BCS and then the SEC. We saw this in 2019, especially, in the “fixing” of the College Football Playoff seedings, too. It just never ends with ESPN’s duplicity and lies. However …

Some of the data on the website actually reveals the contradictions in the other numbers, surprisingly. One of the accurate sabermetrics is the Strength of Record ranking, revealing how strong a team’s record is when context is applied. This literally tells us how good a team is so far, based on the games its played—not based on preseason expectations, marquee value, or any other superficial garbage like the polls are based.

Based on this simple concept, here are the teams that are ranked relatively accurately:

  • Georgia, Oregon, Miami-FL, Penn State, LSU, Tennessee, Indiana, Alabama, Notre Dame, Illinois, SMU, Missouri, Navy, Army, Vanderbilt

These are the schools that are very overrated by the polls:

  • Texas, Ohio State, Clemson

And this list shows which teams are quite underrated, currently:

  • BYU, Texas A&M, Pittsburgh, Washington State, Louisiana-Monroe

The polls are doing it right for a large portion of teams, but you can see what threads run through the overrated teams (marquee value and preseason hype based on same) and underrated teams (just the opposite). This creates illusions among fans about team quality and strength, but it also helps the CFP prepare to pick its preferred 12 teams for the newly expanded playoff—justifying it with biased polling.

Another good measurement to check is the projected record chart on ESPN: the best predictor of future performance is recent results, so this is a good indicator of where teams are headed by the end of the regular season. In this data, we can see how the Hurricanes and the Ducks are the only teams projected to win 11-plus games this season right now. Of course, everything changes week to week, so check back often.

There are 16 teams projected to win at least 10 games right now, though; the Top 12 should come from those teams, but we know cannot rely on the CFP to be fair and uphold the NCAA mission statement: “Deliver excellent and inclusive championships.” And that’s too bad: the fans deserve better.