Why the Top 25 in September?

For many years, the college football Top 25 polls have been major sources of controversy. Year in and year out, it always seems that at least one major college football power gets screwed over. The BCS system has received unparalleled criticism in the light of several prominent national championship debacles, and the Top 25 polls have been in the midst of end-of-season controversy since the beginning of time with USC, Auburn and Michigan as the most recent victims of controversy.

At this point, all of you think you know where I am going with this one: institute an all-encompassing playoff system. Ha…fooled you. Well, I do think that college football should institute a 16-team playoff. But, ultimately, I believe that college sports will always have to deal with some form of controversy surrounding the decisions of the powerful few. When college football finally moves to a playoff format, there will be controversy over who gets left out of the playoffs.

Let me remind you of all of the conspiracy theories that perennially go down on college basketball's Selection Sunday, despite the popular belief that the 65-team tournament is one of the greatest events in sports.
I actually hope to convince you that college football's Top 25 polling system needs reform, not at the end of the season when national championships are on the line, but rather at the beginning of the season when voters are most uninformed.

After another exciting win this week for LSU over Virginia Tech, the Tigers remain in the polls' second place behind a USC team that has yet to play any formidable opponent. How can the voters really judge the Trojans to be better than LSU at this point. Why not wait a week or two until they have more results to analyze?

Last week, we marveled at the accomplishment of Appalachian State becoming the first I-AA school to beat a team ranked in the Top 10 in the country. Well, as it turns out, Michigan probably should never been in the Top 10. The Wolverines dropped to 0-2 this week after getting embarrassed in the Big House by the Oregon Ducks.

Not to discredit the achievements of Appalachian State's football program, but I personally don't believe that the Mountaineers beat the country's fifth-best team. However, the record books will always reflect the accomplishment in that light.

I suggest that Top 25 polls of all sports, but most especially college football, should not be released until teams play at least one or two games. One might argue that there's no reason to do that since the polls don't matter until November anyway. Well, yeah. Why should we worry about a system in which the voters are uniformed and it admittedly doesn't matter. Let's just wait a few weeks and then the initial picks will be more accurate. That solution doesn't hurt anyone. Well, except maybe Michigan.

Add another one to the list: Appalachian State beats Michigan

"This wasn't an upset based on what I saw on the field. Appalachian State was better and they won."

--Lou Holtz

As much as Davidson fans love to hate on our SoCon rivals over the mountains and through the woods in Boone, you have to appreciate the sort of precedent that Appalachian State set today in terms of college football and college athletics on the whole.

Homers for the big conferences can always point to numbers of national championships and athletic endowments, but the fact remains that the major conferences and sports powerhouses do not hold every key to the doors of success any more.

Whether it's George Mason running into the Final Four...Boise State, Wake Forest and now Appalachian State having success in places where college football's elite have long held court (Oklahoma, Florida State and Michigan respectively)...or whether it's Vanderbilt scrapping their athletic department all together to focus on academics and having one of their most successful years in the SEC in their history.

The gate has been thrown open and I doubt whether it will be shut in any meaningful way ever again. Back in January, I pontificated about the need for a playoff system in college football. Today we saw evidence that not only can a team from a lower conference be put into the national championship playoff picture, A I-AA TEAM CAN MAKE A LEGITIMATE CLAIM TO BE RANKED IN THE TOP 25 OF I-A FOOTBALL POLLS.

Just to give a little bit of history about how remarkable this is for both Appalachian State and the Southern Conference, this the first time that a FCS/I-AA school has beaten a Top 25 program in I-A. The last notable victory of an FCS team over a BCS team came when The Citadel knocked off Arkansas back in 1992.

Appalachian State will not be leaving the Southern Conference tomorrow and USC could very well win another football national championship this year, but for all of us little guys, we get one more test case for why we should get to play the big boys at every stop. We get to show that we don't need to have a lot of money in order to be smart and extremely athletic. Every once in a while, we're going to just flat outplay you.

Tonight Davidson fans can raise their hands and give their respects to the Mountaineers...because in exactly three months and 7 days the Wildcats will walk into the home environment of the most historically talented program in the history of college basketball and they will get their chance to put that SoCon logo back front and center on ESPN's homepage. The Mountaineers took down the blue and yellow today...Davidson will get their chance against the other blue and yellow on December 8. Long live the little guy.