What is a “poll”?
Webster’s Dictionary states that a poll can be “...a counting of votes cast...or canvassing of persons selected at random to obtain information or opinions (to be analyzed)”.
Only one major North American sport that I am aware of decides its champion at the end of the season by a poll.
That sport is NCAA College Football, but their poll is not really a true poll because of two things.
First, it’s not a true poll because the voters are not determined at random.
The NCAA selectors are coaches from within the sport that are asked the question of who is the best team and while their answers are qualified they can hardly be considered random because they are handpicked.
Second, in college football where there is not a large playoff system they rely on the various polls to assist in ranking teams throughout the last two months of the season.
Teams that do well in the polls get invited to the best college bowl games, but the two teams perceived as the very best, that score highest in the right polls get to play in the bowl game reserved to determine a national champion.
There is often dispute about the football championship because to get to the bowl games no two teams take the same roads. They all play different opponents and the question of who is best is often voted on based on significant bias, until the very last poll is taken.
In the final poll after the bowl games are played the voters are obliged to name the winner of the most important bowl game as the number one team. So the result of the most important question is already directed so as not to undermine the significance of that BCS Championship game.
Which makes one wonder why they need a final poll if the correct answer is determined before the question is asked, but that is how it works in college football? – But that is not the way it works in college basketball.
CONSENSUS NUMBER ONE
Even though college basketball has the most anticipated national tournament that finishes with the much hyped Final Four championship between two teams that progress unscathed through a field of 68 contenders that were determined by a series of polls, there is still a final poll taken by USA Today/ESPN that just muddies the waters.
Usually there is consensus that the team that wins the Final Four is the number one team, but in this year’s final poll taken following albeit one of the worst played championship games ever there was dissention with one of the thirty-one voters.
Despite that the University of Connecticut Huskies came out of ninth place in their conference, rolled through their conference tournament to qualify for the NCAA Tournament, and outlasted all the top regional seeds on the way to besting Butler University 53-41 in the finale one coach actually put forth that they were not the best team.
Mike Adras has been the head basketball coach for thirteen years at Northern Arizona which plays division I basketball in the Big Sky Conference. Adras has been his conference’s lone representative in the coaches’ poll since 2006.
Half way through each season the basketball polls begin ranking the top basketball teams. Polls are used to influence the tournament invitation committee at selection time because the values from the coaches’ poll are factored in the Real Time College Basketball Ratings (RPI).
In part the poll that Adras and others have say in all year determines the seeds in the final tournament to crown a champion.
I am not quite sure why Adras and the others in the coaches poll are asked a day after the Final Four to vote one more time.
It seems kind of silly to have this process to assist in determining seeding for a tournament to crown a winner and then ask again after that winner is crowned who the top team actually is.
While it may be nice to be ranked number one it is not as glorious as actually winning the games to become number one which Connecticut did last Monday when they beat Butler.
The polls are nice all season, and lead to good water cooler discussion when teams with similar records are ranked in January or early March. Those ranks sometimes even affect who qualifies for the big tournament so there is special interest with teams that are on the bubble trying to make their case to get in.
Some poll voters seem to rank teams higher based on the quality of their victories, some just look at stats or who have the best players.
Adras considered mainly results throughout the season apart from the playoffs for the final coaches’ poll when he answered what should be a snapshot question with a more general response.
BODY OF WORK
Adras decided against choosing Connecticut who had just won the tournament, and maybe he did so because they had some fortuitous breaks along the way like not having to play any number one seeds. Instead of Connecticut Adras picked Ohio State as his number one team - Ohio State was ranked at the top all season but lost to Kentucky in the East Regional finals.
Adras explained on ESPN Radio’s Doug Gottlieb Show that he chose Ohio State as his number one team because he evaluated the “total body of work” of that program for the year as superior to any other.
Ohio State was 34-3 in the season, and though they lost in the championships they were still in his opinion the best team.
Adras was the only voter to not pick Connecticut in that poll.
A silly poll that can only be looked at as a poll designed to cause controversy on the day after a real champion was determined.
I am certain that Ohio State, and other talented teams that Adras liked better than Connecticut, did not feel any better about their squandered opportunities because of any solace found in this next day poll.
Sports are all about winning championships not about winning anointments.
The NCAA is a world of things that never make sense.
While the biggest complaint about college football is the absence of a real playoff where people wish they could actually have some tournament system to avoid poll disputes, we ironically let some coaches’ poll in college basketball to add a wrinkle of doubt even before they truck away the hardwood floor from their title game.
It’s not fair to Connecticut that won in spite of the odds to have lustre removed from their victory, no matter how bizarre, because we want a second opinion.
SNAPSHOT OF OPINIONS
I am not against Adras’ reasoning as much as I am against the over use of polls.
A poll is only a snapshot of opinions at any point in time and should never be the final word. A poll like this is very narrow in reference. There are lots of assumptions made.
Just like in a political poll there can be biases to a style of play or a particular conference and maybe certain teams have reputations that help them score better than they deserve. Coaches that vote always claim that they are ignorant in some respect and not completely in the know about issues that face every team they rank.
They don’t get to watch every team play.
In Adras’ final selection two teams were given credit for having talent even if it did not help them over the hump when they had everything on the line.
The fact that not just one top seed died before the Final Four, but all four were dispatched early and an eight seed faced a three in the Final means that when it came to ranking probably too much attention was paid to talent and record.
Adras aside, Connecticut did actually win the final poll because most voters still believe winning the NCAA tournament says more about a team than its record does.