The Josh Innes Show - College Preseason Polls Matter..Don't Believe They Don't

Episode Date: August 12, 2025

I was reading a story about how the college preseason polls don't really matter. They do. I explain why in this episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right. Let's see here, everybody. Welcome in. College football AP poll came out, and I hate preseason polls, and I've always hated preseason polls, and you should hate preseason polls. I understand why they exist. I understand there was a time that they actually held weight. They don't, in reality, hold any weight directly now, but they still do hold some weight. It's just not direct, and we'll get into that in a second. But I understand you need to put rankings on these teams, so when they play to start the season, it looks sexier, is if you need numbers in front of Texas and Ohio State to let you know that Texas and Ohio State is a good game.

Of course it is. Those are two of the biggest brands in the history of the sport. I don't need to know that one is number one and one is number three in the AP poll to know that that's a good game. We know nothing about these teams to have them ranked, right? And I've been reading different stories. First of all, let me do this. Let me get this out of the way.

Let's get the commercials out of the way right out of the shoot, okay? So let's play a few commercials, and then we will continue. I was reading a tweet from my buddy from the SEC Network, and I'm reading these, and it's like, well, the SEC plays. Actually, let me see if I can find that. I guess I should have had the tweet ready to go, but I was so amped up to discuss this that I had to just get going right now. So let's see, where's my guy from the SEC Network? How am I drawn a blank? This is around the time of day.

I'm recording this after this. the show is over. This is that time of day where my brain starts just going to mush. I slept three hours last night because like a dipshit, I decided that it was in my best interest to stay up gambling on soccer and late baseball games and watching Parks and Rec. Got up at four today. Didn't go to sleep until after one last night. So look, I can roll on three hours, do a pretty good show. But I got to get up at four because I got to get up at four to make sure I get some of these pods in for you because it's been helping the podcast to get kind of consistent times coming out at you.

Anyway, my buddy Peter Burns is who I'm referring to, and he works for the SEC Network, and I'm in no way ripping him because Peter's a dude that's a Louisiana dude, has gone out and grinded and earned everything he's got, sold his own show for a while in San Antonio, I believe it was, bounced around, was in Denver and some other places, and now is on SEC Network, arguably the face of the SEC Network. But there's something I disagree with him. And I get that, like, he works for the SEC, and that's the part that kind of bothers me. Like, last week we talked about how I'm not overly bothered by how ESPN and the NFL are in bed together.

And I don't think anybody should be really bothered by it because in reality, the NFL has been in bed with the ESPN for a long time. So, although it was never official, like, look, they're protecting their entities. They're protecting their relationships. They've done it for years. So just because it's official doesn't mean anything to me. and I don't believe it's Pravda. I mean, I guess it is, but I just don't care that it's Provda. It's football.

It's the toy department of the world who cares. What does annoy me is when you get these people that cover college sports and you've got the SEC network and I get that it's designed to cover the SEC and the people covering it value the SEC over everyone else. It's just weird to me when I watch these SEC network dudes go out and just completely disregard another conference and talk shit about another conference as if the SEC, is God's conference. Is the SEC the best football conference in America? Yes.

On a year-in, year-out basis, more often than not, it is. But there are some years that you can't just throw a blanket over something and say, oh, this team played an SEC schedule, therefore they're better than blank team, right? I think that's bullshit. But one of the things that Peter tweeted was about top 25 games. And let me see if I can find the exact tweet about top 25 games and the number of top 25 games that certain teams in the SEC are playing versus the... Okay, LSU, Oklahoma, Florida, and Mississippi State all have more top 25 teams on

their schedule, seven, than Penn State three, Indiana three, play combined. Another reason why everyone laughed at Big Ten when they tried to flex about the toughness of their nine conference game schedule. But here's the thing. We're basing top 25 on the opinions of media people, media people who have bias. So yes, and no, no, the AP poll doesn't have a direct bearing on what happens in the college football playoff, but it does have indirect and not official. It's technical. It's a technicality here. No, it doesn't officially factor into the decision. So this is not a computer that weighs in, you know, that Texas is number one. But if Texas starts the season at number one, you are going in with the baseline of this is the best team in the country, having never watched Texas play. So now they can just go out and roll through their schedule. What if they play like shit the entire season but go undefeated?

How do you drop them out of number one? How can a team go undefeated and not be the number one team in the country? You started them at number one. What did they do to drop? In any other sport where there are no polls and it's just about standings and how you win, if you go undefeated in the NFL, you're not going to get leapfrogged by a team with one loss because their schedule was tougher. Why is it in college football that we reward teams based on what some means?

media people thought of them going into the season. That's the bullshit I hate. I'm an SEC guy. Year in, year out, the SEC is better than most conferences. The talent is better, the style of football is better. But top heavy-wise, you've got years that Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State, that's a good league sometimes. And then some other ones sneak in. Is it as good as the SEC?

No. But look at last year when everybody was dick swinging about why Ole Miss should be in and South Carolina should be in over this team. Was Indiana a really good football team? They play in a crappy league. They lost the game against the good team and still got into the playoff. But that's how the playoff was set up. So what do I mean by all this? Why does this bother me?

It bothers me because we're ranking people based on nothing. We're ranking teams based on having not seen them play. And then we act as if we don't use those rankings as some sort of baseline. So if LSU goes out and beats Clemson, right? LSU is number nine in the AP poll. Clemson's number four. No matter what happens for the rest of the year, if LSU beats number four Clemson, they will swing their dicks and say we beat the number four team in the country.

What if Clemson loses four times? They're obviously not the fourth best team in the country. Arguably, if you beat them to start the season, they're not the fourth best team in the country because they've already lost a game. But when LSU won the national championship in 2019 and people talk about how they're the greatest team of all time, because they played, I think it was seven or eight, top teams. Yeah, they were top 25 when you played them

and you beating them helped drop them down. But that doesn't mean that they were one of the 25 best teams. So, like, I hate dealing in things that are not absolute. Things that are absolute are win-loss records and standings in baseball, football, the NFL,

hockey, whatever. Well, that's a point thing. So it's a little different. But none of those are determined by people's votes. There is no poll that matters, right? Now, you could argue, this poll doesn't matter. USA Today puts out a weekly power ranking in the NFL that people get worked up over or baseball. None of that matters. But this does matter because this is the only sport where we look at matchups and say this team deserves to be in because of who they played or who this team didn't play. You see what I'm saying? That's why it's bullshit. There should be no

preseason rankings. But Josh, then it takes away from the excitement of these preseason or these early season matchups. It's not as sexy to say Clemson versus LSU, if LSU's not number nine and Clemson's not number four. O contraire, Mon Frere, you want to tell me that someone that knows about college football or even as a novice college football fan wouldn't know that Clemson LSU is a great matchup, whether or not they're both in the top 10 preseason or not? You think people wouldn't know that?

Of course they would. The only time that really matters is if there's some dinky team that's not a big national brand. It'll help SMU at number 16. Whoever they play early in the season, it'll look good saying a top 25 team is playing whoever SMU is playing. Or Boise State, although they're a relatively large brand. It's dumb and they need to go away. Then if that's the case, why not do the college football playoff rankings right out of the shoot? Week one, let's go. Here's a story from the athletic. No, preseason college football polls don't impact the playoffs like you might think, but they do. Because when those people are sitting in those meetings, you don't

think that when they're pitching like at 2019 LSU, you don't think they're pitching the fact that they played seven top 25 teams and beat seven top 25 teams. You don't think they weigh that in? Even if those teams are still not in the top 25, they were when they played them. If you don't think people are weighing that in, and that's not part of the discussion, then I got nothing for you. I can't help you. This is by Matt Baker. It was yesterday. day. College football preseason polls are under attack. The Big 12 ended its media poll this year, apparently assuming formalized expectations could do more harm than good. Conference USA didn't do one either. The Big Ten hasn't had one for years and they were conversations as its media days,

whether preseason rankings carry more meaning than they deserve, influencing the opinions of college football playoff selection committee that doesn't start meeting until later in the season. It does. And the SEC people, of course, don't want to acknowledge. that because the people who cover the SEC and the fans of the SEC do not want to acknowledge that because they are the ones that benefit the most from it. They are

the ones that get to dick swing because we're in the SEC and there's like 10 top 25 teams. How many AP top 25 teams are there? Texas 1. So there's Texas, Georgia is 2, Alabama 3, LSU 4, South Carolina 5, Florida 6, Oklahoma 7, Texas

A&M 8, Ole Miss 9, Tennessee 10. 10 of the top 25 teams, nearly half of the top 25 teams or SEC teams. Of course the SEC values preseason polls because the SEC benefits the most from them. It's like if you're in a voting situation for taxes or whatever, and there's already tax breaks that are benefiting you, you're not going to vote against those tax breaks that benefit you. It's the same shit. This isn't difficult. But the way people talk gets, oh, well, these preseason polls don't matter, and then you get the SEC people that say you're whining. It does alter perception.

And oh, by the way, these people on this committee, a lot of them are dopes anyway. And they're humans. You know what humans have biases. Say it with me, kids. Humans have biases. And that's been the case forever. Do you think these people voting on the AP? And by the way, the other thing is, how do we trust media people to determine the top 25?

This is the baseline stuff since there is no college football playoff. this is the baseline shit we go by when they determine the first college football playoff if texas is the number one team all year long and they start number one and they don't lose do you really believe that they won't put texas in at number one when the college football playoff goes around and i don't have 10 let me get texas a schedule but like when is the first college football playoff poll uh poll come out sometime in october right when is the first college football playoff ranking okay uh let's see it is the no number of Tuesday, November 5th of last year.

So it's November, okay, is when we get that. So now let's look at the Texas football schedule. Again, I could have had this beforehand, but I just felt like ranting and raving. So Texas plays a season opener against Ohio State. Cool. After that, they play San Jose State, U-TEP, Sam Houston, Florida. Let's see. Look, Texas's schedule is for dipshits.

They play a dipshit schedule outside of Ohio State. So you mean to tell me that if they beat Ohio State, that's a good win. But you've got San Jose State, U-TEP, Sam Houston. Their next three games, two of them are against the state of Texas and not the legitimate schools, and San Jose State. Oklahoma may be good, may not be. Florida, again, these are iffy ones. Point being in this is you think come November, if they're undefeated or whatever, who have they beaten in that stretch other than Ohio State, as we know it right now, to be a good team?

Yet they're the number one team. And I guarantee you they'll be the number one team. And a lot of that is based on the fact that the media has them at number one now. The SEC has done an amazing job of propaganda. Is the SEC the best football conference in America and the deepest football conference in America and the most talented football conference in America? Pound for pound are the best players in the SEC per capita, whatever. Yes.

But what the SEC has done so successfully, that is propaganda, is the SEC has created a world that even if you lose, If you lose inside your conference, it's just because the conference is so tough. Where in other conferences, they disregard the conferences beating each other up as just they all suck and they're not good enough. But when Ole Miss loses three games, it's, well, we played in the SEC and our schedule is brutal and they cannibalize themselves, essentially. The SEC schools cannibalize themselves, and then they give themselves credit for eating each other. And that's the difference between the SEC and these other leagues. So there's a great benefit to being ranked high in these preseason polls. Not directly.

It does not impact it directly. It's not a computer poll. But it certainly benefits to be there. Texas would rather be number one right now to start or number two than they would rather be number 25 because that's going to alter the perception. And it's going to make a victory look better for you come November. If LSU beats the number 14 in the country, Clemson, even if Clemson is number 21, number 24 when the first poll comes out. They'll say, well, they beat Clemson when they were number four, and Clemson wouldn't be number 24. Had LSU not beaten them, they'd be higher than that.

It's all bullshit. Anyway, more to come.