The Josh Innes Show - I Despise The AP Poll

Episode Date: September 3, 2025

Not only do I hate the AP Poll, I hate the people who think it matters. I've heard people say preseason polls don't matter. Well, then explain how teams we watched play and play well are ranked below teams who sucked. The explanation is that people are blinded by preseason rankings. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is there anything worse than watching people react to an AP poll, right? Like, I'd like to see, like, a Venn diagram of people who, like, are, don't trust the media people and people who get really worked up over the AP poll as if it matters. Like, there's got to be, like, some sort of intersection of those people. The same people who are, like, big time, like, Trump are types that are, like, the media can't be trusted, which largely I would agree with you. but like then you go to the AP poll and you act as if it's like the end all be all like I'm an LSU guy LSU jumps up to number three in the AP poll jilly sends me a screenshot of and says LSU's number three and I understand that she's aware of how it all works so I'm not being a dickhead when I say it to her but I'm like jilly I don't give a shit you're basically asking people like a bunch of me's to rank teams it has no bearing on anything all it does is you know it makes us matchup look better. Like when you get a one versus a three season opener, that's all that matters. It's made for TV shit. But the idea that, like, I care what a bunch of media dopes think. But people, I, I, first of all, let me play a couple of commercials and we'll

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Turns and conditions apply. Learn more at amex.ca. slash Yannex. I think what bothers me about it is that I think a lot of these people are stupid and don't understand that it's just the opinions of media people. I think they view it as some sort of definitive thing that some sort of calculation has been used to determine this and it's like an official thing and that it matters

and look I know that everybody doesn't follow things all that close people have lives, they have jobs, they have kids like so people aren't just dissecting sports to the level that someone who works in it would dissect sports right but I think what bothers me is that people look at this In the same way they look at like a USA Today power ranking, like for the NFL, right? Or for baseball or for any sport. A lot of it's just for clickbait for blogs, right?

So like you'll see a lot of team blogs that are looking for easy clicks. When I say team blogs, I don't talk about blogs that are, or I say blogs, that's such a dated term. You know, but like websites and shit. I'm not talking about official team things. I'm talking about people who've, you know, wrap themselves in a team that. that they're a fan of and they've started a website or a podcast or whatever. Like, hey, we are Toro Nation or something like that because we're Texans fans. And to get some easy clicks that you can get dummies to click on, you post a story like, wow, the Texans, despite starting 4 and 0, are still 10th in the power rankings.

Like, in the NFL, quite literally, power rankings mean absolutely nothing. Zero. You know how to get in the playoffs. you have to win your division and get a wild card. It doesn't matter what your record is as long as you win the division or win the wild card. It doesn't matter what your power rankings are. There isn't a computer

that determines this. It is your actions on the field. Yet people still love to post links to these stories and can you believe the Texans are 10th in the power rankings? Who gives a shit? That's being determined by media people. You've all already established you think media people are stupid. So why the fuck do you

care what media people say about your team? That might bother me more than And look, I know you might listen to this and go, Josh, you're bothered by a lot of things. Like, this could have just been called Josh is bothered by a lot of things podcast. Certainly it could be. But as someone who is easily bothered by things, although I think I've gotten better. If you listen to this podcast more, I think I've kind of leveled out. Like, do I still get angry over certain things?

Yes. Will there be days I lose my mind? Sure. But I think I've learned and taught myself as I near 40 as I'm, what, like 11 months away from turning 40. I don't get as pissed off about certain things as I used to, right? Like, I still get mad about things. I'll still go off on things. But I try to kind of level myself out. Balance things out. Pick and choose which things matter. Pick your battles. That's something I've been told my whole life and I've never really followed. But pick your battles, Josh. Like, don't get worked up

over everything. If you get pissed off over everything, then what ends up happening here is when you're pissed off over everything, then it doesn't have the same impact. It's like when I used to say pussy on the radio. I knew I was allowed to say pussy on the radio. Most listeners probably thought I wasn't allowed to say pussy on the radio. But if I would have said pussy on the radio every day about something that would have had any impact, you know, you hang on to it for like, it's a special bullet. It's a silver bullet in a chamber, right? So, like, that's kind of how I operate.

So I'm trying to pick my battles on where I get super pissed off about things. But things that really annoy me are when people talk about the AP poll as if it matters. We've all established that media people are bought and paid for dwebes anyway. We see it everywhere, right? If you're somebody that works for a radio station that carries the games, to me, your credibility is probably not all that great because the teams control these radio stations anyway. You might be a free-thinking voice, but for the most part, like in Houston,

look, I really like a lot of the people that are on 6'10 as humans. But once you're being taken off the air at 8 o'clock in the morning on a Saturday to put on the voice of the Texans and Texans employees, to me, your show loses credibility. You may not lose credibility because you're not the one on there presenting the propaganda. But once you got the people that are employees of the team, anybody with a brain would hear that and go, oh, yeah, that's propaganda. Now, really what determines whether or not they consider it propaganda is if the team is playing well or not. If the Texans are 10 and 1 coming off a win over the Ravens, if on Monday at 8 o'clock

Mark Vandermere goes in there and does a show at 8 o'clock and knocks Sean Pendergast and Seth Payne off the air, no one's going to consider it propaganda because they're 10 and 1 and they're telling you good shit about a team you think is good. Where it's propaganda is if they're 1 in 10 and you bring them in, then you're angry about it. It's all in the eye of the beholder and all of this. But as far as big picture stuff with media things, and things that matter in that way.

To me, I don't trust media people anyway, and I don't believe them. I believe that most of them are easily bought and paid for. And in some things like sports, it doesn't really matter. We've talked about that on here, too. Like, how much credibility should ESPN have? They're in bed with the NFL. I don't really give a shit. You know, it's sports.

So who gives a shit? Like, oh, no, ESPN may block or have a story blocked by the NFL. big deal. Does it impact my enjoyment of the sport? Not really. This isn't the real world. It's the toy box of the media world, right? So who gives a shit? But big picture, when people are like, what about the AP poll? Like, do you know that that's just media people? Do you know? Like, I wonder how many people see the Associated Press poll. They see the AP poll. Don't know that AP stands for associated press. They just assume it's just called the AP poll for whatever reason. Just whatever AP means. It's called that. It's the associated press. It is voted on by media people. Media people have biases.

That's why when you involve media people in a poll, do you think that they don't have a bias of some guy that votes for the AP poll, you know, writes for, you know, some sort of South Carolina magazine or a newspaper? Do you think that that person doesn't have some sort of bias to the team he covers? Even if like his reporting is objective, like he sees that. team every day and has a bias towards that team. Everybody has biases, right? So why would I give a shit? Like, I watched LSU play. Here's what I think. I don't care about preseason rankings. Like, I listen to this Josh Pate College Football Show, and he loves preseason rankings because it's, you know, it's content and whatever. I don't like preseason rankings because I think it's a fruitless endeavor to rank teams who we have not seen play. It is dumb, and I do believe that it is something that impacts the perception of teams when you have a commitment. involved in stuff. Whenever you start determining

playoff teams that are in a committee that a committee is used to determine, you want to tell me that they're not swayed by where someone is ranked in these polls? Of course they are. So if you're a team that starts the season number one or number two, and then you play a bunch of shitty teams for six

weeks and you're undefeated, people will say, oh, but look at these guys, they're number one. How do you drop the number one team if they're undefeated? And a lot of people look at it that way. So don't call it. Release the first polls whenever you put out the CFP. There's an idea, but people are going to do that.

So they need that sexy one versus three matchup, and I understand it. I just don't like it, right? But if I were to determine the top teams in college football after one week, even look at Texas, because they were number one and because Arch was all that, you're still going to view them differently and handle that loss to Ohio State differently because of what those numbers were. If you're Clemson, you'll go,

well, it sucks that we lost, but we did lose to a team that was number nine and now is number three, so that's a good team that we played. We don't know how good LSU is. We're just looking at some number that was predetermined by a bunch of fucking slobs that are in the Associated Press.

If you, after one week of football, where would you actually have Texas ranked? Their quarterback looked like shit. And of course, you'd say, if you know nothing about Ohio State, you know that playing on the road there is tough and that they probably have a lot of talent, right? Like, they're Ohio State. They won the national championship a year ago. They're never going to be void of talent at Ohio State. So you know that a loss there is still, you know, the loss isn't as bad or as good or bad as if, like, say, you know, I forgot who it was that Missou play, but Missou played some slap dick like, you know, Western Missouri or some shit. and they beat the shit out of them.

No one's going to look at beating the shit out of Western Missouri as a great accomplishment. So you'll look at just losing a game like Ohio State and you'll go, okay, we'll assume that that's a decent enough team, even if they're not great. We don't know. But what happens is you start to look at these numbers and it still impacts how far you have a team like Texas drop. Tell me after watching Texas, particularly their offense, which was inept, that you would put them as one of the top five teams in the country? Would you?

I wouldn't. I'd put LSU as one of the top five teams in the country. I'd look at a team like Clemson, and despite the fact their offense was pretty terrible, I think they played a very good team. Now, they'd lose a lot of credit for losing a home game and getting outscored 14-0 in the second half, but they had the ball with a chance to go win the game or tie the game late. Defensively, they were still pretty good. You know, you'd look at Florida State and go, oh, we can assume that Alabama,

no matter if there were rankings for them or not, we would know that Alabama is a pretty good football team because it's Alabama. Florida State going to Alabama and beating them should make them a team that's like, oh, that's a top five team. Now I'm curious. AP poll. Let's take a look. I haven't even looked at it because I don't care. So the number one team in the country is Ohio State. Like their win over Texas was good. That's a nice win. But like you start looking at this. Why is Florida State? Florida State's number 14. Florida State, I believe, was unranked going in. So after one week, Florida State goes from being a team that you didn't give shit about to now being 14.

Why is Florida State, if they beat Alabama, who, oh, by the way, Alabama, according to the Associated Press, I don't even think they have Alabama ranked at this point, but you like Alabama and you thought Alabama was so good and the Vegas saw, oh, no, Alabama's number 21. So they still beat a team that's in the top 25. They throttle the team that's still in the top 25. And when they played them, they were number eight. So why the fucking Florida State at least eight? you know like none of it makes sense it is stupid and to get your mind try to wrap your mind around

this shit and act like it's a big deal and that it matters it's just something that i'm not going to do because if you ask me josh who should be the top teams in college football after one week lSU should be one of them i think lsues win was probably the most impressive win i don't care about the rankings but just knowing that clubnick was back on the road they hadn't won a first game in five years that was an impressive game they were an underdog uh Like, here's what, again, results should matter. And I believe if you looked at these things and didn't have a number in front of these teams, you wouldn't be as pressured to put teams where you put them.

After one week of football, why is Texas number seven in the country and Florida State is number 14? The results don't bear that out. Texas was terrible offensively and lost to the number one team now. But they're the number one team because they beat Texas. But then what about Florida State? Florida State played the almighty Alabama and whipped their ass. And that's not as impressive as Texas losing to Ohio State and looking like shit doing so? Tell me any of this makes sense.

That's why I don't care about the AP poll. Georgia beat this shit out of Marshall. Who the fuck cares? They're number four? Miami, who was an underdog, the whole world's taken Notre Dame and oh my God, look out for Marcus Freeman. And Notre Dame looks like shit for most of the game against Miami. Carson Beck looks like a new dude. He's out there fucking slinging.

And you want to tell me that Miami is only, you know, Miami sits at number five. Clemson who got beaten by LSU is number eight. So Florida State, I don't know. Like this is the kind of shit that bothers me. Now, Florida State would have beaten some dipshits. I get it. If Florida State opened their season against Troy and beat them, you'd go, okay, fuck it. But even without any numbers by their name, you know that Alabama is a great football program.

And beating Alabama any year will still be more impressive than beating Marshall. Any year. It doesn't matter the year. So Florida State is a 14-point underdog, goes out, throttles Alabama. Yet Illinois is a better. Illinois at number 11? Oh, you know, South Carolina, that's a nice win over Virginia Tech. Do you think South Carolina is a better team than Florida State?

You know, Michigan, congrats. You kind of sputtered along and kind of, you mean, you never were in peril, but you beat New Mexico at home. Cool. You're number 50. Like, that's why I don't buy into this shit. And I understand that I've spent 20 minutes now talking about it. But Notre Dame, to me, wasn't impressive.

Notre Dame, I don't think their offense is very good. Maybe it'll get better. I know they had some moments in a couple of big plays, but I didn't find them to be all that impressive. So Florida State is worse than Notre Dame. You know why Florida States ranked lower than Notre Dame because of where you had them in this inane preseason poll. All right. Anyway, more to come.