The latest college football polls are out and now it's time to rip them to shreds. Senior college basketball writer Gary Parrish has been calling out voters in the major hoops polls for thinking a little bit too far outside of the box when it comes to their AP ballots every week.
With the football season, I thought I'd steal take the baton on the idea from my colleague and keep all of the writers across the country who vote honest. I've come to know a good number of these people through time and twitter but relationships do not matter, bad votes do.
This is a special time of year however. The end of the regular season brings with it two things: stupid voters and full ballots in the Harris and Coaches Poll. Of course, this year things mattered more than usual with Oklahoma State trying to leap-frog Alabama and play in the national title game. Here are the polls.
AP Poll Coaches Poll Harris Poll BCS
(Details of AP ballots courtesy of PollSpeak.com)
Now, this is a big job calling attention to all of the bad voters. Jerry Hinnen looked up and down the Harris Poll ballots and what he found was not good at all. Three voters ranked Oklahoma State 6th! 6th! 80-year-old and former Iowa sports information director George Wine's voting is particularly disgusting because he has Houston, coming off a 49-28 beat down to a team that lost to UAB, 5th. Read the whole post and enjoy. You can understand why some coaches like Boise State's Chris Petersen are speaking out very loudly against the BCS.
The Coaches Poll, another third of the formula that "determines" which team is better than another, is not much better. Chip Patterson investigated and it's pretty clear that not only did SIDs/football operations vote for a few of the coaches, but they didn't watch anything but a few highlights each week. Air Force coach Troy Calhoun has some explaining to do in particular. Here's all the details about the coaches (some of whom are fired, others just need to be fired from voting).
So, for the final time this year, the Poll Attacks will turn its eye on the AP voters who hopefully voted better than their counterparts in the Harris and Coaches Polls.
Hint: They didn't.
Rodney Dangerfield "No respect" team(s) of the week: Boise State
You remember that team, they play on the blue turf? They're kind of good. They beat the SEC East champ and played eight bowl-bound coaches. They have never trailed by more than seven points in four years. FOUR YEARS. Quarterback Kellen Moore is 49-3 as a starter. I get the "they didn't play anyone" arguments every critic uses but this is a good football team that probably could beat all but one or two on a neutral field.In the coaches, Nick Saban voted the Broncos 11th, same as Steve Spurrier and James Franklin. S-E-C! They're not the worst though.
CRAIG JAMES VOTED BOISE STATE 23RD. Behind Houston, who was blown out at home. Boise beat Georgia. So yeah, don't think James will be calling any games on the blue turf in the future. Ray Fittipaldo also had the program ranked 17th. Sigh.
Overrated: Virginia Tech
Hokies head coach (who happens to be the winningest active coach) Frank Beamer ranked his team 13th in his ballot. Now considering they were just throttled again by Clemson, it's hard to say that you can rank them above what Beamer did (and that is high considering they haven't beaten anybody). Somehow they're in the Sugar Bowl but that's an issue for another day. Anyway, John Werner, Mike DiRocco and Steve Conroy had VT 11th and Bob Asmussen, David Just, Doug Lesmerises, Jeremy Sampson, Matt McCoy, Mitch Vingle, Patrick Magee, Robert Cessna and Sal Interdonato had them 12th. Unranked is a little extreme though Desmond Conner. And an amazing seven voters had the Hokies ahead of the Tigers despite the two head-to-head wins and the ACC title.California Craziness
A trio of voters from California (CSN Bay Area/CBSSports.com's Ray Ratto, San Jose Mercury News' Jon Wilner, LA Daily News' Scott Wolf) are an interesting voting block. Some would call them progressive, others would call them extreme and just about everybody else will call them crazy given their fluctuations in their ballots each week. All three are consistently in Pollspeak's group of "extreme voters" so we'll highlight the most baffling decision(s) out of each.
One last time to put Wolf here before Parrish takes the baton back and puts his ballots in the basketball poll attacks. Wolf had Arkansas 4th, Georgia and South Carolina (at least in the right order) in the top 10 to make half of his top 10 from the SEC, Wisconsin the lowest out of anybody at 13th, Michigan State 20th and Virginia ranked despite being shut out by the aforementioned Virginia Tech. Not his worst ballot ever but not good.Ratto also ranks Northern Illinois 24th and Arkansas State 25th. This is mostly an issue with NIU, Arkansas State deserves to be ranked in the 20's. Wilner cannot be serious with Michigan at 19th, lower than anybody and behind Southern Miss.
What were you thinking? Craig James, ESPN
I just can't anymore, it's so bad.Arkansas 4th (highest of anyone), Kansas State 6th (highest), Stanford 8th (lowest), Michigan 10th (highest), Penn State 17th (highest), Missouri 24th (highest) and West Virginia was unranked. That Big East champ who rolled up more yards on top ranked LSU, unranked.
AND BOISE STATE WAS 23RD. Sorry for yelling, had to get the point across.
Until next year.
Our very own Bryan Fischer has ruthlessly picked through the weekly ballots of 
Beating a mediocre-at-best Florida team seems to have the same effect that beating a good Florida team did. The Seminoles started the season highly ranked but have struggled most of the season in, it should be noted, a weak ACC. Also keep in mind that they just lost at home to Virginia, a team that was throttled by Virginia Tech. Maybe if they win a bowl game they can be ranked in the top 25 (coaches have them 24th, AP 25th) but not now. 
Going to miss putting Wolf in this spot once the final poll comes out. He has Arkansas 3rd and Georgia 7th on top of having Clemson ranked higher than anybody at 15 and Wisconsin lower than anybody at 21. The Badgers are just one spot ahead of Georgia Tech, which shouldn't be ranked on anybody's ballot. TCU is also three spots ahead of Baylor for an odd reason.
There's so much wrong with Sargeant's ballot, it's hard to figure out where to begin. Houston is 4th and Georgia, yes Georgia, is 6th. He also has TCU ranked higher than anybody (10th), Penn State 13th (for beating Ohio State? Ok...) and has USC 17th and Oregon 18th, the lowest out of anybody. Notre Dame is higher than anybody at 19th and Oklahoma falls to 21st. Yikes. Also, Greg Auman of the St. Petersburg Times has Oregon ranked 4th and USC 16th. Not sure how that happened.
Two teams find themselves in this spot this week, which is very hard to do considering the majority of teams outside of the top 10 could be considered overrated. The Trojans have a legitimate gripe about being 18th, the lowest they've been in the polls at 8-2 in the school's illustrious history. Throttling a previously ranked Washington team did nothing to impress anybody it seems, holding the Huskies powerful offense to 17 points and running back Chris Polk to just 36 yards on the ground. The offense with Matt Barkley and Robert Woods is humming and the defense is finally looking solid. Though the Big Ten as a whole is a mess this year, Wisconsin is getting no love as the 15th ranked team. They're two hail mary's from being undefeated and destroyed a ranked Nebraska team earlier in the season. The offense is among the most balanced in the country and the defense has been superb outside of the last play of the game.
It took awhile but we're finally on board with the Nittany Lions. As my colleague Bruce Feldman asked, has any 8-1, Joe Paterno-coached team ever been this disrespected? Yes, the offense is pitiful outside of Silas Redd and they seem to enjoy tormenting the local media by never naming a starter. They're the leader in the, um, Leaders division and certainly have a chance at winning their last three games to get to the Big Ten title game. 10th is a little high (Jim Wogan, John Hunt) but 20th or below? Not right now.
Hard to pick just one team that is overrated this week, it seems like everybody below Oklahoma has serious issues (and Oregon/OU aren't great top 10 by any means). But Michigan State seems ripe at 15th in the AP poll and 16th in the Coaches poll. The loss to Notre Dame (31-13) doesn't look good at all in retrospect just as the Wisconsin win doesn't help all that much. They impressed in a win against Michigan but they only have three BCS wins and won by three in one and needed a hail mary in another.
The Golden Eagles are ranked in the top 25 for the first time since 2004 in the Coaches Poll but are just "receiving votes" in the AP. Voters must not be aware of them shutting down June Jones' offense on Saturday, holding SMU to just three points and 330 yards. They're behind teams like West Virginia (blown out by Syracuse) and Arizona State (lost to Illinois, blown out by Oregon) for some reason. Yes, they're a Conference USA team so they have to fight for respect a lot more than others but they should be on everyone's ballot at 6-1.
To be fair, it's hard to figure out where to slot Nebraska because of the mediocre group of teams outside of the top 10-12 or so. The blowout loss to Wisconsin looks even worse now and having to come back and beat Ohio State is not a ringing endorsement for a top 15 team given their troubles in the passing game. We'll figure out if they deserve a high-ranking after Saturday but until then, they probably should be behind Virginia Tech and even Texas A&M.
I swear that Wilner just likes being the one in this space in order to gloat to his Bay Area compatriot Ratto. First off, teams that are on his ballot that shouldn't be: Auburn (17th), Washington (21st), Texas (23rd). Teams not on his ballot that should be: Houston, Michigan, Penn State. Also head-scratching: Auburn above USC, Kansas State 19th, Virginia Tech one spot behind Washington, Arkansas ahead of Stanford, South Carolina in the top 12, Georgia in the top 15.
Conner's top 20 isn't bad at all, aside from Nebraska being ahead of both Michigan State and Wisconsin. The bottom five is disastrous however. Arizona State is 20th, followed by West Virginia, Auburn, Georgia Tech, Illinois and Penn State. He was the only voter to rank the Fighting Zookers despite losing back-to-back games to Ohio State and Purdue and has one-loss Penn State dead last on his ballot. Conner is also the only one to leave USC unranked.