AP Makes Mistake Removing Arizona State From College Football Top 25

First and foremost, as all the people who know me and from what most readers of my articles can assume, I am a huge Arizona State Sun Devils fan. That being said, this isn’t a homer piece. Coincidentally they are just the team to reference my point. My last article even mentions the fact that I feel them falling out of the 25 is justified for how sloppy they played in their opener last Saturday against an unranked Texas A&M Aggies team (might I add that they are magically ranked now).

Now to the point. For years it has seemed that teams get punished for not playing big name teams, ranked opponents and challenging road matchups. Let’s be honest; if the Big-12 had a championship game, the TCU Horned Frogs would have been last year’s national champions. They would have rolled over every opponent they played. Their only loss was to a pretty good dang good Baylor Bears team. Instead, they were punished and jumped by the would-be National Champion Ohio State Buckeyes simply because their schedule lacked that “big” game at the end. Division II teams play a harder schedule than the Buckeyes.

I call hypocrisy. Everyone who watched that Sun Devils-Aggies game knows that it was not a “neutral” field. NRG Stadium is about 90 minutes from College Station, and that’s if you’re driving the speed limit. That means the members of the “12th man” (the real 12th man, not the wannabe ones in Seattle) could get to the stadium and back in the time it took Sun Devils fans to get their luggage at the Houston airport.

The Sun Devils, then ranked No. 15, fell over 10 spots out of the rankings for scheduling a tough road matchup, one that was pretty close until a broken coverage play made the scoreboard look like a blowout. And if everyone is now saying how good the Aggies are, wouldn’t that make the Sun Devils’ loss more acceptable? Will the Oregon Ducks or Michigan State Spartans fall over 1o spots this weekend when one of them loses? It kind of seems like you have to do that now. No wonder the SEC schedules a quarter of their schedule against FCS schools. Committees that rank these teams preach difficulty of schedule yet punish teams that play challenging opponents.

Maybe they play favorites. It’s a definite fact that Buckeye fans will pack a stadium far quicker than Horned Frog fans. And clearly the NCAA isn’t shy about making money. Either way, there needs to be more justice and equality in the ranking system or we’re going to start seeing a lot of really big blowouts. Why would teams want to risk a mark in the “L” column when they can beat up on far inferior opponents for half the season?