CFB51 College Football Fan Community
The Power Four => Big Ten => Topic started by: medinabuckeye1 on October 20, 2025, 12:09:19 PM
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I believe that there will be 17 AP Polls in the 2025 season and we are now past half-way with nine so here are some updates.
For each list I have included the all-time top-25 and the teams that made the list sometime this season.
All time appearances:
(https://i.imgur.com/gmHyQBE.png)
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All time top-10 appearances:
(https://i.imgur.com/t88RhVo.png)
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All time top-5 appearances:
(https://i.imgur.com/WvPZE6u.png)
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All time #1 appearances:
(https://i.imgur.com/2F1A5xj.png)
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Interesting. I think this shows--a little--how the sports media focuses on brands it knows. So Auburn, Florida State, Clemson, Penn State, Notre Dame, and Nebraska get bumps because the media (and fans) are used to seeing them ranked, and ranked high. It would be interesting to run an analysis of how long it takes the teams who have the most all-time AP poll appearances to fall out of the Top 25 relative to teams without that history. Compare the results for say the top 25 against the not top 25. I bet it's also a sliding scale, meaning a top-10 team all-time gets a lot more leeway than a top-20 team.
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Interesting. I think this shows--a little--how the sports media focuses on brands it knows. So Auburn, Florida State, Clemson, Penn State, Notre Dame, and Nebraska get bumps because the media (and fans) are used to seeing them ranked, and ranked high. It would be interesting to run an analysis of how long it takes the teams who have the most all-time AP poll appearances to fall out of the Top 25 relative to teams without that history. Compare the results for say the top 25 against the not top 25. I bet it's also a sliding scale, meaning a top-10 team all-time gets a lot more leeway than a top-20 team.
I suspect that you are right but the data to prove it would be extremely complex. Take Notre Dame earlier this season as an example: After two games they were 0-2 but remained ranked at #24. One *COULD* and some DID argue that they were only ranked because of their helmet, because they are:
- Tied for the 4th most frequently ranked team
- The 4th most frequent top-10 team
- The fifth most frequent top-5 team
- The fourth most frequent #1 team.
Those things were true but it was also true that:
- One of their losses was by a FG on the road at night to the team (then) ranked #4
- One of their losses was by a single point after a botched XP snap to the team (then) ranked #10
So did Notre Dame stay in the poll because they were "Notre Dame" or was it because their losses were close and to highly respected teams. I would argue that it was probably a little of both.
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I suspect that you are right but the data to prove it would be extremely complex. Take Notre Dame earlier this season as an example: After two games they were 0-2 but remained ranked at #24. One *COULD* and some DID argue that they were only ranked because of their helmet, because they are:
- Tied for the 4th most frequently ranked team
- The 4th most frequent top-10 team
- The fifth most frequent top-5 team
- The fourth most frequent #1 team.
Those things were true but it was also true that:
- One of their losses was by a FG on the road at night to the team (then) ranked #4
- One of their losses was by a single point after a botched XP snap to the team (then) ranked #10
So did Notre Dame stay in the poll because they were "Notre Dame" or was it because their losses were close and to highly respected teams. I would argue that it was probably a little of both.
Absolutely agree, but I bet statisticians smarter than me could put together a pretty convincing regression analysis, or some such thing.
Remember: statistics don't lie, people (sometimes statisticians) lie.