Let's talk about Rankings

Sports fans feast on watching the rankings. Where is their team ranked, or where is the rival ranked? Is the next opponent ranked? Debate rages continually over the places teams are stacked in the ranks.

Sports talk radio dedicates hours a week just debating the latest rankings. Fans call in to talk trash about teams ranked higher than their team. Arguments for and against are ongoing. Everybody has an opinion & quite often they differ, depending on who you are and who you are rooting for.

College coaches seem to be uncomfortable being ranked #1. They have an uncanny way of making excuses why their team shouldn't be ranked above all others.

Fans, on the other end of the spectrum, will boast loudly if their favorite team is #1. While, if you're not a fan of that #1 team, you can come up with a dozen reasons why they shouldn't be.

Players, more times than not, are caught in the middle. I'm sure coaches are telling them don't let it go to your head, while their fans are saying they are unbeatable. It's no wonder why so many teams that make it to the top get knocked off. Kentucky basketball was the latest team to reach #1, only to get beat the same week. Kansas has taken over at the top of the college basketball heap. Will they get knocked off, or prove the pollsters right?

Have you ever noticed how no two polls are ever the same? College football has 3 of them through the season & they seldom agree. Preseason rankings rarely come close to the end of the season results. And throughout the season, the ranks are perpetually changing.

Take the Gryphon basketball team. They are ranked as the best team in the state at the 3-A level. That's in one poll. In another, they are #3. Wrestler Chandler Phillips is ranked as the #3 wrestler in the state at 140 pounds in one poll. In another, he is the #4 wrestler in the eastern half of the state at 135.

If you ever wondered how two sets of rankings can be so different, consider all the factors that go into "guessing" which team, or individual, is the best. Obviously, there is your record and who you beat. Then there are common opponents and a comparison on how teams faired against them. Then you can consider I beat team B by X and you beat team C by Y, but team B beat team C by Z. I'm not sure if the guys compiling the rankings even knew that I played my third string the entire 4th quarter, while you ran up the score with your starters until the last minute.

Anyway, if you've ever wondered how some of these rankings are compiled, and how a publication figures it all out, check out the January 11 posting by Will Wolfe at Retrorankings.com entitled "4A 135". They get so many complaints and questions about the posted rankings each week, he felt he should give an example of what they go through putting them together. Remember, these guys put together a list of the top 10 wrestlers each week. Top 10 wrestlers in each of the 14 weight classes in 1A, 2A 3A and 4A. That's a list of the best 560 wrestlers in the state of North Carolina. He explains what he goes through for only ONE of those weight classes.

Do you think that somewhere, some wrestler, his mom, his dad, his brother, his coach or his girlfriend doesn't think that there was a mistake made? That somebody was overlooked? Really?

I am sure the guys who put out high school basketball, baseball and football polls go through a similar process. The number of teams doesn't rival the number of individuals, for sure, but the process and results are similar. Not everyone agrees with the week's list.

The guys and gals that put together and publish these sorts of rankings, high school and collegiate, are always second guessed. We, as fans, love it and feast on it when our favorites are highly ranked. But rankings are in a constant state of change and there is a reason for that. Rankings are only a list of someone's predictions on how the final outcome will turn out. My prediction is not the same as your prediction.

No wonder nobody can agree on the polls that come out.

It's why they play the games, after all. It's why the unranked are allowed into a tournament. It's how somebody came up with the saying ". . .on any given day. . .". It's why Cinderella takes down Goliath.

To get back to the Gryphons, let's hope that this year's basketball team can live up to their current ranking. Let's see another Rocky Mount team run through the rest of the state to another team championship. Let's see if Phillips and JK Willilamson can pull off a repeat trip to the state individuals, add an upset or two while there, and come home with individual state titles.

It's getting close to tournament time. Go Gryphons.