ODDBALL FAN: THE COMPLAINER OF POWER RANKINGS

by wwtb?, Pacifist Viking

A lot of NFL writers do “Power Rankings” (why are they always called “Power Rankings”? Couldn’t somebody be creative and call them something else? “Rankings of Power”? Anything?) where the rank the NFL teams 1-32. That’s fine: it’s an easy article to write, and it gives us a reason to think about football midweek.

But it also brings out the weirdest of fans: the fan that writes in to complain that his or her favorite team is ranked lower in the Power Rankings than he or she thinks it should be.

With all due respect to this fan (wait: I don’t respect you. Forget that.), What is wrong with you?

Complaining about the Top 25 rankings in college football makes sense; in college football, those rankings are relevant to the actual success of the teams (as absurd as that is). But in the NFL? You get 16 games, and if you win more games than ten other teams in your conference, you make the playoffs. If you win a playoff game, you go on to another playoff game. It’s that simple. So what do these Power Rankings matter? So Dr. Z doesn’t have your favorite team in his top ten. Who cares? If your team keeps winning, eventually Dr. Z will probably put it in his top ten, but whether he does or doesn’t, who gives a crap? It doesn’t matter. It has no bearing. It’s one guy evaluating the team, and his evaluation has no impact on anything whatsoever.

Some of the fans really write with indignation, anger, and self-righteous outrage. They’ll call the writer names, demand explanations, and generally refer to the Power Rankings slight as the single greatest injustice in the whole of human history. It's really not worth the emotion some people appear to throw into it.

Listen, oddball fan that writes in to complain about a writer’s Power Rankings: get over it. It doesn’t matter. What matters is what’s left on your favorite team’s schedule. Your favorite team isn’t going to miss out on a playoff appearance because Dr. Z or Mark Mosley or the ESPN staff didn’t rank it high enough. There’s no bowl game at stake. There’s no missing out on a shot at a championship at stake. Your team will be fine. Or it won’t, I don’t know. But some writer’s Power Rankings aren’t going to be the reason.