PLAYING THE GAME DOESN'T ALWAYS MATTER

by Simon, SimonOnSports

Last Thursday night the #2 South Florida Bulls went to Piscataway, New Jersey, played and lost to a pre-season top 15 team. One week later they plummeted down in every single poll and behind many other 1 loss teams around the country. One such team happens to be the West Virginia Mountaineers. Apparently most people in the country estimate that the Mountaineers are a better football team than the Bulls on all Saturday afternoons and Friday evenings don't really matter.

Looking at the polls across the web from the AP (6-11) to the Coaches (6-12) to the Harris (6-12) to the Blogpoll (9-10), everyone had the Mountaineers ahead of the Bulls.

The only human poll I could find which actually got this right in my opinion was the poll here at EC. And really that's not saying that we're smarter than everybody or anybody, in actuality I single handedly got South Florida ranked ahead of West Virginia. In the EC poll South Florida had 84 points, 19 of which were through my 3rd place vote, and WVU had 76 points, 1 of which from me, as I voted them 21st. Apparently I think like a computer because the only agreement I can find with myself is the BCS who rated South Florida 5 and WVU T-10.

Let's get back on the point. West Virginia has one loss. South Florida has one loss. South Florida beat West Virginia, South Florida beat Auburn on the road, West Virginia has beaten no one very good this season, West Virginia lost to South Florida. And yet people around the country are so quick to forget this and so easily plummet teams with losses fresh in their heads and so easily forget that when teams play each other and one beats the other typically that means they are the better team.

What exactly am I missing here?