In all of American sports, the only thing more pointless than college football’s preseason Top 25 polls is the perpetual argument to ban them.

This subject was revisited this summer nearly a month before the release of the first Associated Press poll of the 2025 season, as reporters sifted through the cacophony of major-conference media days and searched for compelling angles.

Brandon Marcello of CBS Sports, covering the Big 12 sessions in the Dallas suburbs, spoke with Kansas State coach Chris Klieman and reported on his advocacy for the elimination of preseason rankings from the two major polls and his decision to no longer to participate in USA Today’s poll of Division I coaches.

“I don’t think we’ll get it done right now. We’re trying to push,” Klieman said. “When the CFP comes out, that’s when the first AP and USA Today poll should come out.”

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The College Football Playoff rankings, which are the product of weekly conversations among members of the committee that chooses the at-large portion of the playoff field and seeds all participants, will appear for the first time in November.

When the Big Ten gathered in Las Vegas in mid July, ESPN’s Adam Rittenberg reported he had spoken with multiple Big Ten coaches at their media days and “they agreed: The preseason polls should be obliterated.”

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This single statement, presented in a tweet and not even an article, was transformed into subject matter for an SEC podcast on the Locked On network headlined, “REBELLION: Big Ten DECLARES WAR on preseason polls.” And there was another pod from Big Ten country labeled, “Big Ten coaches want preseason polls gone!”

The chances of the Associated Press acceding to the wishes, desires or demands of coaches, reporters, boosters, administrators or even, should he be so moved, Texas superfan Matthew McConaughey, are the equivalent of the Delaware Blue Hens ending this season with the No. 1 ranking.

The word “Press” is right there in the title of the poll, and it’s right there in the First Amendment, not far from the word “freedom”. Why would anyone think they can tell the AP what to publish?

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“If you want to want to get really deep and existential, there’s a little bit of a free speech component you’re talking about,” Ralph Russo told Sporting News. “Even if you say it’s not really news …”

Russo spent more than two decades as an outstanding college football writer with the AP before joining The Athletic last autumn. In his previous capacity, one of his many duties was writing up the weekly poll for distribution to AP clients. In his current position, he’s a first-time AP poll voter.

“Like 90 percent of sports conversation is about who is better and predicting the future. That is the essence of sports,” Russo said. “People who love professional sports, before every major professional sports league, somebody’s going to put out a power ranking, they’re going to predict the division winners, they’re going to predict the Super Bowl winner, they’re going to predict the World Series winner. This is how we do sports.

“Now, I understand in those sports, eventually they move away from the poll to decide things, and you don’t have selection committees and things along those lines. Standings work it out. So I do understand it’s a little different, but if the AP didn’t do it – are you going to tell Phil Steele not to rank teams?

“There are so many rankings, and so many people who want to rank teams and predict who’s going to be good, that’s just a natural part of sports conversation. I understand the AP and coaches poll do it in a more formal way … but if you eliminate them, that stuff doesn’t go away.”

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I’m no fan of polls as a means of measuring team performance and made clear to the AP more than 30 years ago my antipathy toward participating in basketball rankings. That doesn’t mean I can’t see where there is value to their presence. Especially in this sport.

Russo makes an excellent point about the importance of the college football polls to the sport’s history. The Associated Press poll of sportswriters and broadcasters was introduced in 1936, which means it’s been around longer than the NCAA Tournament, the Baltimore Orioles, Sports Illustrated and 81.25 percent of the National Hockey League. Aside from the Rose Bowl and Heisman Trophy, there is very little else tying the sport’s early years to today. However subjectively, the AP poll offers some connection to the past.

“It’s the only thing left in college football that is consistent for the last 80 years, that documents the season,” Russo said. “Documenting that a team started the season with high expectations and then wasn’t good – you can tell me that maybe we were wrong and they weren’t that good. But go ask their fans, and they’ll remember they started No. 10 and ended up 4-8. That’s part of the narrative of a season.”

BENDER: Looking at just how accurate AP preseason poll is

Last year’s preseason AP poll did not register a single point – not even one 25th-place vote – for Indiana or Arizona State. Boise State and SMU were located beyond the top 25. That means fully 1/3 of the first genuine College Football Playoff field was unranked in the preseason. Starting from literally nowhere did not prevent the Hoosiers from climbing to No. 5 in the Week 13 AP poll. And losing that week at Ohio State did not knock them out of a CFP position even though they’d owned zero preseason respect.

The contention polls have too much influence on how a season develops or how teams will be positioned in the College Football Playoff is the product of coaches searching for excuses for lesser results. It’s always someone else’s fault, obviously, but it would be counterproductive to express anger with the committee. So, of course, blame the media.