As games across the South are either finished, in progress, or scheduled for later, the two standing college football polls, the Associated Press and USA Today/Coaches, currently have several Southeastern Conference schools in their respective Top 25...no surprise here since it's the premier conference in the sport. Three 5-1 teams...LSU, Florida, and Kentucky, are ranked in the "teens": LSU is 13th, Florida 14th, and Kentucky 18th in the AP, while with the coaches it's LSU 12th, Florida 16th, and Kentucky 20th. So all three teams have the same win-loss record. However, Florida beat LSU...so why are they ranked behind them? And Kentucky beat Florida...so why are they likewise ranked worse? This is one of the problems I have with these polls...I remember many years when the Gators would play and defeat Tennessee early in the season...as the season wore on, Florida would play well but usually lose one or two more games, while the Volunteers, ending up with no better a record than Florida, would stack up win after win, ending up ranked higher at the season's end. Is there a built-in prejudice here? Probably in both cases...nowadays LSU is expected to be highly ranked, Florida hasn't cracked the Top Ten in years, and Kentucky has traditionally been identified with the league's doormats. But things have changed, and you might think that the sports journalists and coaches would be up-to-date on them, especially which teams won in head-to-head competition...
By the way, at this writing LSU is beating Georgia 16-0 at halftime, Florida came back from a 21-3 deficit to win over Vanderbilt 37-27, and Kentucky has a bye week. Two weeks from now the Gators face Georgia in Jacksonville...
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