The Big 12 begins its annual Media Days today, and there is one thing missing this year. For the first time in a long time, the conference will not release its media preseason polls. These polls were always voted on by the media and would basically be a guessing game on which teams would do the best in the conference, which ones needed another season to work their way up.
The Big 12 is not the first conference to be done with the preseason polls. Last season, the Big Ten was the first conference to do away with the polls and and it may become more of the norm rather than not. The rest of the conferences may also choose to be done with the guessing game every season and focus more on the seasons as a whole
Last year, when the Big 12 was at its final 16 teams with Utah, Arizona, Arizona State, and Colorado officially joining, the conference released its preseason poll, and it could not be more wrong. The team selected to finish last in the conference, Arizona State, ended up winning the Big 12 title, and the team selected to win the title before the season, Utah, struggled to a 5-7 record.
The preseason media polls are truly a guessing game because no one knows how a team is going to come out and perform. Even the preseason Top 25 rankings are not always accurate. The Michigan Wolverines were ranked in the Top 10 going into the season and finished the year outside of the rankings as a whole with an 8-5 record.
So the preseason polls starting to become a thing of the past is certainly not a bad thing, but the Big 12 has an interesting reason as well for stopping the long-standing tradition.
The Big 12 doesn't want to hurt their CFP ranking because of preseason polls
This will be the first season in a long time that the Big 12 won't have its preseason media polls, and the reason may surprise a lot of fans. The conference is following suit with what the Big Ten, but the Big 12 feels like their preseason poll last year is what hurt them when it came to the College Football Playoff.
The Big 12 only had one team representing them, with Arizona State getting in as a conference winner, receiving the automatic bye in the first round. The BYU Cougars, who were also a top team in the Power Four conference, weren't even close to getting into the playoffs, even though they ended up being one of the last undefeated teams in the country.
The Big 12 feels that the team that was projected to finish last in the conference ended up winning the Big 12 title, the CFP didn't deem the conference worthy of being elite, and having more teams. To be fair, when a team whose projected last place wins the whole conference, there is a bit of wondering what that has to says for the rest of the teams and the Big 12 as a whole.
So, in order to avoid that type of situation again, the Big 12 has decided not to play the guessing game this season and be done with preseason media polls, something fans are happy to say 'Good Riddance' to.