Perhaps historians will look back on the AP and Coaches Polls one day and realize they became obsolete because of the need for an expanded playoff. However, what they did with Tennessee football after Week 1 of the 2025 season is an example of a bigger reason they are fading fast in relevancy.
It’s likely a reason they aren’t used in the College Football Playoff rankings anyway.
After scoring a blowout win on a neutral field over a Power Four school that went 10-3 last year and finished in the top 25 of both polls, the Vols saw themselves jump a modest two spots in the AP Poll and one spot in the Coaches Poll. Four teams that lost are ahead of them, as are numerous others that haven’t yet played a Power Four school.
In fact, Tennessee football is one of just 14 schools to be undefeated with a win over a Power Four or top 25 program. So how are they this low, particularly in the AP Poll? Well, it comes down to what everybody has criticized for years about both rankings: Voters are lazy.
The job of the poll is to base rankings on what you see, but voters in both of these polls have, for years, based their rankings on where they had teams the previous week. That shouldn’t matter if the rankings were preseason rankings, but it does with these guys, which is an embarrassment.
Take the Texas A&M Aggies, for instance. They beat a team from a lower tier conference by a smaller margin and are ahead of the Vols. In fact, The Arizona State Sun Devils beat an FCS team by the same margin the Vols beat Syracuse, and they were at home, but they somehow remain ahead of UT in both polls.
I understand if you want to keep the Texas Longhorns ahead of Tennessee football. They lost by one score on the road to the Ohio State Buckeyes. Even having the Clemson Tigers and Notre Dame Fighting Irish ahead of them after close losses, while wrong given how these rankings should be done, could be fair.
At the same time, though, if you’re going to base your ranking on things you thought of teams going in, how are the Alabama Crimson Tide ahead of the Vols in AP Poll, then? After all, the Florida State Seminoles were unranked, so shouldn’t they fall below UT for losing by two scores to them?
See the problem? The lack of consistency among Top 25 voters is astounding. Of course, it’s basically impossible to get these rankings right this early. They should be a combination of record, schedule strength and head to head, but at this point, almost every team is 1.000 or 0.000 in win percentage, and their opponents’ win pct. is the reverse of theirs.
As a result, polls make little sense to be done at this point anyway and have to have some projection, which is why the best way to do it is the tier of the league the team plays in. By the end of September, you can start to move towards schedule strength and slowly move away from these rankings.
Still, there’s no standard in which Tennessee football should be this low, particularly due to how the Vols looked. It’s clear the only way Josh Heupel’s team can climb the ladder in these rankings is to wait for others to lose. Lucky for them, these rankings no longer carry any weight.
