How to Stay Current on NCAA College Football Rankings

Where does your team stand?

Everyone likes to say that their team is No. 1. There's only one problem with this--only one team really can be top-ranked. To know where your college football team stands, both within your conference and nationwide, you should keep up on current stats, rankings and commentary. This will arm you with ammunition the next time someone boasts about their team being better than yours and the numbers say otherwise. Just be sure to differeniate between the official BCS rankings and the others, which are subjective.

Things You'll Need

• Internet

Instructions

1. Visit ESPN.com before the season begins to see where your team is ranked preseason. Both the Associated Press (AP) and USA Today release polls that are based on the current team's strength, potential, current injuries, schedule and last year's performance.

2. Watch the NCAA football games play out throughout the week. If you can, try to not only catch your game but glimpses of other important games as well. This will give you a better insight into how the voting and rankings may vary from week to week.

3. Follow up on the commentary that is given after the games. There are halftime reports, post-game reports, recaps on the nightly news and many sports-centered websites that are dedicated to college football. Many of these sites like to make their own predictions on how and why the rankings may change. SportsIllustrated.com, SportsLine.com and NBCSports.MSNBC.com all follow and regularly update the polls after the week's games.

4. Review the recent poll standings on Sunday night or Monday morning to see how the week's games played out according to voters. There are many polls you can review, including the AP Poll, USA Today Poll, Harris Poll and Legends Poll.

5. Visit BCSFootball.org after the eigth week of college football has finished to review the official BCS (Bowl Championship Series)rankings. These will be the rankings used to determine who plays in the championship bowl games, including the National Championship game. Other official BCS bowl games include the Rose Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, Orange Bowl and Sugar Bowl.

6. Begin the process over again once the season has ended, the bowl games have been played out and recruits are locked into their respective institutions. This occurs in the spring.

Tips & Warnings

• Though the BCS poll is considered the official word on college football rankings and is the only poll to determine how the teams will finish the season and which, if any, bowl game they will play in, the BCS is considered by many to be controversial. BCS critics argue that the polling system, which calculates a ranking based on human votes and computer-calculated polling formulas, is too subjective and could never be standardized in a way that makes it 100 percent fair across the board.

Resources

• Bowl Championship Series