College Football desperately needs a new, accurate, authoritative poll

Yesterday's controversy swirling around AP voter Haley M. Sawyer underscored everything that's wrong with traditional college football polls.

Sawyer, a USC beat writer, came across as the ultimate airhead with her breezy explanation of her poll vote, which included glaring flights of illogic like moving up Florida two spots after a loss to South Florida, then leaving the Bulls off her ballot.

“I don’t want to go too much into my process or logic… It’s really fun but it doesn’t probably matter in the end," she said.

Sawyer did an enormous disservice to the knowledgeable, hard-working female reporters who cover college football, voices like Holly Rowe, Jenny Dell, Heather Dinich and Nicole Auerbach, or Jenny Taft, who is doing the Oregon game this Saturday on Fox Sports, along with Gus Johnson and Joel Klatt.

Besides sounding frivolous and silly Sawyer is just plain wrong: Polls matter enormously, because they shape perception and viewing habits, and the players and teams work incredibly hard to earn that recognition. When the College Football Playoff Committee begins releasing their rankings in November, the AP and Coaches Poll form the foundation of how teams are slotted.

Yet the outrage over her remarks points to a much larger problem. Coaches and beat writers simply don't have the time to watch multiple games and study teams. Many are heavily influenced by regional biases, while others are notorious for low-balling particular programs or conferences. Blue bloods and reputations get too much deference.

Statistical models like ESPN's FPI have inherent biases so large that the data they spit out is laughable. This week 1-1 Texas and Alabama are No. 2 and No. 4.

What the sport needs instead is an authoritative and trustworthy ranking produced by people who study the game year-round and every weekend, a panel of true experts, perhaps 50 to 75.

Put the rankings in the hands of the national, recognized figures who cover the whole sport, people like Josh Pate, Klatt, Andy Staples, Tom Fornelli, Bud Elliott, Dinich and Auerbach. Paul Finebaum is disqualified; he doesn't even know that the Big Ten really did invent college football.

Chose 50 to 75. These are the true stewards of the game. The problem with beat writers and coaches is that on game days they are entirely absorbed in covering and coaching their team. On that day it's a 12-to-16-hour job. The national columnists, podcasters and show hosts live and breath the sport year-round, visit practice, study film.

I want their rankings to determine who's on top. Those opinions really would balance out.

Read More: