His bio reads: "Scott Wolf has covered USC for the Daily News since 1996. A USC graduate, he covered his first Trojan game in 1984 for the Daily Trojan. Scott is known as the "scourge of the Internet message boards," according to radio host Petros Papadakis. Despite this moniker, there's no truth to the rumor he takes pleasure in antagonizing the "Internet geeks."
Well, it's not the internet geeks per se that he has been antagonizing lately.
It's the Big Ten Conference.
According to Pollspeak's Pollstalker function, Wolf had Ohio State ranked #6 in the preseason, Iowa #14 and Wisconsin #25. Ohio State and Iowa were near extreme lows and his vote for Wisconsin was the lowest ranking the Badgers received.
Ohio State was ranked #2, Iowa was #9 and Wisconsin was #12.
After week one, Wolf had Ohio State still at #6, Iowa at #13 and Wisconsin up at #23. These were the lowest rankings for these three teams.
After week two, Wolf dropped Ohio State to #7 (after being Miami (FL)), Iowa moved up to #10 and Wisconsin stayed at #23. While the ranking for Iowa was not extreme, the rankings for Ohio State and Wisconsin were once again the lowest ranking for these squads.
Three thoughts immediately come to mind after looking at this information. One, is that the ballot for a particular voter is simply their opinion about who they view as the best 25 teams in the country in any given week. The exercise I just performed could be done to tear apart anyone's ballot if you are a partisan of a particular team or conference.
The second thought is that this is the Associated Press poll. In the long run, while it is interesting to get the opinion of a writer like Scott Wolf or a talking head like Kirk Herbstreit, the relevance of the AP poll is inconsequential.
It is a topic of conversation and consternation to be sure, but it has no tangible impact on who is crowned the mythical national champion in Division 1-FBS football. Remember, the BCS is made up of the coaches poll and the Harris Interactive Poll. Harris came aboard after the AP, who used to be part of the formula, pulled out after the 2004 season.
The third thought I have is this: It's week two, people. Two games have been played by teams at most. Things need time to settle down before you can truly see who deserves to be ranked where.
So uptight Big Ten people, relax. Badgers and Buckeyes and Wolverines, come in from the ledge.
There is still plenty of time for all of this to shake out.
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