It continues to be a system of much controversy in college football with their ranking system. The college football rankings have been a failure for the last 10 years or more and nothing has been changed this year to help it. A big reason why is money. This has nothing to do with a playoff system or the money involved in the bowl games. It’s the money that outside sponsors give these colleges and the NCAA does everything in their power to protect these rich schools. The current system would actually work if everyone would use it properly, but the favoritism to certain teams and football conferences causes us to have teams like Boise State number 5 in the country and the USC Trojans number 7 in the country. How does a team lose to a team that didn’t win 1 game last year and still hold a top 10 position? That’s very easy to explain. The USC football program receives more money than any other school and this money gets them undeserving rankings each year.

The national media doesn’t help and they keep the flames burning strong in Southern California. They can’t understand a team like Florida State that gets beat by a small Florida school, but yet destroys an over ranked BYU team. Yes, the Florida State Seminoles have played in 3 tough games this year and lost 2 of those. All 3 of these games were teams from the state of Florida and the talent level is so much higher in the South compared to the colleges in the West. The USC Trojans would not even be a 500 team in the ACC or SEC. They struggle against the weak PAC 10 teams and blow out a few of their weak opponents. Only quality win this year is against Ohio State and they get ranked too high each year. This is the same Ohio State team that almost went to overtime with Navy this year.

The good news is that the hottest high school players in the country are avoiding USC right now and advisers don’t like the USC future. It’s possible stiff penalties may be handed down soon, since USC got caught giving money to Reggie Bush and will likely miss future bowl games. The lack of recruits will create a more level playing field in the PAC 10 and pretty soon USC will just be a 500 team in a weak football conference. Too bad we don’t get to see ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreet warn the young high school players about this and the dreary futures they may have if they select to make USC their college choice. College players need the bowl games for exposure and the launching pad to a career of playing football games on Sunday. Why risk choosing USC; when you can select from all the other great colleges east of the Mississippi River.

So the mystery continues why we see the rankings so screwed up right now. If the NCAA would take the proper steps to correct the bias votes in college football, we could all see the true standings in college football. Here is the current “TRUE STANDINGS” that everyone should be voting for in the college football polls:

1. Florida

2. Alabama

3. Texas

4. LSU

5. Virginia Tech

6. Cincinnati

7. Miami

8. Houston

9. Penn State

10. TCU

11. Iowa

12. Auburn

13. Mississippi

14. Georgia Tech

15. Wisconsin

16. Oregon

17. Boise State

18. Kansas

19. South Carolina

20. Stanford

21. Boston College

22. UCLA

23. Missouri

24. Oklahoma State

25. USC / BYU / Arkansas / Ohio State / South Florida / Georgia

This is the list of the true standings in college football. It gets a little tricky when you go past 20 teams, so I chose several schools that could have that 25th ranking in the country. I would love to see some teams listed at 25 compete against each other.

USC .vs. Georgia

South Florida .vs. Ohio State

BYU .vs. Arkansas

Now that would be a fair competition and some evenly matched teams in this scenario. The current rankings would have 2 top 10 teams going against lesser opponents and the number 19 team BYU playing against a team that isn’t even ranked. The mystery remains in college football rankings, but the real fans of college football know who the best teams really are and why some teams are ranked so high.