I was reminded about how useless the college football polls are once more. Oh, I think they are mostly accurate in the top 5, but after that, it’s a joke and a crap shoot depending on the team’s “name” and the “name” of the team you played that week. Pitt beats Texas A&M in College Station and moves up one notch in the ESPN/USA Today Coaches Poll (to #18) and two spots in the AP Writers Poll (to #15). Fair enough, I suppose, though I wouldn’t have minded seeing Pitt get a little more of a bump for winning in College Station.

Now, take Purdue which beat a pretty bad Notre Dame team, at home. They move from being unranked in the ESPN poll to being #23 (the AP had them at #22 and kept them there). How about Minnesota hanging on to beat a Penn State team that had only beaten Temple and Kent State in Happy Valley: ESPN — from #20 to #16; AP #24 to #21. Tennessee, who was at home needed 2 or 3 overtimes to beat an unranked South Carolina team, moved up a notch. Florida gets some incredible luck to barely beat Kentucky and moves up in both polls from #25 to #24.

On the other side, TCU beats a bad Arizona team and falls 4 spots in the ESPN (#17 to #21) and 1 notch (#19 to #20) in the AP.

I’d say they don’t matter, that only the BCS when it is released is what counts, but these two polls count 50% towards the BCS rankings.