You know, I just don’t know how to characterize the AP top-25 poll at this point. Technically, it means nothing. It doesn’t help decide a national championship, so a good argument could be made that freed of the greater importance, the writers who vote can engage in stronger homerism and more easily fall prey to regional biases. Of course, working against that is the fact that most of the writers make their ballots public, so they still have to answer for them — unlike, say, the Coaches Poll.

Be that as it is, the AP pre-season poll is out and Pitt is ranked #23.

Useless aside, for all the talk of the West Coast Bias, the North East teams probably have it roughest when you look at how they determine where the voters are.

SCHOOLS ELIGIBLE – All NCAA Division I-A teams (119 for 2005). Teams on NCAA probation are eligible to receive votes.

VOTING BREAKDOWN – By state (1-3 schools – 1 voter; 4-6 schools – 2 voters; 7-9 schools – 3 voters; 10-12 – 4 voters) plus five voters each representing a region (East, South, Midwest, Southwest, Far West) and four national voters for total of 65 voters.

That means in Pennsylvania, there is only one voter. Same for New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. I’m not saying they are wrong with the geographic spread (though arguably Ohio State really benefits from having all those MAC teams raise the number of voters to 3 in the state).

Here’s the list of AP voters for 2005. The Pennsylvania vote comes from Ray Fittipaldo of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Fittipaldo is the beat reporter for the Pitt basketball team. Note that both Kirk Herbstreit and Chris Fowler of ESPN College GameDay get votes this year (though Herbstreit gets his as a member of a local Columbus, Ohio radio station).