Maybe I can shed some light on coach's polls or at least the way I view them. There is a difference between coach's pills and fans/media polls. Fans and media look at a lot of different things, wins, losses, record, who they've played, margin, ect, etc.

 

Coaches tend to vote on what they know. Talent, coaching, opponents played. I think coaches are not as quick (especially early in the season) to look at a a lot if the other factors that media and fans do. Meaning they go with what they know about other teams and their gut. They know that a lot happens early in the season. Coaches tend to play a lot more players, pitch their number two more often, and deal with injuries ect. I think all coaches know that teams will start to tighten that up as we move thru the season and that's how they vote. Based on how they feel the order is, regardless of what has happened in the early part of the season...meaning they understand that there are ups and downs in a season and some teams start slow and some fast, but at the end of the day, coaches vote on where they think a team should be regardless of the ups and downs. Hope that makes sense and may explain why a coaches poll may look a little different than a fan.

 

I bet if you asked the college coaches to vote on the top 25 football or basketball, it would look much different than the ESPN or AP. Heck in some recent year, coaches may have had the top 7-8 be SEC schools in football. Well that would never fly with the public because that would mean teams with as many as possibly 4 losses would be ranked ahead of undefeated teams. In reality, it's probably true that those SEC teams were better than the undefeated teams in most cases, but that would never fly.

Coaches do vote in college football. And most of them admit they don't see scores or know the details of the games of the teams they are voting for, and a lot of them pass that task off to SIDs. At least now their votes don't determine who plays for a title.

 

It's hard to get too worked up about polls in HS sports when we settle it on the field. It would be nice to see the kids recognized for how they are playing on the field, but the easy answer to that is win and they won't be able to ignore you at the end, when it counts.

Maybe I can shed some light on coach's polls or at least the way I view them. There is a difference between coach's pills and fans/media polls.

I definitely agree that the coach's pills is probably what makes their voting look crazy:) You gotta love auto correct