Preseason Top 25 - Why Include Teams Not Playing?

[H2o]

https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/29731277/ap-top-25-clemson-no-1-followed-ohio-state-alabama

 

I understand this is meant to be a "true" ranking, but not everyone is operating on the same schedule. They should have omitted the teams not playing this fall because there will be nothing to go off of until 2021 for them. Also, with all of this madness, how is the bowl schedule even going to work? 

[YoloinOhio]

They will probably continue to rank teams until everyone has played 

[Mark Vader]

Weird

[Bill from NYC]

13 hours ago, YoloinOhio said:

They will probably continue to rank teams until everyone has played 

Not sure what you are saying here. 

[YoloinOhio]

On 8/25/2020 at 5:24 AM, Bill from NYC said:

Not sure what you are saying here. 

Ralph Russo from the AP indicated that the AP isn’t committed to having a poll in the winter/spring and doing a final ranking, but is open to doing it depending upon how it all plays out. If all conferences get in a reasonable amount of games, at the end of it all they will mash them all together with a final ranking. These conferences weren’t going to be playing each other anyway so at the end of the year if everyone has played 8-10 games they are open to a “fall champion” and a “winter champion” and mash it all together. He said it’s just too early to know what will actually happen so they went ahead and ranked everyone in the preseason poll. 

[Bill from NYC]

13 minutes ago, YoloinOhio said:

Ralph Russo from the AP indicated that the AP isn’t committed to having a poll in the winter/spring and doing a final ranking, but is open to doing it depending upon how it all plays out. If all conferences get in a reasonable amount of games, at the end of it all they will mash them all together with a final ranking. These conferences weren’t going to be playing each other anyway so at the end of the year if everyone has played 8-10 games they are open to a “fall champion” and a “winter champion” and mash it all together. He said it’s just too early to know what will actually happen so they went ahead and ranked everyone in the preseason poll. 

OK, but aren't dates already set for the playoffs and championship in the fall/winter?

[YoloinOhio]

2 minutes ago, Bill from NYC said:

OK, but aren't dates already set for the playoffs and championship in the fall/winter?

He’s saying that they want to see it all play out before deciding how they will rank because everything in the CFB world right now is purely tentative. The AP is also separate from the playoff. If they see an apples to apples to comparison between two separate seasons then they will rank accordingly and mash it together. If they can’t compare because one is clearly more competitive than the other, or they only get in like 3 games in the fall but 8 in the winter,  they won’t mash it together. Basically the AP doesn’t  know enough right now not to include every team in a preseason poll that is based on 0 games played. 

[Bill from NYC]

43 minutes ago, YoloinOhio said:

He’s saying that they want to see it all play out before deciding how they will rank because everything in the CFB world right now is purely tentative. The AP is also separate from the playoff. If they see an apples to apples to comparison between two separate seasons then they will rank accordingly and mash it together. If they can’t compare because one is clearly more competitive than the other, or they only get in like 3 games in the fall but 8 in the winter,  they won’t mash it together. Basically the AP doesn’t  know enough right now not to include every team in a preseason poll that is based on 0 games played. 

Thanks. What a mess.