Who's the best? Let's rank 'em!
Everyone loves rankings. Whether it’s the AP, coaches, the nation’s top colleges, weekend box office results or the best Donkey Kong player ever, people love ‘em.
Especially when it comes to sports rankings.
People want to see how their favorite team or player compares to everyone else. They want to argue about placement, ranking methodology or how they could change. They’ll commiserate about a perceived bias or revel in a result.
And, after 15 installments of ranking the greatest college basketball programs, it was awesome to see ESPN’s Prestige Rankings this week.
For those that haven’t seen it, the simple version is that ESPN weighted 21 categories of hoops success – and failure – and ranked the top 300 teams in what they termed the “modern era,” or when the NCAA tournament expanded to 64 teams for the 1984-85 season.
(There’s far more involved than just that when it comes to breaking everything down, so click here for more.)
Anyway, the results had some surprises – it was a small surprise to see Michigan State out of the top 10 and seeing St. John’s still in the top 40 – but after culling all the numbers for my rankings, not a lot.
As for everyone else on the net, the reaction was mostly small grumblings, but not much more.
The biggest gripe – not surprisingly – was Duke at No. 1. There was mention of ESPN just wanting to focus attention on their TV coverage or hype up Duke and Carolina.
But that’s just the nature of rankings. People take issue with your methodology or the parameters (in ESPN’s case, the era involved) and cut loose.
Still, that’s the point, right? Get people reading and talking about it? That’s the best part of rankings, no matter how they might fall.
