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| Some musings on athletic polls and rankings |
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| Those participating in athletic polls often don't seem to use good sense |
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By Lon Austin
Every year athletic polls generate a lot of conversation around the water cooler at work.
It sometimes seems that those voting in polls don't always have all the information. For example this year in college football the general belief throughout the country going into the bowl season was that LSU, USC or perhaps Georgia were the best teams in the country and yet Ohio State was ranked No. 1.
The bowl games clearly showed that they shouldn't have been as LSU easily handled them, Georgia man-handled Hawaii, and USC dismantled an Illinois team that had beaten Ohio State in the regular season.
This winter there is an oddity in the Oregon state 5A wrestling polls that absolutely defies logic, but it sure makes for good conversation.
Crater High School has been ranked No. 1 almost the entire season. Now don't get me wrong, Crater is a very fine wrestling team, and it would not suprise me at all if they were to win the state title, but there is no possible way that they should currently have the No. 1 ranking.
At the Oregon Wrestling Classic, which is the state's unofficial dual meet championship, Crook County defeated Crater in the semi-finals, while Hermiston whipped Hillsboro. Then in the finals Hermiston beat Crook County, while Hillsboro handled Crater in the consolation finals.
Logically that would have made Hermiston No. 1 in the state and Crook County or Hillsboro No. 2, but that's not what happened. Crater remained at the top.
Then last weekend at the major bracketed tournament of the season Hermiston was once again the highest finishing 5A school, while Crook County was again the second 5A school. One would expect that this would settle things, but on Monday morning Crater was still No. 1, even though they failed to even finish in the top ten.
Crook County has wrestled Hermiston tough twice now in dual meets, and came close again in the bracketed format that is like district, plus their JV beat Hermiston last weekend, so district is still up for grabs.
Hermiston and Crook County finished 1-2 at state last year and based on what happened in the regular season they should again, but that's why they actually wrestle and don't just let the polls decide the championship. Anything can happen.
The next couple of weeks could be really interesting.
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