Media voting on polls and awards is an ongoing tradition across sports, though perhaps the biggest impact is felt at the college level.
Obviously for decades the media poll helped determine (or outright decided) the national champion ever year in college football. For basketball, the AP poll has long served as a rolling measuring stick of quality. That’s before we get into the various awards and conference voting that goes on.
Take, for example, the tradition of media voting on preseason conference polls. The SEC football version of this practice is obviously a mainstay, and this year’s poll shook out about like you’d expect, with Georgia projected first in the SEC East and Alabama selected to win the SEC West.
Drilling down a bit further, though, one very obvious outlier is apparent.
SEC preseason media poll
East
1. Georgia (172 1st place votes)
2. Kentucky (4)
3. Tennessee (1)
4. Florida
5. South Carolina (3)
6. Missouri
7. Vanderbilt (1)West
1. Alabama (177)
2. Texas A&M (3)
3. Arkansas (1)
4. Ole Miss
5. LSU
6. Mississippi State
7. Auburn— Brett McMurphy (@Brett_McMurphy) July 22, 2022
Who the fuck voted for Vanderbilt? And why?
"Four first-place votes for UK seems a little h–oly SHIT SOMEONE VOTED FOR VANDY" https://t.co/RBOE0b4huw
— Mike Rutherford (@CardChronicle) July 22, 2022
There could be any number of explanations here, from pure user error to some kind of anarchist protest vote. The key thing to remember about both ends of that spectrum, though, is that both poles are hilarious, and it’s hard to think of any result from in between that isn’t also funny, including “actually thinks Vanderbilt will be good this year.”
Vandy, to be clear, is probably going to suck. Head coach Clark Lea is entering his second year at the helm of the Commodores. Here’s how ESPN’s Bill Connelly summed up Vandy’s 2021 season in his SEC East preview:
The Commodores went 2-10, fell to East Tennessee State and lost eight conference games by an average score of 40-14.
Connelly proceeds to project Vanderbilt as the #115 team in all of FBS football, while offering this slight bit of optimism for Commodore supporters:
(Technically, Georgia’s bowl odds are 99.98% and Vandy’s are 0.4%. Yes, Vandy fans, I’m saying there’s a chance.)
Having said all of this, there’s no way we’d be writing about this poll had Vanderbilt not received a first place vote, so kudos to you, random media member who decided to do this.
[ESPN]
