I've always had issues with ranking teams so early. After all, how is anyone supposed to gauge how 18- and 19-year olds are going to perform on college football's biggest stages? In fact, pre-season poll numbers may only serve to prop up some teams that really aren't that good. After all, if a #2 team survives a lackluster opener, how far would they really fall? They're the #2 team, after all, even if the lower-ranked teams behind them might be better teams.
But more to the point, these rankings never seemed less relevant. In past seasons, before the era of the Bowl Championship Series, pre-season rankings were the only way to gauge title contenders. An early-season loss by a top-ranked team meant not only a tumble in the standings but a short-circuit to national title hopes.
But with the advent of the BCS came changes; most notably, the first actual BCS ranking wasn't released until late October. That meant that all the prior poll results didn't explicitly count -- they merely factored into the ranking that determined the BCS score. Even so, poll position was a key component of the BCS ranking.
While the BCS was an improvement over choosing a national champion by vote, it had its flaws and detractors. That ultimately led to the creation of the College Football Playoff and the committee that makes the selections. That CFP Committee uses strength-of-schedule as one of the key factors in determining their ranks. In fact, there is very little reliance on polls, but rather how a team has been playing. The end result is that an early-season loss carries much less penalty than a loss in November.
So if the Playoff Committee doesn't go by the polls, and the first ranking don't even come out until mid-season, then what exactly is the value of a pre-season poll? I suppose fans need something to argue about until the real games begin.
