Criteria for the polls?

There is a friendly discussion going on right now in the media about whether Gonzaga or Kansas should be ranked #1 in the country. Well, I don't know. Until you tell me exactly what #1 means, I do not know how to answer that question.

Are you asking which team would beat the others five out of nine times if they played right now regardless of what they have done earlier in the season? That could produce some nonsensical ratings if a David Robinson had been injured early in the season for Navy, but was now available. They would no doubt have lost several games without him that they would have won with him, but do you just ignore those games because of how good they would be right now? And with Robinson they would indeed be very good right now.

Are you asking which team has done the best body of work over the course of the entire season - all the way back to game one, ignoring when it was done? If that is the question (and I think it should be), then why do we have polls at all? Why not just let the computerized systems do the work for us?

All of this raises the question of why we have polls at all if the regular season means virtually nothing. Who cares, if the only "winner" is the last team standing, even if they lost ten games over the course of the season and the team they beat in the finals took their first lost? In a winner-take-all tournament system, rankings mean nothing - except giving us something to talk about. But if giving us something to talk about is the purpose, then why have the tournament? Let the fans argue about which team would have beaten the other one, despite their being no definitive answer. That is half the fun, anyway, isn't it? And even if the Seed Ticks beat the Wart Hogs in the finals, that still does not mean they are the better team, since the Wart Hogs might have beaten the Ticks eight out of ten times over the course of the season.