If someone took the time to put together a top-25 ranking of the silliest things people are saying about college football, I would read it, and amid College Football Playoff expansion praise and the question of whether the Indiana Hoosiers could beat the New York Jets, I would expect to see this line:“We need to get rid of these preseason polls.”No, we most certainly do not. Preseason rankings are fun. They are harmless. They are tradition, dating to 1950 (The Associated Press started in-season and postseason rankings in 1936). There’s been ample harm done, tradition lost and fun sapped in college football in the past couple of decades, and you people want to take aim at one of the good things?“You people,” unfortunately, encompasses more than fans of jilted teams who talk themselves into preseason polls as a culprit.The best national champs of the last five decadesRalph D. RussoESPN college football writer Adam Rittenberg is great. He’s been a friend for almost 20 years. All due respect to him, please allow me to disrespect something he posted on X, which was in response to Scott Van Pelt’s lamenting on his podcast the accuracy of preseason polls in the transfer portal/name, image and likeness era.“Nation’s second-most popular sport no longer needs these,” Rittenberg wrote, “and they can set damaging narratives, while often looking really stupid by October.”We had a robust written argument after that, which I probably should have just copied and pasted instead of coming up with all these extra words. But just trust me that I won. If “damaging” were accurate, then I would stand down and join the preseason poll pitchforkers.It just isn’t. If you want to go back to the era of polls deciding mythical national champions, which ended in the 1998 season with the introduction of the BCS, fine. The BCS formula included polls as well, so you could argue that preseason perception unfairly helped and hurt certain teams because of where they started.But today we have one ranking that actually helps dictate the postseason, the College Football Playoff selection committee rankings. They debut Nov. 3 this season.These people make odd choices at times and can be quite bad at explaining their choices. Human beings have biases, and I have no doubt certain programs and leagues hold more sway with some people.But there’s nothing to indicate the numbers in front of teams in August infiltrate the selection committee decisions of early November. The crux of Rittenberg’s argument is he thinks the folks on the committee are influenced by “narratives, including those put forth by preseason polls.”But a year ago, The Athletic’s Matt Baker did a study of five College Football Playoff seasons and the impact of preseason rankings on final rankings. He gathered data that “shows the opposite of what critics claim: Teams with higher preseason rankings seem more likely to be punished, not rewarded, compared to computer rankings, while teams that start unranked are more likely to be overrated than underrated.”Van Pelt cited 2025 preseason top-five teams Penn State and Clemson — which finished a combined 14-12 and faced off in the fabled Pinstripes Bowl — as examples of why it’s so hard to assess teams in August, even when they bring back known commodities.He’s right, and I would guess the first 20 years of this era will see more preseason poll missteps than the preceding 20 years, though they’ve always had some misfires. To the credit of the committee, it did not care last season that Penn State started No. 2 and Clemson No. 4 in the AP poll. Neither appeared in the initial rankings Nov. 4.That’s why you start the poll that actually dictates the Playoff field several weeks into the season. That’s why we need to leave our harmless, fun little preseason polls alone.Fans like knowing what people who coach or cover college football think about their teams going into a season. TV networks use them to promote games. Schools keep track of ranked wins and losses for going on a century now. There’s no reason to end this.The AP and coaches polls could be better. As an AP voter for several seasons, I learned to embrace huge changes in the first month of the season, when we actually get information. Too many voters put too much stock in their preseason ballots and move teams too slightly, as if those initial spots were earned at all.But we have bad Heisman, MVP and halls of fame voters, too. That doesn’t mean the voting stops.The undertone of this discussion is the Big Ten/SEC rivalry. Big Ten folks think the SEC gets too much preseason respect, leading to too much postseason reward.The reality is, most people see an Alabama helmet and think one thing, then see an Iowa helmet and think another — even though Iowa probably would have drilled Alabama last season. But that’s helmet scouting, not August number counting.Heed Curt Cignetti’s words in this era of dominance, Big Tenners: “We don’t cry a river, whine and complain.”Which brings me to my 2026 preseason ranking of college football things that people like to cry a river, whine and complain about but would lose their minds if they actually went away.1. Instant replay2. Targeting calls3. Preseason polls