Jon Wilner of the Mercury News has decided to use his AP vote this year to rank Kansas on the extreme low end of the rankings each week.
Wilner has rationalized his rankings on his blog each week and laid out his reasoning for how he will rank teams. However, he has shown a pretty strong double-standard by not applying his own logic to this year's Kansas team.
Wilner states in his blog, "As with my football rankings, the emphasis is on strength of schedule and quality wins/losses."
The problem with this statement is emphasizing "quality losses." All season he has kept teams like UConn and UNC high up in his polls because they have quality losses. I am all for rewarding teams that play tough schedules, but I don't see very much quality value in losing. He has basically set up a system that rewards teams for losing.
The other major problem is when teams you perceive to be quality teams all play each other, you end up not punishing the team that loses because you have given that loss some type of value. So with the web of Kentucky, Texas, Michigan State, North Carolina, and UConn all playing games in the non-conference, you end up giving the teams that lost those games (MSU, UNC and UConn) almost as much credit as the winners.
Jon Wilner's voting history:
WEEK 5: Wilner ended up punishing the Jayhawks in Week 5 and moving them out of his top spot and to number 3 for not playing a tough enough schedule. KU scheduled tough competition, but with Memphis losing Calipari and UCLA losing their players to the NBA, the early schedule lost a lot of its luster.
Coincidence that his drop of the Jayhawks coincides with them beating his hometown California Golden Bears?
WEEK 6: Wilner ended up dropping the undefeated Jayhawks again in week 6 claiming, "KU thought it had a top-tier foe lined up when it scheduled UCLA, but I cannot take intent into account because then I’d have to do the same for every team all the time during the pre-conference season."
That is fine as long as he is fair and when KU plays quality competition, he rewards them whether they win or lose as he has with a host of other teams (MSU, UConn, UNC).
WEEK 7: The Undefeated Jayhawks drop another spot. What is going on here? Wilner references a Sagarin strength of schedule in the 200s. No mention of his new top team Texas and third place team Kentucky whose Sagarin strength of schedule was also in the 200s.
WEEK 8: KU beats Wilner's #18 ranked Temple by 30 points on the road and Wilner fails to reward the Jayhawks. So much for rewarding quality wins, let alone a complete domination. At the time this was the best road win by any of the top five teams. Nice double standard.
WEEK 9: KU loses to Wilner's #11 ranked Tennessee Volunteers on the road. Alright, KU loses its first game, but hey, that has to count as a 'quality loss' in Jon Wilner's book, right? Nope, KU drops in his poll to #7, the most extreme low ranking for KU of all AP voters.
Wilner ends up putting Texas, Kentucky, Michigan State, Purdue, Villanova and Syracuse ahead of the Jayhawks. Some of those teams had multiple losses. I guess you need to rack up more quality losses to crack Wilner's top 5.
WEEK 10: It took Purdue losing two games this past week for KU to move up to #6. Still the most extreme low ranking for Kansas of all voters. Hey Jon, you might want to look your buddy Sagarin's ratings again. Must be nice to completely ignore KU's strength of schedule has shot up while Texas and Kentucky's continue to lag behind. Way to be consistently random on when to apply your standards.
Wilner has Villanova ahead of Kansas at #4. Villanova's only loss is to Temple, so that quality loss obviously boosts them ahead of Kansas. Nevermind the fact that KU actually beat Temple on the road by 30. In Wilner's system you get more credit for losing the game than a dominating win.
Wilner has Michigan State ahead of Kansas at #3. They have three quality losses. Or do they? Losses to both five loss Florida and six loss North Carolina surely can't count as quality can they? If he checks with Sagarin, they are losses to the 52nd and 35th best teams respectively.
What will Wilner do next week? So far the only thing consistent about his standards is that they don't apply to Kansas.
As long as he has a grudge against Kansas, I will continue to hold him accountable. You can go to PollSpeak.com to vote for good and bad voters. I will cast my grudge vote against Jon Wilner until he applies his standards to teams equally.
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