Arizona stayed at No. 15 in this week’s AP poll, as there was little movement (i.e. losses) from the teams just ahead of the Wildcats.

Arizona moved ahead of Iowa (which suffered a narrow home loss to Wisconsin) but was jumped by undefeated Missouri (which delivered the first loss to Oklahoma).

Speaking of Iowa …

How is that that the 6-1 Wildcats still trail 5-2 Iowa on three of the 60 AP ballots?

Now, there’s no shame that the Hawkeyes lost to No. 9 Wisconsin 31-30 … and perhaps Iowa’s 35-7 win over Iowa State early in the season gets some added value because the Cyclones just won at Texas. (But so did UCLA, which has returned to being a mess since that game.)

Iowa’s top three wins have come over Iowa State, Penn State and Michigan, with the latter two opponents sounding better than they are really are. Arizona’s victims include impossible-to-figure out Cal, impossible-to-figure-out Washington … and Iowa.

Arizona has the better record, has at least equal quality victories, and the head-to-head meeting should be the clincher.

It’s also important to remember that the AP instructs voters to base ballots on results, not necessarily who they think is playing better at the moment or a projection of which team they think will finish higher.

I have no complaint about NOT dropping a team like Iowa after a close loss to a highly ranked opponent … but keeping the Hawks ahead of Arizona seems to be illogical voting.

(Yes, this is right about where someone will say, “What does it matter?” but polls are a part of the fabric of college football discussion, and we should be holding all these voters accountable for their ballots. That’s the great thing about the AP poll — it makes the ballots public, unlike those from the coaches’ poll.)

Anyway, Rick Wright of the Albuquerque Journal is the most extreme voter in this case, putting Iowa 13th and Arizona 18th. That is the tied for the highest mark in the poll for the Hawkeyes and the lowest figure for the Wildcats.

Cole Harvey of the Macon (Ga.) Telegraph has Iowa 13th and Arizona 15th.

Chris Fowler of ESPN has Iowa 15th and Arizona 17th.

Meanwhile, the Wildcats moved up two spots to No. 16 in the coaches poll.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 24th, 2010 at 10:28 am and is filed under Sports. Tags for this post: AP poll, Chris Fowler. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.