It's college football, so, hey, cast your vote

SEATTLE — First, Doug Lesmerises wants to apologize. A writer for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, he's a voter in the AP college football poll, and he inadvertently omitted Washington this week after penciling Washington in at No. 15.

"It's unacceptable for me to have done that," he said by phone the other night. "I'm glad I didn't cost them a spot in the poll."

Ah, the polls — the chronicle of college football. In basketball, they mean next to nothing. In football, they're the gospel according to 60 AP voters, 59 in the coaches poll and however many creaking ex-nose guards are taking part in the Harris Interactive poll.

Late September in the AP poll is always a provocative time, when the vacuous speculation of the preseason vote gets buffeted by, oh yeah, the games. Yet the sample is so small as to be inconclusive.

So the voters differ wildly, to the background music of sites like www.pollspeak.com. The poll watchdog does its own little rankings: a reader-based ballot on the Good and Bad Voters of the Week.

Mostly, the debate breaks cleanly on performance-versus-perception lines. On one side are those who use the preseason poll, or their last week's ballot, as something carved out of granite. On the other are the guys who pitch early perception out with yesterday's tailgate trash and reevaluate each week on results.

Got to go with the results-based folks on this one, especially since AP voting guidelines say to disregard preseason speculation and reputation and concentrate on who won and lost. And against whom.

So you wonder why this week's poll has Mississippi No. 4 and Penn State No. 5. Apparently allergic to scheduling teams that give scholarships, Penn State's early portfolio consists of wins over Akron, Syracuse and Temple.

Lesmerises has already gotten a lot of ride as both a Pollspeak good and bad voter, underscoring the split in belief on how it should be done.

This week, he has Alabama No. 1, Florida fifth, Penn State 15th and Mississippi 24th. He slammed USC for losing to Washington, dropping the Trojans from No. 2 to 25th. He gave UCLA huge credit for its victory at Tennessee, putting the Bruins 12th.

"It's results, results, results," said Lesmerises, describing his philosophy. "It's definitely a reflection of what has happened, not a prediction of what will happen."