AP Top 25 bias? Eastern voters less likely to rank Utah, more likely to rank BYU

Analysis shows Eastern Time voters ranked Utes lower, Cougars higher in AP’s Top 25.

I’ll be honest: I thought both BYU and Utah were underranked in the AP’s Top 25 this week.

BYU beat up on an admittedly horrible Portland State team by a score of 69-0, and I figured that would move the Cougars up from “leading vote-getters outside of the preseason Top 25″ (No. 26, if you will) to the real rankings themselves. But nope, they were stuck as the leading vote-getters among non-Top 25 teams once again.

Utah was even more surprising, I reckoned. The Utes absolutely pasted UCLA by a 43-10 score and looked even more dominant in doing so than that scoreline indicates. They were only favored to win the game by 5 (shoutout Tom Barberi), so to put a 33-point shellacking on UCLA should have woken up a lot of college football eyes about the potential of Utah’s football program this year.

They moved up a whopping two spots, from the second-leading vote getter among non-Top 25 teams to the very tail end of the real poll at No. 25.

So I was curious: Was there bias at play? In particular, did Utah’s tremendously late kickoff time of 9 p.m. MT make it difficult for some voters to watch Utah’s top-tier performance, perhaps knocking them lower in the poll? Let’s find out.

The East Coast hates Utah

The methodology was pretty simple here. The AP releases all 62 voter ballots early in the week, somewhat after the poll’s full results are announced, with the voter’s name and the news outlet they represent. They’re compiled nicely on collegepolltracker.com.

So I put all of those ballots into Excel, and then looked up where each outlet was based, then looked up that city’s corresponding time zone. (The Arizona ballots were placed in Mountain time, though they don’t recognize Daylight Saving Time.) The voters from national outlets like CBSSports and The Athletic were put in their own category.

Then, I simply examined how each time zone voted. And the results were stark:

• 66% of Pacific time zone voters voted for Utah in the AP’s Top 25, with an average ranking of 19th.

• 100% of Mountain time zone voters selected Utah as a Top 25 team, with an average ranking of 20th.

• 63% of Central time zone voters picked Utah as a Top 25 team, with an average ranking of 20th.

• Only 35% of Eastern time zone voters voted for Utah, with an average of 22nd.

• Of voters representing national outlets, 83% picked Utah in the Top 25, with an average of 18th.

Those are some significant differences! We should note that the voter pools in the Pacific, Mountain, and National categories are relatively small, just six people in each group. Central and Eastern time zones have many more voters, because they represent more people.

However, the largest group representing Eastern Time Zone outlets was significantly less likely to pick Utah than everyone else.

The East Coast loves BYU, though?

Interestingly, it appears the opposite bias was at play for the Cougars.

• In the Pacific time zone, zero voters voted for BYU in the top 25.

• Just 16% of Mountain time zone voters — so just one voter — picked BYU in the Top 25. Shaun Goodwin from the Idaho Statesman had BYU ranked 23rd.

• In the Central time zone, 15% of voters picked BYU, with an average placement of 14th.

• 28% of Eastern time zone voters selected BYU, picking them 18th on average.

• No national voters had BYU in their Top 25.

What’s going on here?

First, it’s fair to suspect that Eastern Time voters had their TV screens turned off by the time Utah’s 11 p.m. ET kickoff occurred. Yes, ballots weren’t due until Monday, but most voters seemed not to have watched the action. There’s even a peer-reviewed study that indicates that highly televised teams have better rankings than lesser-televised games, all things being equal.

Of course, not a lot of people watched BYU’s game, either. It was only on ESPN+, not nationally televised at all. And the early scoreline dominance from BYU didn’t exactly make it compelling viewing.

One of the only really logical hypotheses here is that, having watched neither game, Eastern time zone voters were more likely to stick to their original rankings of Utah and BYU. Those watching Utah, however, might have been impressed by their dominance.

Those watching Portland State flounder may have been more impressed by the weakness of BYU’s opponents — I certainly was. While BYU played very well, Portland State was perhaps the worst collegiate football team I’ve watched, with a 42-0 loss to Tarleton State the previous week solid evidence as well.

There is evidence that, in general, AP voters do display biases in their selections. A published work from a group of University of North Florida economists indicates voters tend to have biases towards teams in their own state and their own conference.

Media voters aren’t alone in the bias, either: College coaches who vote in the USA Today coaches’ poll put their own recent opponents four places higher than everyone else on average, and the recent opponents of their own alma mater three places higher.

One interesting aspect to watch for, though, is how the media reacts to the conversation around the rankings. There has been much national conversation about Utah being underranked. Utah plays Cal Poly this week in a game against an FCS opponent that typically wouldn’t have much of an impact on a team’s ranking.

Will voters react to the reaction come the end of this weekend? We shall see.