“Who’s favored? We’re favored?”

Even Mark Richt is having problems with early season polls.

A voter in the USA Today coaches’ poll, Richt admits he had a hard time filling out his ballot last weekend.

With the four losses among top-10 teams,  he grabbed some scratch paper and started trying to rank teams as if there had been no previous polls this season.

“I just couldn’t sleep, I guess,” he said, “so I started to go:  If there was no preseason rank, just who’s undefeated?  Who have they beaten? Is there some signature victory in here somewhere? Who should be No. 1 just based on who they’ve beaten? And then of the one-loss teams, who did they lose to and did they have a signature win or two?

“And then I ranked it that way, and I looked at it, and I’m, like, ‘If I call this in, they’re going to think I’m out of my mind.’

“Then I went back and did it the old-fashioned way,” which basically is use the previous  poll as a starting point and move teams up or down based on the latest results.

“The reason I can do it that way and have peace is, I always know as the season wears on it works itself out,” Richt said.  ” . . . But if there wasn’t a preseason poll or if no one had tradition or no one had this and that, it’d be interesting to see what everybody’s poll would look like.”

I give the man credit for obviously putting a lot of thought into his vote.  The sad thing is that we know there are plenty of coaches **cough**Les Miles**cough** who don’t.

There’s got to be a better way.