Every college football poll is biased, or at least that's what we conclude when polls differ from the way we as fans individually view the college football landscape.
AP Poll voters have a tendency to over-rank big brands while going to bed before BYU's night games kick off.
The College Football Playoff rankings are primarily a beauty contest designed to maximize viewership in CFP games rather than rewarding the 12 teams with the best individual seasons.
The Coaches Poll should be re-titled as the "Graduate Assistant Poll" because extremely busy college coaches mostly delegate this distracting chore to their underlings.
And speaking of the Coaches Poll, their 2025 rankings are in and they only fan the flames of people who understandably point out the flaws and inherent biases of these types of votes. It's highly unlikely that coaches watch enough games of programs outside of the 12 teams on their schedules to have fully-formed opinions of every squad in the country. And that's not a knock on them, either. No matter how many games or how much tape any person consumes, there will be flaws in these types of subjective ranking systems.
And there will be bias.
When it come's to how BYU finished ranked No. 12 in the final Coaches Poll, here's how I as an admittedly biased BYU fan see patterns of bias in the system. And by "bias", I mean results that significantly differ from my own opinion.
The individual ballots for the Final Coaches Poll are out! Here’s how they all voted: pic.twitter.com/fKt3PSZUYo
— RedditCFB (@RedditCFB) January 21, 2026
Big 12 coaches are certified "Ball knowers"
The highest BYU was ranked was No. 9, and there were five coaches who ranked the Cougars there. Three of those five No. 9 rankings came from Big 12 coaches in Kansas's Lance Leipold, Texas Tech's Joey McGuire, and West Virginia's Rich Rodriguez.
Considering there are only five Big 12 coaches who participate in the poll, that's 60% of available Big 12 votes putting BYU at No. 9.
Houston's Willie Fritz ranked the Cougars at 12 while TCU's Sonny Dyches ranked them at No. 11.
In all, BYU's average rank was No. 10 coming from the five Big 12 coaches who casted a vote.
Cougar fans can take that Top 10 final ranking coming from coaches in BYU's own conference as more credible than that of the non-Big 12 voters. After all, Kalani Sitake's squad actually played against West Virginia, TCU, and Texas Tech (twice) this past season, and those three coaches got a good look at the Cougars. The other two Big 12 coaches are highly aware of what's going on within their own conference.
One of the two non-Big 12 coaches to rank BYU at No. 9 was Georgia Tech's Brent Key, who also saw the Cougars up close after losing to Kalani Sitake's squad in the Pop Tarts Bowl.
On the flip side, a cynic could simply state BYU's No. 10 ranking coming from Big 12 coaches is simply bias. They could allege Texas Tech's Joey McGuire ranked the Cougars at No. 9 because his team beat BYU twice, and the higher BYU is ranked, the better the Red Raiders' season looks. Same goes for TCU, West Virginia, and Georgia Tech to make their losses to the Cougars fall under the "quality losses" designation that the CFP selection committee loves so much.
In my view through some massively blue-tinted goggles, Big 12 coaches and Brent Key were spot on since they knew BYU best.
The Cougars were a Top 10 team!
The certified "Non-ball knowers"
BYU's three lowest rankings came in at No. 16 from Liberty's Jamey Chadwell, New Mexico's Jason Eck, and Syracuse's Fran Brown. Here's why those confusingly low rankings are, once again, biased.
Liberty's Jamey Chadwell was the head coach of Coastal Carolina back in 2020 when his No. 14 Chanticleers beat an undefeated and No. 8-ranked BYU team during the COVID season. It was a testy, physical game. After the contest ended Chadwell said, "If you slight us, we use that as motivation." Chadwell felt slighted by BYU back in 2020, stuck it to the Cougars on the field that dreadful day, and continues sticking it to the Cougs via his Coaches Poll vote.
New Mexico Lobos fans generally despise all things BYU. The two teams were bitter conference foes back in the WAC and MWC days, and coach Eck would have likely had pitchforks and torches outside his home if he had put the Cougars in the Top 15. But what screams "bias!" most from Eck is he ranked Utah at No. 11.
So in Eck's mind, somehow BYU vanquishing Utah head-to-head while also beating out the Utes in the Big 12 standings somehow makes Utah the better team, and by a fairly wide margin? How does that make sense?
Syracuse's Fran Brown apparently has something against the entire state of Utah. Not only did he rank BYU No. 16, he ranked Utah No. 17. Those were the two lowest rankings for both the Cougars and the Utes on any single ballot, and they both came from Brown. Can the Utah Tourism Board buy this guy a plane ticket to the Beehive State?
Polls are inherently biased, and college coaches aren't immune.
Especially when they disagree with our individual college football world view.