Now that the Flyers are a healthy 8-0, more and more Dayton fans continue to check the national polls to see if the red and blue crack the Top-25 for the first time in many moons. For the past two weeks, the pollsters have chosen to keep the Flyers on the outside looking in and on the edge of national recognition. While there are at least eight very good reasons to argue that the Flyers should already be ranked, there are many more that tell the real story and explain why voters have serious apprehensions about sticking the Flyers on their ballots so early in the season.

The USAToday/ESPN Coaches Poll is made up of 30 Div-I coaches who are preoccupied with coaching their own teams and scouting future opponents. Most coaches also have other coaching-related commitments and families they must find time for. In short, coaches have few opportunities to hunker down in the La-Z-Boy and check out a few college basketball games pitting Hudgypucker University and Sloopy State. When coaches don’t get a chance to see many of the teams play, they must go by what they’ve read, heard, and been accustomed to seeing in the NCAA Tournament.

The AP Poll is tabulated using the votes of many AP writers throughout the country who represent prurient interests and suffer the same unintended ignorance that many coaches do. Sportswriters in the Pacific Northwest may not see a Dayton Flyer highlight all year unless it’s a major upset against a national power. Similarly, the local Dayton TV affiliates rarely chime in to update everyone on the UNLV/Fresno St. game. In the strictest sense, AP voters are landlocked and cannot possibly give every worthy team an equal shake in the voting. Because voters don’t see all the teams, they vote for the teams they have seen – teams in their geographic region. Midwestern voters see Indiana, Illinois, Ohio State, and Michigan on TV almost every weekend. At the same time, one of these voters may go all year without seeing a Big-12 matchup. In the end, it’s tough to vote for a program you know nothing about.

Those reasons aside, there are others that weigh against Dayton at this point in the season.

The Flyers have absolutely no history of recent success on the college basketballs scene. Dayton has yet to beat a Top-25 team. Yes, Kentucky was ranked #12 when Dayton won in Cincinnati, but unless they are ranked when fans argue the point (i.e. today) with nonbelievers, it doesn’t have the sticking power it once did.

Every year, several teams come out of the gates blistering yet cool off once the New Year rolls around and are rarely heard from again for the remainder of the season. A couple years ago, Ohio University opened up the season with several wins in the Preseason NIT. The Bobcats rose up the polls to as high as #14 before dropping out a couple weeks later never to make it again. Not to say Dayton is this year’s reincarnation of Ohio U., but it does worry voters who are asked to vote for teams without a proven track record of getting to the Top-25 — much less and staying. As of this writing, the Flyers are ranked #27 in both polls. Rather than worry about where the Flyers should be or where the Flyers could be, let’s all take a deep breath and point our concerns to the next game.

As quickly as we talk about national rankings, an opponent like Cleveland State can pin a loss on us and make the conversation a moot point. While it would be great to be ranked – and it seems only a matter of time before we are – there’s no sense in worrying about a process that is out of a fan’s sphere of influence. All the great things that a national ranking brings – notoriety, recruiting credibility, television exposure – are only valuable if you truly deserve the honor. Other teams like Oklahoma, Illinois, Gonzaga, Wake Forest, Utah, and Purdue have similar credentials and equally deserve to be ranked. In fact, these teams all have something Dayton doesn’t – a decade of tradition. Like it or not, this means something when it’s time to cast a vote.

Worry about Cleveland State, worry not about the polls. If we do that, the rankings will take care of themselves.