Josh Pate thinks AP Poll voters must be on drugs, and he’s not wrong

Another week of college football has come and gone, which means there's another AP Poll for everybody to complain about.

The weekend that was in college football produced some thrilling results that had fans on the edge of their seats waiting for the new AP Poll to come out on Sunday. No. 4 Ole Miss fell to No. 21 Florida. No. 20 Oregon spanked No. 12 USC. An exciting Mississippi State team that crept into the top-25 last week validated its entrance with a win over No. 19 Missouri. Not to mention top-ranked Texas slid by No. 14 Tennessee by a field goal.

There was bound to be a fair bit of shakeup in the AP Poll. But it appears as if, once again , voters were not up to the task, at least according to college football's voice of reason, Josh Pate.

Pate, who recently got his own weekly show on ESPN, took to his daily podcast on Monday to go after voters for what he views as some egregious misses in the most recent AP Top 25. Some of the voting was so bad in Pate's estimation that the only explanation is that the voters are on drugs.

"I think we need qualifiers to be an AP Poll voter," Pate began. "You're like, 'Josh, what kind of qualifier?' You need to have gone through the D.A.R.E. program," the college football commentator insisted, suggesting that AP voters must be in some drug-addled daze to put together the poll they did.

His first issue was with Florida's ranking. The Gators moved up from 21 to eight after beating the breaks off of top-five Ole Miss, but Pate thinks they didn't move up far enough.

"They would look, and they would say, 'Well, we bumped Florida up 13 spots.' That's not real logic! That's just something you say; that's bumper sticker logic. You're supposed to drive by, and I read that, and then it fades off in the distance, and I don't think through it critically, nor did you. You didn't bump Florida up anything. It's not real. It's just off feelings. It's not real anyway. That's not a reward. It's not like Jon Sumrall's standing in line [saying], 'Please.' There's a 13-spot bump. They went and disemboweled a top-five team last night. They went and ripped Ole Miss' spine out. They hung more yardage on them than Texas and Tennessee had combined. I don't care where they were last week. I don't care if they were unranked last week. Especially if you do this properly, early in the season there should be massive fluctuation in this thing."

Pate's next issue was with Missouri, a team that is still ranked after losing to Mississippi State.

"Missouri is still ranked. Why? Missouri was 19th based off feels last week. They're 25th based off drug use, essentially, because I don't know what on the resume constitutes being a top-25 team."

He then turns to Mississippi State, which moved up eight spots, but is still, according to Pate, hurt by its own brand.

"At this point, what would it take for Mississippi State to be a top-five team? They just beat Missouri. …Mississippi State just got a ranked win last night. They have three power-four wins. I am firmly convinced there are voters that still haven't watched them play. 'Oh, they got that quarterback, right?' That concludes our Mississippi State scouting report from an alarming number of AP voters. Drugs. Drugs! That's all you can say at this point."

On the opposite end of the brand spectrum is USC, a team that Pate is perplexed is "still 18th" after a home loss to Oregon.

"USC's on another level though. …Not only do they fail miserably, they fail miserably against Oregon's backup quarterback, and still get beat by double-digits at home. So it's like the annual pantsing of USC in a prime spot happens, and where do they fall? Outside the top-25? Outside of the top-30? No, they're 18th. Why are they still 18th? You know the answer. Drugs is the answer."

Pate was not alone. In fact, several other prominent football personalities agreed and brought additional receipts. ESPN's Kevin Clark dutifully noted that two AP voters simply forgot to rank Miami, currently the No. 4 team in the country, for the past three weeks. One of these voters ignored questions about his poll, and the other deleted his social media to avoid the backlash.

Responding to Clark, Yahoo Sports college football writer Dan Wolken advocated that polls like the AP's should be abolished altogether. "They don't serve a purpose anymore," he wrote.

In (slight) defense of the AP voters, keeping tabs on every single team in college football is no easy task, especially when many of these voters are beat reporters for one specific team. These voters are often in stadiums on Saturday covering their team, and can't keep tabs on several different games at once.

But that's exactly the point. Voters, who are ostensibly the most qualified people to make judgments on which teams are the best in the country, aren't even capable of putting together a coherent ranking. So what purpose does it serve other than giving fans and podcasters something to talk about?

Outside of some wholesale reform where the AP starts locking 50 people in a room for 12 hours every Saturday to watch every single college football game before submitting their ballots, this will continue to be a problem.