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Show Study shows Cougar ranking right where it should he mobile. Comprising the stable core, representing rep-resenting consistent performance and ranking, are Nebraska, Ohio State, West Virginia, Penn State, Alabama and Oklahoma. Number-one Nebraska tallied 16 appearances in the top 20 and a total of 230 points. The nearest point total was Oklahoma with 212. Seggar says West Virginia made the ranks because of a constant showing in the top 20, even though the Mountaineers have never been in the top 10. Stable teams are most likely to maintain a presence in the polls in the next few years. Those that come closest to upsetting up-setting stable teams are members of the upwardly mobile category, including Southern Methodist University, Uni-versity, Georgia, University of California-Los Angeles, Florida and North Carolina. In the past few years, the polls have seen more circulation because be-cause of the expansion of the Pacific-10 and growth of the Western Athletic Conference and Pacific Coast Athletic Association. Behind the relatively stable newcomers new-comers (BYU, Pitssburgh, Clem-son, Clem-son, Miami, Florida State, Iowa and Boston College) are the relatively rela-tively unstable newcomers. These are teams that need a few more years of top showings to stabilize a presence in the top 20. They are Oklahoma State, Illinois, Maryland, Mary-land, Baylor, Kentucky and East Carolina. The teams destined to be downwardly down-wardly mobile, according to Seggar, Seg-gar, are Notre Dame, Missouri, Arizona State University, Michigan, Michi-gan, University of Southern California, Cali-fornia, Auburn, Texas, Mississippi, Mississip-pi, Arkansas and Purdue. Studying football in such terms is not uncommon for Seggar, whose other research includes finding better ways to conduct polls and analyzing possible ways elites conspire to maintain position. posi-tion. This may include rules violations. viola-tions. "Of the top 57 teams, 21 (or 40 percent) have been on probation for violations at least once in the past 17 years," he says. The unmerciful beating the Brigham Young University football foot-ball team took at the hands of the University of Washington last weekend and its subsequent fall in the national rankings to 22nd from 9th or 1 1th was a rude surprise for Cougar fans. But a Brigham Young University researcher says the team is now in line with its historical ranking of 2 1 st. John F. Seggar, a professor of sociology and former BYU rugby coach, recently completed a study of how college football teams have been ranked in the top 20 tp see whether the upper stratum is dominated by a limited group of elites. What he found was that college football, although apparently dominated by certain groups, is not elitist if viewed carefully over the past 20 years. "Thirteen of the 20 teams in the polls from 1968 to 1972 did not appear between 1980 and 1984. So the polls are not as exclusive as one might think," he said. Low-ranked teams can make the top 20 by improving im-proving performance. Rather than use sports talk like "perennial powerhouse" or "underdog," Seggar classified teams as part of the "stable core," the "upwardly mobile" and "downwardly mobile," as "relatively "rela-tively stable newcomers," and as "relatively unstable newcomers." He calls BYU a relatively stable newcover. Its rise exemplifies how one team can take advantage of change. With six top 20 appearances, appear-ances, the Cougars tallied 39 total points in Seggar's study and ranked rank-ed 21st. BYU showed up in seven of the past nine annual polls, and Seggar says the Cougars might soon rank among the upwardly |