The Premo-Porretta Power Poll is a retroactive end-of-year
ranking
A ranking is a relationship between a set of items such that, for any two items, the first is either "ranked higher than", "ranked lower than" or "ranked equal to" the second.
In mathematics, this is known as a weak order or total preorder of o ...
for American
college basketball
In United States colleges, top-tier basketball is governed by collegiate athletic bodies including National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), the United States Collegiate Athleti ...
teams competing in the 1895–96 through the
1947–48 seasons.
The Premo-Porretta Polls are intended to serve collectively as a source of information regarding the relative standings of college basketball teams within given seasons during the early decades of the sport. No systematic end-of-season national tournament existed in college basketball until the founding of the
National Invitation Tournament in 1938 and the
NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship Tournament in 1939, the latter of which determines the NCAA Champion for a given season. Furthermore, no regular, recognized national polling took place for college basketball prior to the establishment of the
Associated Press Poll
The Associated Press poll (AP poll) provides weekly rankings of the top 25 NCAA teams in one of three Division I college sports: football, men's basketball and women's basketball. The rankings are compiled by polling 62 sportswriters and broadca ...
and the
Coaches Poll
The Coaches Poll is a weekly ranking of the top 25 NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) college football, Division I college basketball, and Division I college baseball teams. The football version of the poll has been known officiall ...
in the
1948–49 and
1950–51 seasons, respectively.
Background
Patrick Premo, a
professor ''emeritus'' of
accounting
Accounting, also known as accountancy, is the measurement, processing, and communication of financial and non financial information about economic entities such as businesses and corporations. Accounting, which has been called the "languag ...
at
St. Bonaventure University, and Phil Porretta, a former
computer programmer, have each spent more than 40 years—first separately, and later collaboratively—researching the early history of college basketball.
Their archival work has often uncovered game results that had not previously been reported in books and basketball program
media guides, such as the results of competition against
AAU,
semi-professional,
club
Club may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
* ''Club'' (magazine)
* Club, a '' Yie Ar Kung-Fu'' character
* Clubs (suit), a suit of playing cards
* Club music
* "Club", by Kelsea Ballerini from the album ''kelsea''
Brands and enterprises ...
, and
YMCA
YMCA, sometimes regionally called the Y, is a worldwide youth organization based in Geneva, Switzerland, with more than 64 million beneficiaries in 120 countries. It was founded on 6 June 1844 by George Williams (philanthropist), Georg ...
teams.
Whereas Bill Schroeder of the
Helms Athletic Foundation
The Helms Athletic Foundation, founded in 1936, was a Los Angeles-based organization dedicated to the promotion of athletics and sportsmanship. Paul H. Helms was the organization's founder and benefactor, funding the foundation via his ownership ...
retroactively named only his choice of the top team nationally for each season from 1900–01 through
1941–42 (and then annually selected a national champion for each season from
1942–43 through
1981–82), Premo and Porretta have used the data they have compiled to compare teams against one another and assign rankings to multiple teams for each season—15 teams for the 1895–96 season, 20 teams for each season from 1896–97 through 1908–09, and 25 teams for each season from 1909–10 through 1947–48.
Premo and Porretta first published results of their early collaboration in 1995. Most recently, in 2009, their full rankings were included with the core information for each season prior to 1949 in the ''ESPN College Basketball Encyclopedia''.
[''ESPN College Basketball Encyclopedia'', pp. 526, 529–87]
National champions
Pre-NCAA Tournament champions
Pre-Associated Press Poll champions
References
{{Reflist
History of college basketball in the United States
College basketball in the United States