Propaganda history lesson time?
In 2004, when the SEC had undefeated Auburn be denied a spot in the mythical National Championship game in favor of a Texas-USC matchup, I think all the SEC writers and media and coaches took notice that their little spiteful voting down conference foes was the wrong way to go. Henceforth, they began talking up the SEC in addition to their own programs and, I think, they all began voting that way too.
At that time, being a Big East team, we frequently talked about how Notre Dame and the Big Ten seemed over-ranked every preseason. The Big Ten had the largest fan base, the biggest media markets among the conferences and the ESPN/ABC big contract deal. There were a lot of vested interests in promoting Big Ten football even though they'd look weak every bowl season.
As the Big Ten would launch BTN just 3 years later in 2007, they were in renegotiation time with ABC/ESPN and ESPN realized they had to move on.. to the SEC as their primary Primetime Saturday partner conference. Those markets were growing as well. They had been coaching the ACC to destroy the Big East to fully capture the east coast markets but it wasn't working. Big East teams kept over-performing their poor preseason rankings. And the ACC football thing was failing anyway.
So now you had ESPN joining the ranks of those pushing SEC domination. Recruits saw this propaganda. And while the SEC was a fine conference prior to 2004.. it got better with teh hype train pulling it along. Top recruits flowed in. Bama became as good as Bama fans thought it was all along. Same for other SEC programs.
The ACC is ESPN's secondary partner and, I think, they have learned.. through desperation mostly, that they needed expansion and promotion.
I think these over-ranked ACC teams are a part of that. Unfortunately, most of these polls do not show everyone's ballots every week. And once the preseason ballots are in, most ballots after that are just reactions to where those teams started. Think of how long it took Florida State to leave the rankings. They started way too high and then hung around... and whoever beat them got rewarded for beating such a highly-ranked team.
If the ACC proponents keep this up.. maybe they will get more and better recruits to their "ranked" teams at the expense of teams that should be benefitting from a proper ranking right now.
It might be interesting to discover how the homer-voters suppress rankings of otherwise good teams to promote those they cover or their opponents.
None of the above is meant to suggest Rutgers should be ranked. I prefer we not be at this time. Just keep winning and that fixes everything.. until you have to battle against poor preseason rankings next year.