I love rankings! Always have, always will.

I remember as a kid how I couldn’t wait to go to the store to see if they had a Street & Smith magazine preseason college basketball or football rankings issue. Man, I would spend hours combing through those things, back before the internet and when you couldn’t find much information on teams all across the country.

Rankings were the best — and really only — way to compare your team against other teams. So, of course, the polls were pretty much gospel back then.

Some will argue that’s not the case anymore, in an age when we have endless statistical data and analysis to compare teams. With all of that, who actually cares what 60-70 sportswriters think about where teams should be ranked?

Well, I do.

And no matter what you say to the contrary, you probably do, as well.

I always laugh when some fans say stuff like “rankings don’t matter.” If you’re one of those people, then why are you still reading this column?

Rankings matter because they get us talking. They get us interested. They create endless debate material. They give us bragging rights when our team is ranked highly, or make us angry when it’s not ranked.

They allow us to evaluate a head coach, such as these gems: James Franklin is 13-26 vs. ranked teams during his Penn State tenure, and a woeful 3-17 vs. top 10 teams.

It’s true that rankings matter less nowadays in college football. The only poll that ultimately matters will be the playoff committee’s top 12, and that’s why it’s gotten a lot easier for some fans to claim the AP and coaches polls don’t mean anything.

Ahhh, but in the court of public opinion, those polls absolutely do still matter. Because perception matters, and to that point, go back and look at Franklin’s record against ranked teams, and it’s easy to see why so many Penn State fans have little faith in him in big games.

The undefeated Lions are No. 4 in the AP poll this week, No. 5 in the coaches poll. In the latter, they are behind a one-loss team, Georgia. One AP voter from Tampa had Penn State all the way down at No. 8 in his poll, behind three one-loss teams (Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee).

I pointed out on X how that voter’s poll doesn’t make much sense. He actually had written a column about his poll and claimed that he’s still not sure about Penn State because it has played such a weak schedule.

That’s fair. Hey, I’m not totally sold on the Lions yet, either, simply because they haven’t played a really strong opponent yet.

Still, I believe Penn State should be No. 4, because it’s undefeated and that’s how the rankings — at this point in the season — should work.

Would Penn State beat Georgia or Alabama? I don’t think so. But rankings aren’t really about whether you think one team would beat another team. They are about your record right now, and since I believe losses should matter a great deal in college football, then most of the time, undefeated teams deserve to be ranked ahead of teams that have a loss.

We can agree to disagree on any of this stuff. And you know what, that is exactly why rankings are still so much fun.

Cory Giger is the host of “Sports Central” weekdays from 4-5 on 96.1 Hank FM.