It’s that time of year again: time for ridiculously early preseason college football rankings! SI’s Andy Staples, ESPN’s Mark Schlabach, and the Mercury News‘s Jon Wilner have all published their picks. Oklahoma is the consensus #1, with Oregon, LSU and Alabama ranked #2-3-4 in some order. After that, there’s really no consensus: the only other teams that appear in all three Top 10s are Stanford (ranked #5 by Staples, #9 by Schablach and #10 by Wilner) and Florida State (#10, #7 and #5, respectively).
Appearing in two Top 10s are Ohio State, Texas A&M, South Carolina and Boise State. Appearing in just one are TCU, Oklahoma State, Arkansas and new Big “Ten” member Nebraska.
Notre Dame gets some love: Staples has them #24, Schablach #14, Wilner #14. Meanwhile, only Wilner has USC ranked (at #15), though I’m not sure if that’s because of postseason ineligbility or just because Staples and Schablach think they’re going to suck. Arizona State seems to be the de facto Pac-12 South favorite, as the Sun Devils are ranked #23, #21 and #19… which seems a little crazy to me, as the Sun Devils are always on the cusp and never seem to break through. But who knows, maybe 2011 will really be the year. Utah is the only other Pac-12 South team getting any attention, and that only from Staples, who has the Utes at #25.
As always, there’s much disagreement about where to rank Boise (Staples #11, Schablach #5, Wilner #8) and TCU (Staples #8, Schablach #18, Wilner #18). There’s also a lot of disagreement about the suspension-addled Buckeyes, ranked anywhere from #6 (Staples) to #20 (Wilner). As for early Boise opponent Georgia, let’s just say they ain’t exactly 2010 Virginia Tech, thanks to the bowl loss to Central Florida and the departure of A.J. Green. The Bulldogs are ranked #21 by Staples and Wilner, and unranked by Schablach.
Oh, and defending national champion Auburn? They’re #14, #17 and unranked, on the assumption that Cam Newton will turn pro. (Or should I say, formalize his status as a pro athlete? Heh. Sorry.)
Why would USC not be ranked in any preseason polls…. Actually, why is USC not ranked in the post season polls?!?! Tulsa, UCF, Maryland, Utah all ranked and would lose to SC at their home stadiums. What a load of crap.
Looks like Lane has a ton of talent coming in, again, this year so hopefully that can be converted to an AP national title, but it won’t be easy with Minnesota coming to town. Either way, there’s a lot more football to be played.
it won’t be easy with Minnesota coming to town
hahahaha
Either way, there’s a lot more football to be played
Like the entire season? LOL
Worth noting that Wilner is a Consistently bad voter with lots of outlying votes. In particular last season he greatly undervalued Oregon and Stanford for a number of weeks.
One thing that I find a little frustrating about Pollstalker’s “bad voter” rankings is, “bad” is almost always simply synonymous with “outlying,” which really shouldn’t be the case; sometimes conventional wisdom is wrong, and voters shouldn’t be discouraged from departing from it when they have a good reason, nor should they be discouraged from making large movements from week to week — another thing that tends to lead to scorn and derision and “bad vote” status. Some of the “bad” voters are truly bad, like Scott Wolf, whose votes seem totally illogical much of the time. Wilner’s votes, when I’ve paid enough attention to note them, often have some logic behind them, even if it’s unconventional. If I remember correctly, he was one of the voters who had Boise State ranked #1 for several weeks early on, based on the notion that they’d accomplished more on the field (beating Virginia Tech) than anyone else to date, including Alabama, Ohio State, etc., all of whom were highly ranked because of preseason expectations rather than on-field accomplishments. People can legitimately debate the merits of that approach, I’m not saying he’s obviously right and everyone else is wrong, but the point is, it’s not indefensible and I respect him for thinking for himself and not just following the herd. Not to say he never gets anything wrong, just pointing out that “bad voter” and “lots of outlying votes” are not actually synonyms.
So then, how would you mathematically quantify a “bad voter” if not by some measure of outliers vis-a-vis the mean? It’s easy to criticize, but if you can’t propose a workable system to replace the one you’re denouncing, then what’s the point?
Actually that’s not the system. The system is, viewers of the site VOTE for & against the voters they consider “good” and “bad.” But invariably, the “bad” voters are the ones who are outliers, whether they’re dumb outliers like Wolf or defensible outliers like Wilner. The solution, therefore, is simply for the Pollstalker voters to be more open-minded and thoughtful. 🙂
I wasn’t talking about whether or not he’d been voted a bad voter, I was talking about his ranking of various teams compared to other voters and the number of outliers he had. Also as I followed his blog this past year starting with the conference shuffle a number of times he “explained” his votes and frankly the reasons where often inconsistent or just plain indefensible. Also, based on comments from other people who post there who are Stanford fans, he has at least a percieved negative attitude towards that school. I realize fans on a message board are not the best source, just pointing out the observation as an additional point of data.
Hell, just take this quote from Wilner’s own blog to see where he stands:
“Hotline readers often wonder why/complain about my tendency to lean SEC in my top-25 poll. It’s the best league in the land, folks.”