MSC’s Preseason BlogPoll Top 25

By Sean · Monday, August 18, 2008 · 3:03 PM |  Share | 2 Comments 

I don’t care for preseason polls very much as I find ranking teams based on predictions and nothing else is too arbitrary a way of doing things. I like the schedule the Harris Interactive Poll follows. Their first poll isn’t released until after the third week of the season, giving pollsters a chance to actually get a look at teams before ranking them.

Even with that being said I do understand that releasing preseason polls is a good way to create discussion and hype games. I’m perfectly fine with preseason polls that don’t have any effect on the BCS coming out early, so I guess my beef is really with only the USA Today Coaches Poll. Either way, the best poll out there, the BlogPoll, is coming out in a few days, and for the first time I am participating in it.

Before I get to my preseason poll, I’d just like to lay out how I put it together. Basically, I went through and predicted the entire college football schedule for 2008 and recorded what I believe the record of all 119 Division I-A teams will be. After that, I sorted the teams based on most to least wins to get an idea of which teams should be in the top 25. I didn’t go strictly on predicted wins alone as there were some mid-majors fairly high on the list. The number of predicted wins was really the foundation of the poll, and then I re-ranked it and made some changes based on how good I think these teams will be. It’s hard to think about hypothetical head-to-head match-ups, but I did take that into consideration a little bit for a portion of the poll.

Anyways, without further adieu, here is my preseason top 25 poll:

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Ohio State	25
2	Oklahoma	24
3	Georgia	23
4	Southern Cal	22
5	Florida	21
6	Missouri	20
7	Auburn	19
8	LSU	18
9	Clemson	17
10	West Virginia	16
11	Texas	15
12	Virginia Tech	14
13	Texas Tech	13
14	Arizona State	12
15	Wisconsin	11
16	Penn State	10
17	Kansas	9
18	Tennessee	8
19	Brigham Young	7
20	Oregon	6
21	South Florida	5
22	California	4
23	Illinois	3
24	Pittsburgh	2
25	Fresno State	1

I’m not going to dissect the entire poll, but below you can find my explanations for why teams ended up where they did.

• As much as this hurt, I did end up deciding on putting Ohio State at #1. I unfortunately think OSU will run the table this season and make it back to the BCS Title Game for a third consecutive year. They probably will just lose in the title game, but for the regular season at least, I have them finishing 12-0, good for the top ranking.
• After OSU, I elected to put the Sooners at #2. They have had their fair share of issues in BCS games lately, but I have them going undefeated as well. They may not necessarily be a better team than Georgia or USC, but they will finish with a better record according to my predictions.
• Speaking of Georgia, although they do have loads of talent, I just don’t think they can survive their schedule. It is probably the toughest schedule in the country and for them to pull off a win every single week would shock me.
• USC has been hit with freak accidents, jock itch, and regular old injuries in the last month or so, and I think that will catch up to them at the beginning of this season. Once we get into October I have a feeling all will be well for the Trojans, but I have Ohio State going into Los Angeles and beating USC. I’d love to see the exact opposite of that happen, but I don’t think it will. USC will still finish the year strong with another Pac-10 title and a top 5 ranking in my opinion.
• Rounding out the top 5 is Florida, who will put together another solid season. Tim Tebow likely will be a Heisman contender again and a BCS bowl is definitely a realistic possibility for the Gators. Their biggest game of the season undoubtedly will be against Georgia, where the winner could be thrust into the national title picture.
• Looking at the rest of the top 10, I’m pretty happy with how spots 6-10 turned out. Missouri should have another big season with Chase Daniel leading the Tigers at QB. Auburn is a team that I am very high on despite welcoming a new offense and a new QB. LSU will not win another national championship, but they still will be a top 10 team. Clemson needs to finally live up to preseason expectations, and I think they will this season. And finally, there’s West Virginia. I think they are going to fall into futility as long as Bill Stewart is their head coach, but that fall will take a few years. With Pat White and Noel Devine still around this season, talent alone will get them another BCS berth.
• Looking at spots 11-20, a team worth mentioning is BYU. There is a very good chance they could be this year’s BCS buster, and even if they’re not, the Cougars should still win 10 or more games. Because of that, I have them ranked #19. Depending on how a specific game or two goes this season, they very well could be ranked up toward the top 10.
• Taking a look at the final spots of my preseason poll, I imagine the fact that Michigan isn’t ranked will stick out to you. As much as I wanted to put U-M in my preseason poll, I just couldn’t do it. Since there are so many question marks going into the season, I need to see Michigan play a game before deciding whether or not they are a top 25 team. That means that if they take care of business against Utah, the Wolverines will be ranked in my next poll. If not, though, then it’ll take some work to eventually crack the top 25.
• Just a quick note on the final two teams in the poll… I don’t think the Wannstache is that great of a coach, but he has quite a bit of talent on his team thanks to great recruiting. That will be good enough to carry them to an 8 or so win season, which puts them at #24. Finally, I included Fresno State because they are another team that could potentially be a BCS buster. I don’t believe they will get into BYU range, but they are definitely a team that could make some noise this season. Specifically, keep an eye on their September 13 game at home against Wisconsin.

Once we get a few weeks of college football out of the way I will start to create my poll based on only what teams do on the field. That will obviously become a factor after week 1, but a single game can only tell me so much, meaning expectations for the rest of the season will still help create my poll for the first few weeks.