The Dawg Sports 2011 Preseason College Football BlogPoll Ballot
by T Kyle King on Aug 24, 2011 8:55 AM EDT
in College Football BlogPoll
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PrintIf college football season is almost here, that must mean it’s BlogPoll time! For the seventh year, I am a BlogPoll voter, and I spent literally tens of minutes compiling my preseason top 25! Actually, I devote considerable effort to this enterprise during the regular season, but, at this stage of the game, your guess is as good as mine, so here are my guesses:
Dawg Sports Ballot - Week 1
| Rank | Team | Delta |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Alabama Crimson Tide | -- |
| 2 | Oregon Ducks | -- |
| 3 | LSU Tigers | -- |
| 4 | Boise St. Broncos | -- |
| 5 | Oklahoma Sooners | -- |
| 6 | Stanford Cardinal | -- |
| 7 | Oklahoma St. Cowboys | -- |
| 8 | Michigan St. Spartans | -- |
| 9 | Virginia Tech Hokies | -- |
| 10 | South Carolina Gamecocks | -- |
| 11 | Wisconsin Badgers | -- |
| 12 | Texas A&M Aggies | -- |
| 13 | Florida St. Seminoles | -- |
| 14 | Nebraska Cornhuskers | -- |
| 15 | TCU Horned Frogs | -- |
| 16 | Arkansas Razorbacks | -- |
| 17 | Pittsburgh Panthers | -- |
| 18 | Mississippi St. Bulldogs | -- |
| 19 | Ohio St. Buckeyes | -- |
| 20 | Houston Cougars | -- |
| 21 | Penn St. Nittany Lions | -- |
| 22 | West Virginia Mountaineers | -- |
| 23 | Nevada Wolf Pack | -- |
| 24 | Florida Gators | -- |
| 25 | Southern Miss. Golden Eagles | -- |
SB Nation BlogPoll College Football Top 25 Rankings "
My explanations, for whatever they are worth, are offered after the jump:
- For the fourth straight year, I have awarded the No. 25 preseason ranking to Southern Miss, as a tip of the cap to my former SB Nation colleague, Matt Hinton, though, this year, Dr. Saturday concurs in my affirmation of his alma mater.
- As usual, there were not 25 teams worthy of being ranked in the top 25, and the gap separating the top five from the rest of the pack is huge. The teams I have ranked sixth through tenth are by no civilized measure deserving of top ten rankings, but they’re the dogs with the fewest fleas, relative to the rest of the pack.
- I believe Florida State and Oklahoma have been overrated by the pollsters generally, and I will need the Auburn Tigers, Georgia Bulldogs, Missouri Tigers, Notre Dame Fighting Irish, and USC Trojans to prove it on the field before I am prepared to rank any of them.
- For the first few weeks of the season, I likely will tweak my rankings only slightly, based upon a given week’s results, but, starting about three or four weeks in, I probably will start using a clean white sheet of paper at the outset of each week’s ballot. Once this process begins, your feedback is welcome. It’s welcome now, too, but, at the moment, all you really can offer in defense of your position is, "I’m a better guesser than you!" You very well may be, but there’s no way to know now about which guesses you will lurch uncontrollably into accuracy.
- That said, these are the teams I think will be good, in the approximate order in which I think their quality will manifest itself in wins and losses, but I will be wrong about a lot of that.
Those wishing to say, "I told you so!" later may tell me so now in the comments.
Go ‘Dawgs!
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What??? Only half of the SEC in the top 25?
You are going to feel silly when the season ends with 10 SEC teams in the top 10.
That's true...
perhaps Kyle needs to see these videos of Doug Martin since he has clearly never seen a team outside of the south play.
http://sportsandgrits.blogspot.com/
by Mr. Sanchez on Aug 24, 2011 10:04 AM EDT up reply actions 2 recs
Well they are easily 2 td favorites over us
And that’s determined with unbiased comprehensive research, therefore…. THATS A FACT… JACK!!!
Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win.
I Corinthians 9:24
by Southern Dawg on Aug 24, 2011 3:42 PM EDT via mobile up reply actions
Still, I was surprised
that they got no USA Today #1 votes. They have a very good team.
by CommDawg on Aug 24, 2011 4:53 PM EDT via mobile up reply actions
Agree on Oklahoma and Florida State
Totally overrated in my mind, Stoops hasn’t won a big time bowl game since I was in middle school.
"When people see me sack the quarterback, I want them to see Jesus." - Reggie White
Twitter @JoshBernat17
by jbernat17 on Aug 24, 2011 9:22 AM EDT via mobile reply actions
LSU?
I know they’ll have a stellar defense, but they are one big question mark on offense. I mean, everyone here knows that Coach Bobo’s offense is clearly the worst offense in the country, and yet the Bulldawgs somehow managed to score more points, gain more yards, achieve more first downs, convert on more third downs, and incur fewer penalties than the Tigers. And the Bayou Bengals show no signs of improvement. Their starting QB is likely out for at least the first game of the season against Oregon, and he’s been the model of inconsistency for the last few years anyway. I think we all have a healthy respect for Mr. Mettenberger’s abilities, given how he was pushing Aaron Murray for starting time before his exit from the program, but it speaks volumes that he was not able to take the starting job from Jefferson during camp. Even more troubling (from both human and football perspectives) is that they have replaced their offensive coordinator twice this off-season. Moreover, they’re due for a drastic regression to the mean after an extraordinarily lucky year: LSU converted on a mind-boggling 11 of 12 fourth down attempts and won 6 of 7 games decided by 7 or fewer points.
I think there are good reasons to rank Florida State and Oklahoma ahead of LSU. Florida State clearly has a better offense, and they’re returning a boatload of starters (16/22). Although they have to replace Christian Ponder, his backup got significant playing time (and a few starts) due to injury. The Seminole’s defense is also trending in the right direction. They went from a deplorable 97th in the nation in total defense in 2008 all the way up to 23rd in the nation last year.
Similarly, Oklahoma has one of the nation’s most potent scoring attacks, ranking in the top 20 nationally in nearly every statistical category and actually running more plays per game than Oregon’s much-hyped “blur” attack. They return 9 of 11 starters on that side of the ball. On defense, they were actually statistically better than the Tigers last year, and there’s no reason to expect any significant regression given that 8 of 11 starters return.
by Spears on Aug 24, 2011 9:53 AM EDT reply actions 1 recs
Excellent points. Allow me to retort:
What Florida State did against an ACC schedule and Oklahoma did against a Big 12 schedule, LSU did against an SEC schedule.
Game over. :)
Seriously, those are valid points, which I will bear in mind when crafting future ballots. Thanks.
Go 'Dawgs!
by T Kyle King on Aug 24, 2011 1:49 PM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
FSU also beat Florida and South Carolina
'11: Minimum Goal: Win 10 games again
'10: 7th in offense, 41st in defense. Division Champions. 10-4. (6-3)
'09: 3rd in offense, 107th in defense. 7-6 (4-4)
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LSU beat Florida, as well.
The Bayou Bengals didn’t face South Carolina, so I’m not sure of the relevance of that, unless you’re asking for the Seminoles to be given credit for beating the Gamecocks in a bowl game. Given South Carolina’s history of late-season fades generally, and its poor bowl winning percentage specifically, I’m not sure how strong a point that is in FSU’s favor.
More to the point, my first two sentences were in jest, and my last two sentences were sincere. The smiley-face and the word “seriously” provide useful cues as to the location of the break point.
Go 'Dawgs!
Just pointing out that “against an ACC schedule” only accounts for 9 games.
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Fair enough.
I was just pointing out that I was joking. Spears’s points are well taken, and, provided the ‘Noles win, I’ll take his points into account when compiling future ballots.
Go 'Dawgs!
For what it is worth
My ballot through week 4 would look this way:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
you get the idea..
I HATE ORANGE
LSU has a slew of players under police investigation including QB Jordan Jefferson, in a bar fight at 2am.
At bare minimum, they broke teams rules being out after curfew. I am sure that that won’t keep the mad hatter from playing them against Oregon, even though a one game suspension would definitely be in order.
"One thing I will never do as long as I’m at Georgia is lose to Florida." - Herschel Walker
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