Thursday, July 12, 2007

South Carolina Pre-season #6

1. Southern Cal
2. Michigan
3. West Virginia (defense not included)
4. Texas
5. LSU
6. South Carolina

This is causing a minor stir over at Everyday Should Be Saturday.

I mean seriously, why is Michigan in the top 5 every preseason, and rarely post season.

6 comments:

Flounder said...

lovin it!!

I pray he is right! That means we lose 1 or two games - His crystal ball is better than mine.

Moose said...

good website

Anonymous said...

michigan is going to be good this year for real.... they might make a run at the bcscg ... they return are key players from last years team...

General Malaise said...

Preseason rankings carry too much weight in our current system. Imagibe two teams who play the exact same schedule with the exact same results. Both Team A and Team B begin with 2 cupcakes. Team A starts the year ranked #9. Team B starts the year unranked. After two weeks of feasting on bad teams, Team A will have likely moved up 2 or 3 spots depending on losses in front of them and big wins behind them. Team B will probably move into "also receiving votes." Lets say in week 3 both teams beat a good team. Team A is now knocking on the door of the Top 5 and Team B is in the rankings at 22. next week disaster, both teams lose to a mediocre team. Team A drops to 12; team B out of the rankings.

You can see where I am going with this. But consider, it is now twice as tough for Team B to make its way back into the rankings. Team A's loss, if it doesn't happen to a bad team again, will be viewed as an aberration because as we all know (based on preseason hype) team A is a good team. Further the team that team A lost to might jump into the rankings or start earning respect.

Now what happens to Team B? Out of the top 25 they will have to have atleast two wins as big as the one that vaulted them into the rankings to come back. Why two when only one was needed before? The loss in week 4 confirmed what many people believed about unranked team B in the preseason: they aren't a top 25 team. Now if they win another big game, voters will rationalize that the win was the result of a favorable upset or the other team's errors. They will point the the bad loss as the real team B. The least likely rationale to be trumpeted is that Team B is still good. It will take another big win (their 3rd of the season) to place them in the top 25; probably around 21 or so. If team A has the same two big wins, they are talking top 5.

For too many years Michigan has been the beneficiary of this preseason hype. But Michigan is not the worst offender. That title goes to Notre Dame. If Notre Dame was called anything else and started last season out of the top 25 does anyone think they would have cracked the Top 20, much less the Sugar Bowl?

Anway to respond the Jr, it does in fact seem like Michigan will be good this year. We'll see.

Anonymous said...

i agree with your statement this happens every year and i think its Southern cal that is the beneficiary of this more times than not... when they play a decent team they struggle and/or lose.. they only won one NC and espn says they won two... LSU won the the sears trophy but no one remembers that... not to mention auburn would have beat southern cal's ass the lone year they did win...

not sure about the d at michigan but they have the best trio in QB RB and WR in the nation...

Anonymous said...

I also find it highly amusing that Clemson is in the lower tier and USC is in the upper tier of the overrated rankings... like we try to tell those Hill Billy inbred tater fuckers every year... and ps be on the look out… the more the season gets closer, the more I hear about Clemson having its most talented team in years....