USA Today Preseason Polls: Florida No. 1
The USA Today Coaches’ Top 25 college football coaches’ poll has been released and to no surprise, Florida ranks No. 1.
Here’s the top 15 (via ESPN.com):
1. Florida
2. Texas
3. Oklahoma
4. USC
5. Alabama
6. Ohio State
7. Virginia Tech
8. Penn State
9. LSU
10. Mississippi
11. Oklahoma State
12. California
13. Georgia
14. Oregon
15. Georgia Tech
The most intriguing team to watch this year in the top 15 is Ole’ Miss. The have a solid quarterback in Jevan Snead a true playmaker in Dexter McCluster, a couple of quality receivers and several capable rushers. But the one thing that could keep the Rebels from taking that next step is the play of the offensive and defensive lines. They lost two significant pieces of both lines last year when Michael Oher and Peria Jerry were drafted into the NFL. Can they replace both of those players and make some noise in the SEC?
Another team to at least keep an eye on this year is North Carolina, who is ranked 20 in the preseason poll. They lost receivers Hakeem Nicks and Brandon Tate to the NFL, but their offense is still chockfull of potential and their defense was incredibly opportunistic last year. I’m not saying the Heels will challenge for a national title this season, but they’ll be competitive.
The Heisman race is going to be fun to watch all year, too. Sam Bradford, Tim Tebow, Colt McCoy and Terrelle Pryor hold the edge going into the season, but watch out for sleepers like Evan Royster, Jonathan Dwyer and Jahvid Best.
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I’m sure Notre Dame will crack this list right away with some of the patsies they have on their schedule this year……
Wake up the echos, the over-rating will begin in week one!!
DaBear…patsies? Who, besides Nevada and Michigan, is a patsie on that schedule?
I would have to agree with DaBear……
Washington
Washington St.
thats 4 teams…not to mention I’m sure some of these other schools will fall off and nto be that good this year ie Pitt every year is ranked so high and disapoints
I think thats a pretty fair list for now. I would only switch Alabama and Penn State. Penn State and ND should win a ton of games. But will probably bail out in the big bowl games.
I just think singling out ND (when they’re not even in the rankings) is ridiculous. Let’s take the #2 preseason ranked team, Texas. Which of these do you not consider a patsie:
Louisiana-Monroe 4-8, 3-4 in that powerhouse Sun Belt conf
Wyoming 4-8, 1-7 in the Mountain West
UTEP 5-7, 4-4 in Conference USA
UCF 4-8, 3-5 in Conference USA
There’s 4 patsies for you but since ND doesn’t play in a conference, I’ll throw in the rest:
Colorado 5-7, 2-6 in the Big 12
Baylor 4-8, 2-6 in the Big 12
Texas A&M 4-8, 2-6 in the Big 12
So that’s 7 teams with a combined conference record of 17-38 in 2008, none of which were even at .500 in-conference or overall and 4 teams that play in weaker conferences. I guess beating North Texas 68-0 every year got a little tiring for them.
ND is scheduling the same way most of the other big boys do it. I’d rather play a tough service academy than Louisiana-Monroe.
My bad…UTEP was .500 in conf. usa. Wow…killer schedule for Texas.
Outside of maybe the SEC (Florida’s schedule is brutal last year), the majority of teams in college football have weak schedules. And even when you think a team has a tough schedule, by the end of the year we’re arguing whether or not it actually was a difficult schedule because as Titan 22 suggests, some of those “tough teams” fall off.
This is one of the biggest problems with the pro-BCS argument. People in favor of the BCS tell us that “we get a playoff game” every week in college football, yet as T-Bone points out, Texas and Wyoming isn’t a freaking playoff game. ND vs. Nevada isn’t a playoff game. Their reasons for not having a playoff system in place are absurd.
T-Bone has a point though: We can’t just call out ND for having some JV teams on their schedule, because again, the majority of teams schedule 2-3 pasties a year and then they get another 2-3 patsies from their conference.
Unfortunately, there’s no way around that though. It’s not Ohio State’s fault that Michigan, Northwestern and Indiana are going to be bad again this year. The same goes for other teams in other conferences.
i agree that every conference has a weak stretch of games, but i think the problem with ND is they win those games and they are automatically put in the top 25….Other teams will be undefeated in a weak conference and never get a look, ND gets put higher because of the national attention….
We either hate ND or we love ’em. I belong to the former group. I was only trying to highlight that ND would soon be skyrocketing up that list. Washington and Washington St were 2-23 last season, Nevada is Nevada and Connecticut is Connecticut.
Contrary to T-Bone’s comment, I don’t think I’m ridiculous. All the good teams have patsies but ND will run up that standings list like no one else when they beat theirs.
I guess T-Bone is referring to Navy when he mentions tough service academies. What is ND’s record vs Navy? And in 2010 they add Army, another “tough’ service academy.
My intent was to point out that ND will move up faster than anyone else when they beat the patsies on their schedule. I don’t think that’s a ridiculous thing to say, let’s see where they are on the list in Oct/Nov…..have a nice weekend.
Yup, ND might move up the rankings but not any faster than Florida State or Nebraska…the same Nebraska who has Florida-Atlantic, Arkansas St., and Louisiana-Lafayette for 3 of their first 4 games.
Who do you think Alabama will have a tougher time with…Florida International, North Texas, or Chattanooga? How about Penn State vs. Akron, Eastern Illinois, or Temple? These schedules are more legitimate than ND’s? I’d rather see the traditional ND-Navy game than play that crap.