The staff, core players are the same in most cases. Preseason rankings are a crap shoot but the prior year is as good a basis as any.
That is an interesting point. ACC has teams where Pro Football lives in Boston, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Miami, Cal and Stanford (SF)...so 6 teams Big 12 has Az. St (Phoenix), Cincinnati, and TCU (Dallas)..3 teams, SEC has Vanderbilt (Nashville)...1 team, Big10 has the most Michigan (Detroit), MInnesota, UCLA and USC (LA teams), Northwestern (Chicago), Washington (Seattle), Maryland (Washington Commanders), Rutgers (NY teams)...8 teams. I realize you could debate other teams being close to pro teams but clearly the SEC has the least. The other issue is size of schools. Big 10 only has two private schools (Northwestern and USC), SEC has one private school (Vanderbilt), Big 12 has three private schools (BYU, TCU, Baylor), ACC has seven schools (SMU, Miami, Syracuse, Duke, Boston College, Wake and Stanford). So between competing with pro teams and a lot of smaller schools, definitely makes it a challenge against particularly the SEC.
There you go. And who attends public schools mostly? In state students. Makes for bigger, more passionate fanbases. I would say, and a STEM institute, that GT is a state school that acts like a private school.
Since we are talking "should", the proper method is for someone who actually knows at least a little bit about what they are looking at comparing the rosters, the coaches, and at least tangentially the schedules and assessing who is the best team, who is the 2nd best, etc. What happened in the previous bowl season should only matter in the sense that it is a datapoint for the returning players and coaches. But it is a minor datapoint, as what those returning players did in the 12 game regular season should also matter, I would argue should matter more since the upcoming season on which you are ranking the teams is a 12 game schedule and not a single bowl game. And, BTW, I agree with you (and I think others on this board do as well) that the bowl results will affect pre-season rankings.
topdan.com
When you take in Bowl games and the CFP games there are no elite ACC Teams going into next year. Syracuse probably ended the year playing better than any of the ACC teams with wins over Miami and a Bowl win over a 9-4 UCONN team.
I mostly agree, although I will point out we won't know fully what any team will look like next season until after the rosters settle early in the summer. But what you just wrote is a decent analysis based on the entire season. No where did you say anything like "ACC school A looks to be really good on paper in 2025, but the ACC was 1-9 in bowl games last December, so I can't rank them as high as I would if the ACC had gone 5-5."
No we don't know what any team will look like next August. Going 5-5 would have helped unless the top 5 ACC teams all lost. Clemson, SMU and Miami all lost so that was the top 3 ACC teams. Louisville, Duke and VT still have games to play. Would be nice if they all won, especially Louisville and Duke. If both of them lose only Syracuse will have won out of the 6 teams with the best overall records in the ACC. s much as I want Duke to suck in football I hope they win their Bowl Game.
Funny? Or sad? The iiwii approach is the very antithesis I believe of the primary thing we are or were all taught at GT: Problem solving. Nor is at an approach any of us in the private sector were allowed to embrace in our professional careers.Yes.
Sure, but please note the records of “The Best Conference in History” against those teams as a moderating variable in your comparison.
Ok, my belief is that investing in good PR makes a difference. The ACC was left behind in this race a long time ago. Yes, the CocaCola versus Pepsi analogy is appropriate. When Pepsi finally started marketing at the level of Coke they closed the gap considerably. But Coke had already established brand dominance even though in blind taste tests people preferred Pepsi, so Pepsi always lagged 30-40 points behind in market share. Marketing by the SEC created the original advantage but this was reinforced by wins, history and generations of traditions being passed down. The SEC brand is established and strong now and would survive temporary or extended downturns in performance as well as superior marketing by the ACC.
I don't think there is a good, legitimate way to rank players preseason. I'd be okay with any method if there wasn't a built-in bias for those that start in the polls. If teams that started there fell as quickly out of the polls as those that worked their way into the polls, I'd be okay with it. The problem is the inherent bias based on preseason polls. So, I'm going there.
And going there is pointless. There is no metric to evaluate teams in the preseason. Only info based on past performance and what people think of the players on the teams and the coaches. As teams like Alabama and Georgia have won or played in multiple Title games they are perceived to start at a higher level. Add the number of NFL high draft picks those teams put out every year simply reinforces that they should be ranked high.
Therein lies the problem. There has to be a legitimate formula for evaluating (guessing) preseason strength of teams and yet the system continually fails. An obvious example is when a team performed well in the previous year, yet has lost many of their key players, but they get the benefit of the doubt because “it’s a strong program.” These “re-loading” teams can get a top 10 preseason ranking and it requires them losing at least three games before they fall out of favor. I could go on but I’m preaching to the choir.
I don’t think you intended this, but your comment sounds like you are saying the ACC’s record is bad because we have to play SEC teams more than anyone else. Kind of sounds like you are saying the SEC is better than everyone else.
ACC get rolled by the Amercian Conference, Conference USA, MAC, Mountain West and Big South just this year. Who's even close to that putri record. ACC didn't lose to teams in the Colonial or UAC. We got that going for us. The ACC deserves all the abuse and snide comments we're gonna get for a piss poor showing. Rightfully so ACC teams are going to get punished in 2025 pre-season and any ACC team is going to have to win their way up the rankings.
I regularly state that the top of the SEC is often better than the rest. My issue is not with those teams. My issue is the conference to conference to comparison - up and down the line.
I parsed this data a little more. I knew the SEC had an edge, but I thought the ACC’s numbers would be a little better.I think the analysis below may shed some light on our current conversation concerning the ACC versus the SEC. This is a pretty detailed summary covering the last 25 years. This shows each SEC team's record against all conferences including the ACC. This even goes so far as to cover every game during this period starting in 1998.
Without going into a lot of detail, the ACC has won 101 times out of 240 games against the SEC which is 42%. Not too bad. However, I believe the issue comes down to the ACC record against the SEC's top teams. The ACC teams do pretty well against the bottom half of the SEC teams, but the ACC doesn't do very well against the top 7 or 8 shown on the spreadsheet. Scroll down to see detail showing every team's record.
SEC vs Other Conferences - topdan.com
Complete list of the SEC's inter-conference football games since 1998 (the BCS and playoff eras).
Not sure your criteria for defining top, middle and bottom, but this set of data I think tells a compelling story unfortunately. Do you think these numbers influence the perception of the AC vs SEC somehow?
