Pre-season Coaches Poll

bke1984

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Polls don't mean a thing. I could care less what the polls say. I prefer to remain under the radar. What counts is when toe meets leather.

Totally agree, but it always helps your resume if you beat ranked teams. There are five of them on our schedule as of now.
 

GT_05

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Tennessee 24th, we are in the Others receiving votes. Pretty big opportunity on the national stage week one. Need to come away with a W

http://www.espn.com/college-football/rankings

The preseason polls don't matter. In a strange way, we have something going for us. In order to rank high in the polls, we have to beat good opponents. I understand that we have the 8th toughest schedule in D-1 this year. Therefore, a few Ws should get us ranked pretty quick. Maybe this is also part of the reason that we only got 10 votes.

As far as preseason polls not mattering, I decided to look at the Dwags over the past decade since they ALWAYS seem to get a very generous preseason ranking. There seems to be little correlation between where they started the year and where they finished.

Year-->Start-->Finish
2016-->15-->Unranked
2015-->8-->Unranked
2014-->10-->9
2013-->4-->Unranked
2012-->7-->Tied for 5th
2011-->18-->19
2010-->22-->Unranked
2009-->13-->Unranked
2008-->2-->13
2007-->14-->2

I think we have some real opportunities this year.


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Eastman

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Doesn't make much sense to me that Northwestern, Memphis, San Diego State and Appalachian State would get more votes than us but if we win our first game that will probably change. As GTech63 stated preseason polls have little value.
 

FightWinDrink

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I mean they hold little value for who's good. I won't argue with that. But they do hold value in visibility and attention. More people will watch games with teams with little numbers by their names. If it wasn't true they would have done away with the preseason polls by now because they are such a terrible predictor of season success. Can't hurt to get ranked and noticed though.
 

Whiskey_Clear

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As much as I hate it, preseason polls do matter. They unfortunately set the stage of perceptions before a single game is played and those perceptions are difficult to change.

If you don't think that factors into the playoff decisions at the end of the year you are wrong imo.
 
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As much as I hate it, preseason polls do matter. They unfortunately set the stage of perceptions before a single game is played and those perceptions are difficult to change.

If you don't think that factors into the playoff decisions at the end of the year you are wrong imo.
This is not a new position for us. We have always been faced with playing our way into the rankings.
 
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Yeah but IMO the preseason bias against us played a large roll in us getting only a split natty with Colorado....and just by a hair for that matter.
And your opinion is correct. But some of that preseason bias might have been that the program appeared to be a shadow of its "glory days" self. In the dozen years preceding 1990 we had won a total of 54 games, three times we won 2 or less, we were on our third coach in that span, and had been to one bowl game. I think the voters had cause to be skeptical.
 

GT_05

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Good team but the 1990 team didn't face the strongest of competition. They beat #1 UVA but UVA finished the year #23, they beat #19 Nebraska that finished the year #24, they played #25 USC that finished unranked, and #15 Clemson turned out to probably be their toughest opponent who finished at #9. All of their other opponents were unranked and they finished that way.

Wins against ranked opponents matter more than anything.


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AE 87

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Good team but the 1990 team didn't face the strongest of competition. They beat #1 UVA but UVA finished the year #23, they beat #19 Nebraska that finished the year #24, they played #25 USC that finished unranked, and #15 Clemson turned out to probably be their toughest opponent who finished at #9. All of their other opponents were unranked and they finished that way.

Wins against ranked opponents matter more than anything.


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LOL. (imho)
 

Eastman

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The Colorado team should have lost 2 games (5 downs) and tied one. They weren't exactly world beaters and we dominated Nebraska. If I recall correctly after the game Tom Osborne said we were the best team they played. That is good enough for me.
 

GT_05

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The Colorado team should have lost 2 games (5 downs) and tied one. They weren't exactly world beaters and we dominated Nebraska. If I recall correctly after the game Tom Osborne said we were the best team they played. That is good enough for me.

I'm not taking away from the National Championship but the points I made are where the skepticism came from. GT was the only undefeated team in D-1 that year but many would argue that there were some one loss teams that had a tougher schedule who should have a shot over the 5th down Colorado Buffalos. Skepticism.



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Eastman

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I'm not taking away from the National Championship but the points I made are where the skepticism came from. GT was the only undefeated team in D-1 that year but many would argue that there were some one loss teams that had a tougher schedule who should have a shot over the 5th down Colorado Buffalos. Skepticism.



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There did seem to be a bias for the buffs that year. They haven't done much since then.
 

AE 87

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I'm not taking away from the National Championship but the points I made are where the skepticism came from. GT was the only undefeated team in D-1 that year but many would argue that there were some one loss teams that had a tougher schedule who should have a shot over the 5th down Colorado Buffalos. Skepticism.



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The only 1 loss team in the AP top 10 was Houston at 10.
 
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