Athlon Way-Too-Early Top 25 College Football Rankings for 2019

StPaulHusker said:
It was my assumption that a preseason poll was an insight to where the teams will start the 2019 season.  If so, they are high AF

If it is their prediction that Nebraska will end up 19th to end the year, then I think they are geniuses.
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Aren't all polls predictions of where someone thinks the team will end up?

 
StPaulHusker said:
I doubt ALL of them are
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I think the definition/reasoning behind the preseason polls differ from pollster to pollster.

I believe that Sam McKewon has done his preseason poll based on how he thinks the team will finish the year.  For example, he had Wisconsin preseason #3 this season, because he thought that Wisconsin would roll through the Big Ten West and their schedule and end up there.

Here is also an article from 2016 where McKewon explains leaving Michigan State out of his preseason 2016 poll after they were coming off a 12-2 season in 2015.  It turns out that McKewon's thoughts on Michigan State was correct, in that Sparty struggled to replace Connor Cook and they had a terrible season.

https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/ap-voter-explains-why-he-left-msu-out-of-preseason-poll/

EDIT:  Here is a link to McKewon's preseason poll for 2018.  https://collegepolltracker.com/football/pollster/sam-mckewon/2018/pre-season

 
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Like it or not, this seems like a pretty good indicator of the expectations that national media and pundits will have for the program for next season. Lofty (but certainly attainable) expectations.

 
The Scarlet Pimpernel said:
Like it or not, this seems like a pretty good indicator of the expectations that national media and pundits will have for the program for next season. Lofty (but certainly attainable) expectations.
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I imagine that NU will get some votes from AP and Coaches poll voters in the preseason poll.  This is based on the trajectory at the end of 2018, the name brand of Nebraska, and the opinions on Scott Frost.

By the time that these voters get to the bottom 5 of their poll, I am sure some will think "I can throw Nebraska in at 23, I think they will be pretty good this season."  It's a lot easier to come up with a school like Nebraska than to predict a MAC, AAC, or MWC school to have a strong season and crack the top 25.

 
As far as the Athlon article goes, this is what I'll say - regardless of the debate over how deserving we'd be to be ranked pre-season, it's nice to be mentioned by national media as being more relevant after several seasons of not being relevant at all.

 
Undone said:
Agreed, and honestly I don't think we deserve a spot in the Top 25 after finishing 4-8.

If we have convincing wins after our first three games I'm pretty sure we'll be ranked. But I kind of doubt we'll be ranked preseason nor after Week 1.
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I can’t remember who it was but one of the announcers experts said to expect Nebraska to be ranked preseason based on how they developed from game one to game 8-10(when he made the comment) and how QB’s make a huge jump from year 1 to year 2 under Frost

 
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Ok so I went back and looked up Athlons Way Too Early Top 25 for 2018.  Their predictions were for how they thought teams would FINISH.

So I retract my "high AF" comment.

If anyone cares, here is how they saw 2018 finishing:

1-Alabama-Correct

2-Clemson-Correct

3-Georgia-Incorrect

4-Ohio St-6th before bowl

5-Michigan-Miss

6-Miami-Miss

7-Auburn-Miss

8-Washington-#9 going into the bowl game.  Not a bad guess

9-Wisconsin-Miss

10-Oklahoma-4th before CFP

11-Penn St-#12 going into the bowl.  Going to drop

12-Michigan St-Miss

13-Florida St-Yikes-Big Miss

14-Mississippi St-18th going into bowl.  Loss will drop them

15-Notre Dame-3rd before CFP

16-Virginia Tech-Miss

17-Florida-Probably ends up in top 5-6

18-Stanford-Miss

19-Boise St-25th before bowl game

20-Texas-15th before bowl game.  

21-USC-Miss

22-West Virginia-16th before bowl game

23-Oregon-Miss

24-TCU-Miss

25-Texas A&M-19th before bowl game

Teams currently in the top 25 that were not listed by Athlon

Syracuse

Utah

Iowa St

UCF

Northwestern

Kentucky

Washington St

LSU

Fresno St

Missouri

 
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Landlord said:
I think it means that they think Nebraska is the 19th best team right now. Which we could be, but there's no way to actually know that or even believe it that makes any sense. There's nothing to support such an idea. Where we end up at the end of the season is a completely different thing, because that factors in progress and momentum and a body of work. This factors in blind hypothetical potential.

Or it means something completely ambiguous and arbitrary and inconsistent and is really meaningless for anything other than driving clicks and ad conversion rates.
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Likewise, there’s no way to know Nebraska isn’t the 19th best team in the country heading into week one.

I’ve always took it as magazines and other publications’ polls are where they’ll end up; AP and Coaches poll are where they think they are heading into week one.

The timing of the CFP rankings makes the most sense. Why take a shot in the dark when you can just wait to see the teams play? Of course they could figure out how to actually vote logically, but that’s an entirely different matter.

 
broganreynik said:
The timing of the CFP rankings makes the most sense. Why take a shot in the dark when you can just wait to see the teams play? Of course they could figure out how to actually vote logically, but that’s an entirely different matter.
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That's been one of my biggest problems for years back when the polls chose the champion.  Once a team was in the polls, they were, many times, given the benefit fo the doubt for issues throughout the season....while one that doesn't start in the polls, struggled to get respect even though they're winning games.

To @Moiraine point.  If this is "where they are now", why wouldn't the preseason poll simply be the final poll of the previous season?

 
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