OH BOY!
Are you like me? Do you get super excited for the Pre-Season Coaches Poll? I mean, seriously, how awesome is the Pre-Season Coaches Poll?
And by awesome, I mean ridiculous.
And by Pre-Season, I mean too early.
And by Coaches, I mean graduate assistants.
Even so, it's college football, it's something new to talk about. Yay Football!
You can find the entire poll here, but here are some thoughts.
24. Notre Dame
HEEEEEYYYYYY... look at that, wouldya? Notre Dame is in the pre-season coaches poll after not being ranked at the end of last season for the one-thousandth year in a row. As MSULaxer27 said in an email to all of the OTE writers:
"Just curious over the last 20 years, how many times has ND appeared in the preseason poll with NR in the final rank column?"
16. Nebraska
The Huskers are the lowest ranked of the four B1G teams that show up on the pre-season poll. Expect Bo Pelini to scream at his team about being disrespected by other coaches, and then use it as motivation to get Taylor Martinez to cut down on the arm punts.
15. Texas
Boy things really took a dive in Austin last year, didn't they? An 8-5 season? What an abomination. Unlike Notre Dame who always has an appearance on this poll with an NR as their previous year's final ranking, Texas usually has an appearance on this poll with a single digit in the previous year's ranking as well as this year's pre-season ranking. The Horns are gonna have to "hook 'em" from unfamiliar territory.
13. Michigan State
12. Wisconsin
More fodder for Burt Bielema's assertion that there's quite a rivalry here. You could have flip-flopped these teams and nobody would bat an eye. We in B1G country probably think these teams could be a little higher up on the list, perhaps the high single digits? Having said that, both teams were hurt by the fact that they lost three games in 2011, and also, they aren't ESSSSSS EEEEEEEEEEEEE SEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. /fart noise
8. Michigan
The highest ranked member of the conference makes it into the Top 10 because nobody has any respect for B1G. Having said that, this is exactly why these pre-season polls are BS. How can you even argue these things? Let's just look at #8 Michigan and #7 FSU. Each team won their bowl game a season ago, but Michigan beat a tougher opponent (VaTech who finsihed #18 in last year's poll), and ended up ranked #9 in the country, while FSU ended ranked #23.
Now I'm not saying that FSU won't end up with a better season than Michigan, but without any games having been played, what do these graduate assistants really know about FSU that pushes them up 16 places?
3. USC
Remember those sanctions that were supposedly going to cripple USC football for at least a few years? Yeah, how did that work out?
2. Alabama
Yawn.
1. LSU
Double Yawn. /wanking motion