The general crux of this series will be clear evidence of the media jobbing college football teams unduly. Especially a certain team from Columbus, OH. Sorry Otterbein, I'm referring to The Ohio State University. This particular entry is a bit different however, the other side of the coin if you will.
At a more base level, what we're usually looking for here are media outlets that are devaluing the Buckeyes football team based on the last two national title games while not holding the rest of the world to the same ridiculously high standard. Make sense?
Getting to the point, you would think that after getting smacked around in the national title game by two different SEC teams, that the Buckeyes would start to sag in the polls. That is, even if we're talking about the most meaningless preseason polls that will ultimately have almost no bearing on anything. The ones for example produced by preseason publications like Athlon and Phil Steele.
A quick word about preseason polls. In my opinion, preseason polls should be about where you think a team is right now. Don't worry about the schedule, if you put all 120 teams in head-to-head games tomorrow, who would be tops?
For some reason there are people out there that think preseason polls are some kind of prediction of how the poll will look at the end of the season. That's not a preseason poll, that's a postseason prediction. Let's put it this way, we know that's a ridiculous exercise because when was the last time someone released a poll, and then didn't change it at all during the regular season because it was spot-on accurate?
Preseason polls are part of what's wrong with college football right now but they're nearly impossible to remove from the fabric of the game. Everyone reads all the same shit and that's why you can poll two guys from Portland, OR and two other guys from Fredericksburg, VA in the middle of July and come up with almost the same relative rankings.
For the time being though we'll use the preseason polls as a barometer of general opinion in the college football media. And isn't that the definition of a poll anyway?
Anyway, getting to the meat here (finally!), Bucknuts released at the beginning of July it's first 'consensus poll'. This is a grand idea because A) it relieves the rest of us from having to run around the entire internet searching for rankings and B) because it provides just that, a 'consensus'.
A few interesting notes...
- USC was the prohibitive No. 1 team in last year’s final Preseason Consensus Poll, gaining 17 of the 18 first-place votes. LSU received the one other No. 1 vote in the poll as AutumnSpectacle.com became the only outlet to predict the eventual national champion.
Southern Cal lost to Stanford last year, and in the process took a sledgehammer to any chance of playing for the national title. And I just like saying 'Southern Cal lost to Stanford last year'.
- In this opening edition of the 2008 Preseason Consensus Poll, we see that Ohio State has jumped out to an early lead in the standings. The Buckeyes have four of the 11 available first-place votes. Georgia is next with five first-place votes.
- Ohio State is coming off an 11-2 season and a second consecutive loss in the BCS national championship game, while Georgia was also 11-2 and took a Sugar Bowl win over Hawaii. Ohio State is listed in the top five of all 11 polls cited here. The race for the top spot would be closer if Georgia was not rated as low as No. 9 by Phil Steele’s College Preview. The Bulldogs are in the top five of every other poll.
- The rest of the top five in the Preseason Consensus Poll is USC, Oklahoma and Florida, which had two first-place votes.
- In terms of conference strength, there may a changing of the guard this year. The Big 12 has apparently supplanted the SEC in terms of relative strength. A year ago, the SEC had six top-20 teams in the final poll. The Big 12, in this initial poll, has placed an impressive five teams in the top 15.
- The Big Ten is next with five top-25 picks. The SEC comes next with four in the top 25. The Big East, Pac-10 and ACC all have three top-25 picks, although each one of those leagues lags behind with just one team in the top 15.
So while I would have expected the Buckeyes to be hovering in the 3-6 range based on past results, it appears that the general consensus is actually somewhere in the first or second position.
The notes about the Big XII, Big Ten and SEC are interesting too. What this tells me is that those in the know, or supposedly in the know, are not blindly throwing all their faith into the SEC conference after two straight titles.
The "experts" are also apparently aware that the Buckeyes will return what appears to be on paper, one of their most talented teams ever. That's saying something.
There's of course the matter of QB Todd Boeckman but we'll save that for another time.
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