Rightfully so, based on what? Because SEC teams are overrated to start the season? Miss St rose in the rankings because they beat A&M and LSU, two fraud teams. Why is Auburn ranked so high in the first place? Both of these teams are ahead of ND at the moment, for example.
Auburn has a win over a 5-1 K-State team. ND's best win is against a 4-3 Stanford team. Both have losses to undefeated teams. Who would you rank above Auburn/Alabama and why? Those, along with ND, are the only three 1-loss teams that have a loss to an undefeated. Everyone else has a "worse" loss. SEC teams are in the top 5 of the Sagarin ratings, too. Sagarin doesn't care where the polls put them preseason, nor does it have any conference bias: http://sagarin.com/sports/cfsend.htm
The SEC has dominated out of conference games this season. The only teams those top SEC teams are losing to is the other top SEC teams. Whether they cannibalize each other is one thing, but they're clearly putting together some of the best resumes. Miss. State has demolished everybody they've played, including Auburn who's one of the top teams. Auburn beat a now #11 Kansas State on the road. Alabama beat a now ranked West Virginia team on a neutral site. The only team Auburn has lost to is the Top team in the country, while Alabama has only lost to the 3rd (and probably should be 2nd) ranked team in Ole Miss. Whether you think that's impressive or not is one thing, but please just tell me who's done convincingly more so far? Notre Dame is right there, but who have they beat? They played FSU well, and are easily one of the best teams in the country, but their resume isn't anything special right now. Sure, teams like LSU and A&M were overrated at the start, and that's precisely why I hate preseason polls to begin with, but the Top SEC teams (Auburn, Alabama, MSU, Ole Miss) have handled everybody they've played outside of when they actually played each other. When your only loss is to the Top teams in the country, that's hard to really criticize. Having said that...this season's weird and I'm sure we'll see some more weird losses and playoff shakeups. However...I once again have to ask, who's put together a better resume than those top SEC schools?
TAMU wasn't ranked at the start. LSU has lost to the #1 & #5 teams. TAMU has lost to #1, #3, #4. I think LSU would probably have a decent chance to finish ACC play or ND's schedule with 1 loss at most.
I should re-phrase... A&M started at #21, but South Carolina was #9. A&M beat South Carolina and jumped pretty high because of it, even though now we know South Carolina isn't worth much. The preseason polls skewed how people should have reacted towards that game. As for LSU, they're fine, but not the Top 10 caliber team they were made out to be early in the season, as was shown by their blowouts to MSU and Auburn. Preseason polls just shouldn't be a thing.
With or without preseason polls, A&M had a blowout win on the road against a major conference team. If you were just ranking on performance after Week 1, A&M should probably have been #1 at that point. Regardless, preseason polls don't matter by midseason, so who cares? If today was the first poll, who would you rank as your top 5 by resume? I suspect it would look a lot like the actual rankings.
I agree... supposedly the playoffs wont be affected by the polls. The polls are good to have IMO, people get something to talk about. Just like recruiting rankings. It helps promote the sport. But preaseason rankings shouldn't carry any weight real world weight.
Have an AP & Coaches' Poll before the season (because they are fun for fans). Don't vote again until after week 4 or 5.
That's not true. They do matter. One of the justifications for Ole Miss coming out of nowhere was the number of highly ranked teams they beat. Those initial rankings impact that. It's why I say they mainly rose from beating A&M and LSU. I think they got to #3 in the country after beating both of those squads, and neither should have been considered a great team by the time they played them (going off memory on the ranking).
Why? Auburn's best win (@ Kansas State) is better than any win Notre Dame or TCU has had, and their loss (@ #1 Miss. State) is no worse than Notre Dame or TCU's loss.
Ole Miss was also unranked preseason - meaning that the preseason polls didn't stop anyone from looking at them highly despite initial expectations. And they haven't played LSU. They moved to #11 by default of being undefeated as other teams lost (they beat no one of relevance to that point). Then they jumped from #11 to #3 after beating Alabama, who everyone still thinks is very good. They stayed #3 after beating A&M. In the Sagarin rankings, they are #1 - unaffected by any preseason ranking or conference bias.
I got the Miss schools mixed up. Miss St was unranked to start the season, and they stayed that way until they played LSU. http://espn.go.com/college-football/rankings/_/week/4 The win over LSU shot them from unranked to #14. http://espn.go.com/college-football/rankings/_/week/5 After beating A&M they rose to #3. http://espn.go.com/college-football/rankings/_/week/7 The rankings to start the season had an impact on where LSU and A&M were ranked. It makes a difference.
Miss St hasn't beaten anyone. They are only ranked so highly because the assumption is the SEC teams they have beaten were as good as their early rankings, when they clearly weren't. ND barely lost to the champs and a title favorite. TCU barely lost to Baylor.
They beat Auburn. That's somebody. To say they aren't is utterly silly. You criticize the SEC for being overrated and not beating anybody (when they obviously have), but Baylor gets beat by West Virginia, and that makes TCU look better for losing to them than Auburn for losing to the undefeated top team in the country? TCU's best win is against Oklahoma, who's actually proving to be overrated by losing multiple games. What about Ole Miss beating Alabama? Are we saying Alabama isn't good? Who has Florida State played outside of Notre Dame? Who has Notre Dame beaten? You're just saying the SEC is overrated, but not using similar logic for other programs. You can say the SEC is overrated and whatnot, but that is not sound logic that you're using...
MissSt has beaten Auburn, who has beaten one of the highest ranked Big12 schools (K-State) on the road. Where would you rank MissSt and who would you put above them? MissSt has a far better win than either TCU or ND - and barely losing is still losing, which MissSt hasn't done. Sagarin gives MissSt a stronger strength of schedule than either TCU or ND, a better win, and no losses - you can debate whether Sagarin is accurate or not, but its certainly not biased by the SEC or preseason rankings.
I know you guys love to pull up those Sagarin ratings (a great tool) and bring up Auburn as being good because of their success last year, season ranking and beating Kansas State, etc... But aside from that. Just watching the game. The eyeball test. Mississippi State is an outstanding football team, they have a coach who has had success in the SEC before, they have one of the best players in the NCAA but more importantly, they are physical, experienced and deep on both sides of the ball. If you've seen Mississippi State play you just know they're one of the top teams in the nation. Even if LSU and Auburn were women's soccer teams, MSST is good. Simple as that.
Disagree. They haven't beaten anyone to justify them rising from unranked to the spot that they currently occupy. Why should wins over LSU and A&M take a team from unranked to #3? I personally don't believe Auburn is a great team. Time will reveal that they aren't just like it did with SC, A&M and LSU. Baylor got beat by WV and dropped. I didn't justify my ranking by who teams beat. My "who teams beat" rant revolves around SEC teams getting huge ranking bumps from simply beating other SEC teams, even though those teams aren't that great. And notice TCU never had an immense bump in the rankings. See my point? My previous post noted that I got the Miss schools confused. Nobody, but these teams didn't come from unranked to the top of the polls either. Who has Miss St beaten to jump from unranked to the top of the polls? That only occured because the teams they beat had inflated rankings. Someone noted the preseason rankings don't matter. That's not true. Still a good point on the Sagarin rankings not taking them into account though.
Oh they most certainly did. Preseason: Unranked Wk 2: 33(8th RV) Wk 3: 32(7th RV) Wk 4: 32(7th RV) Wk 5: 29(4th RV) Wk 6: 25 [Beat Oklahoma] Wk 7: 9(↑ 16 spots!) Wk 8: 12 Wk 9: 10
You're basically just saying that all SEC teams are overrated, therefore any win over them is an overrated win. There might be some SEC teams that prove to be overrated, but as of now, there's plenty of them that are looking like great teams. If two great teams play, then one of them has to lose. You're discrediting Miss. State for beating "nobody" but you're not providing any examples of teams that beat "somebody" to overtake them with better resumes. It just doesn't add up. You might not believe teams like Auburn/Miss. State/etc. are that good, but their resumes are better at the moment than teams like TCU, Baylor, Notre Dame, etc. I'm not sure that's all that debatable right now.
