Coaches Poll 1. Alabama(58) 2. Ohio State(3) 3. Oregon 4. Stanford 5. Georgia 6. Texas A&M(1) 7. South Carolina 8. Clemson 9. Louisville 10. Florida 11. Notre Dame 12. Florida State 13. LSU 14. Oklahoma State 15. Texas 16. Oklahoma 17. Michigan 18. Nebraska 19. Boise State 20. TCU 21. UCLA 22. Northwestern 23. Wisconsin 24. USC 25. Oregon State Others Receiving Votes Kansas State (11-2) 113; Miami (Fla.) 101; Michigan State 89; Baylor 80; Virginia Tech 65; Fresno State 62; Arizona State 51; Mississippi 32; Vanderbilt (9-4) 29; Utah State (11-2) 23; Brigham Young 20; North Carolina 19; Northern Illinois (12-2) 19; Tulsa (11-3) 9; Ohio 8; San Jose State (11-2) 8; Arizona 5; Cincinnati (10-3) 3; East Carolina 3; Kent State 3; Mississippi State 3; Washington 3; Central Florida 2; Arkansas 1; Arkansas State 1; Rutgers 1; Tennessee 1; Toledo 1.
I don't agree with placing Georgia and South Carolina in the Top 10. Those two schools being in the Top 10 show a bias towards the SEC. I think Louisville and Oklahoma State should be higher than Georgia and South Carolina.
I think Louisville will end up ranked higher than Georgia or SC but I'd take both of those teams over Louisville head to head. I think most people would. If there was an SEC bias you'd see Florida/LSU/Vandy ranked higher.
Props to both programs for the courageous week 1 matchup. Wonder if Sammy Watkins will return to awesome form this year. Gotta give the edge to UGA because they should completely destroy Clemson's defense.
Overrated/Underrated Spoiler It’s no specific fault of the pollsters -- though it’s silly the coaches, often biased, uninformed or both, still have a meaningful poll -- but we all err when establishing preseason rankings. It’s the way it goes. But we want to have something about which to converse in August, so we continue on these prognosticating ventures. I’m good with that. I like the conversation, and it means we can pick at the initial projection. With the USA Today preseason coaches' poll now out, let’s examine which teams might be underrated and which might be overrated (including a pair of national title contenders) by the coaches. Overrated Ohio State Buckeyes Ranked: No. 2 I didn’t ask him when I saw him this week, but based on the conversation I had with him earlier in the offseason, coach Urban Meyer likely would agree with me on this. Of course, Meyer will want to downplay the potential of his team, and whether it really is the greatest threat to the SEC dynasty. But the fact is that most anyone I ask agrees that the Buckeyes’ 12-0 record last season was incredibly weak (relatively speaking) and might not be the best indication of what to expect in 2013. Games against Michigan State, Indiana, Purdue, Wisconsin and Michigan were decided by a combined 23 points (4.6 per win). Two of those wins, against Purdue and Wisconsin, came in overtime. The Buckeyes won by just three points against a four-win Indiana team. So they have yet to prove they’re some sort of juggernaut, a notion Meyer offered unsolicited in the spring. “We’re a flawed team,” he kept saying. And it hasn’t proven that it can win when it matters, now that the NCAA cloud has dissipated. Ask Lane Kiffin. It’s a different matter altogether. The schedule likely will keep the Buckeyes from being vastly overrated in the long run, but No. 2 -- and considering them the strongest national title contender outside Tuscaloosa -- might be asking too much of this team. Texas A&M Aggies Ranked: No. 6 I like coach Kevin Sumlin and his staff a great deal, and he already has done a wonderful job in College Station, but more and more college football people I talk to are anticipating some sort of implosion from quarterback Johnny Manziel. Whatever that looks like, it would obviously affect the team. Just imagine the Aggies without Manziel. Jameill Showers transferred to UTEP. Kyle Allen enrolls in 2014. The interim is dicey, at best. Duh, I know, but A&M needs Manziel. I’m not necessarily in the doomsday camp, but I do think the bar was set so high last season that a team-wide SEC sophomore slump would be natural. Then again, when I ran that past a peer, he said, “OK, but who are they going to lose to?” He’s right. Even if the Aggies drop big games to Alabama and LSU, it’s tough envisioning additional losses. Maybe Ole Miss? Maybe Auburn? Still, sixth in the country appears to be a little generous. A couple of coaches I recently spoke with were not high on the Aggies' defensive personnel a year ago, and that was with standouts Damontre Moore and Sean Porter, who are no longer on the team. “[Mark] Snyder is going to earn his paycheck,” one coach told me, referring to A&M's defensive coordinator. Boise State Broncos Ranked: No. 19 This ranking feels as if coaches are robotically expecting the Broncos to check in where they normally do, toward the tail end of the Top 25. My complaint isn’t with Boise so much as it is about the more qualified teams that were left out. You’ll see a couple of them -- Miami and Arizona State -- below among the underrateds, but there are others such as Baylor, Kansas State and Michigan State that I would have ranked ahead of the Broncos. That doesn’t include Nos. 20-25, most of which would be favored versus Boise on a neutral field. And if Boise State is 19th, that means some coaches had it ranked even higher. As far as the Broncos themselves, the talent level still does not seem close to where it was in the 2011 season; six players from that team were taken in the 2012 NFL draft. That’s particularly the case on defense, where about half of the starters will be new faces. Look, they’ll still win a bunch of games -- because that’s what coach Chris Petersen does -- but No. 19 feels a bit inflated. Even the season-opening marquee wins -- Virginia Tech in 2010, Georgia in 2011 -- seem to have declined in concert with the talent level (the Broncos lost in Week 1 last season to Michigan State). What would beating Washington, in what would be two games in a row (after winning last season's bowl matchup), really do for program visibility? That road trip to play the Huskies, along with ones against Fresno State and BYU, could cause Boise trouble. Underrated Texas Longhorns Ranked: No. 15 An Austin columnist tweeted Thursday that he had never seen Mack Brown as relaxed and energized as he is these days. But he quickly followed up by saying he doesn’t exactly know what that means for the season ahead. I responded to him by saying I never know what to make of talent-rich-but-let-you-down Texas. He said he could envision anything from a 7-5 season to an 11-2 year. Good. So it isn’t just me. But we’ll tenuously place the Longhorns in this underrated category for two reasons: that ridiculous talent level, better than most programs in the country, and the lack of a clear-cut favorite in the Big 12. The offense was the culprit two seasons ago, when it averaged 5.4 yards per play (70th in FBS). The injury-riddled defense was the issue a year ago, when it allowed 5.9 yards per play (84th in FBS). The offense returns primarily intact and the defensive injuries that derailed the ’12 season, chiefly to end Jackson Jeffcoat and linebacker Jordan Hicks, have healed. If both units can even approach their optimal results from the past two seasons, there’s no reason why the Horns shouldn’t be in the mix to earn double-digit wins (for the first time since playing for the national title in 2009, by the way). That would constitute a much higher finish in the polls than middle of the pack. Vegas believes the Horns are currently 2-1 to win the Big 12 and 25-1 bets to win the BCS title, according to Bovada. Miami Hurricanes Ranked: NR The self-imposed postseason ban is perhaps why the Hurricanes are flying under the coaches’ preseason radar, but the perception could quickly change -- as fast as Week 2, if they scored a home upset of Florida. Here’s why a rise in the polls could happen: Miami returns as many players as any team in the country. That includes an unheard-of 21 players back on the defensive two-deep. Granted, that’s a defense that was 97th in yards per play allowed, but Al Golden reminded me last week that about 15 freshmen played in 2012. So the experience level is up, and if those incumbents are not working out then talented newcomers will take their place. Offensively, Golden said sitting out the ACC title game was particularly painful because quarterback Stephen Morris was playing as well as any QB in America. He didn’t throw an interception in November, while he threw 11 TDs. “We think we gave up a chance to play in the Orange Bowl,” said Golden, who expects Miami could go most (if not all) of the season before getting its final NCAA verdict. “That was a pretty big sanction.” Vegas likes the Canes quite a bit. Bovada has them as a 33-1 shot to win the national championship. That’s the same number linked to ranked teams Oklahoma State (14th), Michigan (17th), USC (24th) and well ahead of 50-1 teams such as Notre Dame (11th), Oklahoma (16th), Nebraska (18th) and UCLA (21st). Miami deserved a spot in the poll. Arizona State Sun Devils Ranked: NR Not ranking ASU might have been a bigger mistake than not ranking Miami. The coaches must have missed the end of Todd Graham’s first year, in which the Sun Devils blistered Washington State, upset rival Arizona on the road and put up 62 points on Navy in the San Fran bowl. Marion Grice ran for 159 yards and two scores in that game, and Graham told me last week that Grice could become a legitimate off-the-radar Heisman candidate. Defensively, tackle Will Sutton came back for his fifth season and junior college transfer defensive end Marcus Hardison, along with opposite end Carl Bradford (11.5 sacks in 2012), make up quite possibly the top D-line in the Pac-12. That stout front should help a defense that was very good overall -- 19th in yards-per-play allowed, at 4.78 -- but not so sharp against the run (4.25 yards per rush, 65th). The difficulty of the schedule could keep the Sun Devils shuffling up and down the polls, but there are also big non-conference opportunities such as Wisconsin and Notre Dame. A lot of coaches I’ve talked to said they wouldn’t blink if ASU repped the South in the Pac-12 title game.
