What's the point of dissecting a hypothetical scenario, hypothetical means anything can happen. You could say that "IF we never traded for Steve Francis, we never would have gotten Yao, Rudy never would have been fired, and that we never would have gotten TMac, therefore, we wouldn't be championship contendors this season." Like you said below, "we'll never know." We returned almost all of our starters, have a veteran lineup, and yes, we still had VY. Once again, "we'll never know." Georgia: 10-2 VTech: 10-3 FSU: 9-3 If how you perform last year factors so heavily to your initial rankings, why was Auburn not even in the top 10? Why wasn't Oklahoma #3. While it does factor somewhat, they also look at the personnel, returning starters, etc... 1 loss last season doesn't determine what happens this season.
So that we can entertain ourselves on a message board. In summation; if UT had lost to Kansas their immediate future would be incredibly affected. If you don't believe it would have had an affect then that is like saying that UT beating Michigan in the Rose Bowl had no effect on their initial ranking this year. Anyway, I'm tired of arguing a hypothetical point that was initially brought up because of RM95's comment about "close wins" or something. How in the hell did I end up defending bigtexxx in an argument? If you would like to discuss my initial post about UT v. USC on strength of schedule, I'm all ears.
Some effect, sure. But Cal was ahead of Tech in the preseason coach's poll despite the results of the Holiday Bowl...
I think most will agree that UT deserves to be #1 at this point, I won't be suprised at all if we move back down to #2 by next Monday though and stay their come the end of the season. Our last worthy opponent is A&M. USC still has 3 more ranked teams to play, including No.8 UCLA
DonnyMost, I agree with what you are saying - I'm just not making myself clear enough. The computer polls/rankings (not the BCS or the human polls) do NOT or have already expunged the "preseason" data from their rankings. So it doesn't matter if UT lost all of its games last year they would still be #1 in the computer polls at this time based on this years results only. Anderson Hester computer poll - "Unlike the A.P. and coaches' polls, these rankings do not prejudge teams. These rankings first appear after the season's fifth week, and each team's ranking reflects its actual accomplishments on the field, not its perceived potential. " Billingsley - "Where a team begins the season is also a hotly debated topic, and understandably so. It is, after all, truly impossible to determine how incoming players, or coaching changes, will effect the returning nucleus of a team. I think it is important for teams to earn their position in a poll and not have 15 or 20 positions handed to them just because of what I personally, or anyone else, personally thinks. At the same time however, teams who have vastly improved from one season to the next deserve the opportunity to have those improvements reflected in their ranking quickly. As I have said many, many, times, I am adamantly OPPOSED to PRESEASON POLLS. They do an incredible injustice to College Football. I could state COUNTLESS examples over the last 50 years of such injustices, but let’s look at the most recent glaring example of Texas in 2001? How in this world did Texas deserve a Top 5 Pre Season ranking after having come off a 9-5 #29 campaign? Moving 26 places without ever playing a down of football? Based on what, a new hot quarterback? Give me a break. The sportswriters may as well hold a lottery in George W's 10 Gallon Hat. It would be just as accurate. Enough of that... don't get me started." Colley - "First and foremost, the rankings are based only on results from the field , with absolutely no influence from opinion, past performance, tradition or any other bias factor. This is why there is no pre-season poll here. All teams are assumed equal at the beginning of the year. If you include some kind of human input, what's the point of a computer poll in the first place? Garbage in, garbage out." Massey - "Preseason ratings are typically derived as a weighted average of previous years' final ratings. As the current season progresses, their effect gets damped out completely." Saragin - "For the first few weeks of the season, the starting ratings have weight in the process(BAYESIAN), but once the teams are all CONNECTED, then the starting ratings are no longer used and all teams are started equal and the ELO-CHESS is then done in an UNBIASED manner from that point on." Wolfe - I can't find anything on preseason or starting point but since the results don't start until week 7 (the first BCS poll release) it is safe to assume it only uses the current years results. These are the 6 computer polls used in the BCS. As you can see if Texas was 0-10 last year or 10-0 it would not have any impact on their current ranking.
You better hope texas loses, if they win, your degree from Rice will vanish and you turn back into just another dude from Waco instead of the F-1fitty driving bon vivant casanova that we all know and love.
Sam, I think you meant to say my degrees from Rice. I have a BS and a BA. Thanks for the correction in advance
