For those of you who could use a Monday morning laugh.
Or argument, whichever.
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For those of you who could use a Monday morning laugh.
Or argument, whichever.
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ESPNs 2014 preseason Football Power Index is so ridiculous its not even worth discussing. How can such a successful network be so lame and bias when it comes to recruiting and ranking?
The exact same way that every news source has been successful in the past few years. They learned that biased reporting and spinning stories to create massive controversy while letting everyone comment their two cents gets more page views, watches, clicks, etc than actually reporting. You write for the lowest common denominator nowadays.
Last spring what do you think would have gotten more responses:
"Alabama is the bestest and most complete football team ever and is going to three-peat!" (Which was everywhere)
or
"Alabama has a few tough tests this year and Florida State has a relatively easy route to the MNCG"
Answer, the one that incites the rage of 80% of the country tired of hearing SEC and Nick Saban rhetoric every day. Therefore clicks to post "$ECSPN" or "Nick Saban is overrated" and makes ESPN $0.00007.
Because ESPN is so completely narcissistic that they're now in the process of trying to redefine how we rate everything based on statistical formulas they themselves derived.
Look at their insistance on using QBR instead of the generally accepted Quarterback rating. Every year they keep spouting off how great a guy's QBR is without going over the rating, and all we see is some number thats supposed to tell us how good he is. And now we have this. This is their attempt at Sabremetrics.
They have completely become everything we hate about sports. Ratings that mean nothing. Formulas that are too convoluted for their own good. And worst of all, they don't even realize how nauseating they've become. They've put themselves on the pedestal and now demand us all to worship them.
Is it just me or does the trajectory of ESPN resemble that of MTV. MTV doesn't even really show music anymore (hasn't for 20 years or so)......will ESPN get so bad that there is barely any real Sports on it anymore?
Considering their most watched time slots, and most profitable, are filled with sports games, I doubt it. Hell they're probably the reason why there are prime time games on Friday and Thursday along with the occasional Monday and Tuesday game. There's no way they're going to replace the boatload a money they make off actual games for a car full they would make from reality and more talk shows unless to fill dead air.
No, but I could very easily see them make ESPN their content-driven network, and have another network, ESPN Sports, or something like that, where they air live sporting events, except for the major ratings-driving spots (Thursday Night Football, Monday Night Football, NBA Playoffs, Duke-UNC basketball, Sunday Night Baseball in the summer, etc) which will remain on their main channel. They're practically halfway there as it is.
stopped reading when I got to USC at 13.. Funny that UNC and Miami are ahead of us when we all know at the end of the year we will have beaten both those teams. Every year its the same lingo.. VT with little respect at least on paper.
Do we really deserve all that much respect from the national media recently? The program barely managed to stay above 0.500 the past two seasons, lost it's entire offense to graduation and there's no clear replacement, and the defense has to reload a few positions. Ranking in the 30s sounds right for us. ESPN used to love us until we fell flat on our face one too many times. Throw in how regionally our team is regarded and we don't get the pity spots that Michigan and USC get every year.
I'd rather be ranked outside the top 25 and crash the party than get in the Top 10 in the preseason when we're really a top 30 team and get embarrassed.
If you're saying Logan was our entire offense, then this statement is correct. But in regards to number of players and experience returning on the field, this is incredibly incorrect. We lost Logan, Coles, and Andrew Miller. While QB is a major role to replace, losing our entire offense would be closer to after the 2011 season when we lost Wilson, Coale, Boykin, and others.
Yeah, I was mostly talking about Logan and the reportedly 4-5 way QB battle going on. While he was not literally the entire offense there was a post showing just how ridiculously much he was featured and the amount of offensive production he produced compared to other QBs.
Fair enough. Definitely a huge loss in offensive production, but the talent on offense around the QB is still there. We just need to find the right one to plug in behind center. We certainly haven't earned any credit right now. A lackluster Spring Game, an offense that returns 2 starting RBs but is more excited about a freshman, added to the middle of the road seasons will only keep us in the conversation as candidates to win our division in conference, but not to compete for the championship on either the conference or national level.
I also need to call "SLY" on Beamer and Co.
The offenses were effectively programmed and stated the Defense wouldn't be stunting, which they did, some.
The players split relatively evenly through White and Maroon but, the odds were stacked against the Offenses. don't forget the Offenses were playing against Bud Foster defenses.
Other schools may have racked up 75 pts in 45 minutes and we racked up a total of 10 but, there were a lot of good things I saw in those 10. don't forget the guys we had NOT playing that day.
I'm calling "Sly" on those guys because I think they believe we have more than we're letting for offense this year and if we can get a good play caller there may be enough playmakers there to make an offense this year. They're being coy about this to try and surprise Ohio State.
I agree 100% but to have Miami and UNC above us is comical.. What has Miami done recently other than underachieve and UNC can't even color inside the lines with their coloring books. I really don't pay much attention to rankings in May but they do provide some laughs.
UNC and Miami generally have better recruiting classes than us, therefore more potential even if they can't spell or are distracted by strippers. Miami also has a larger national fan base and by listing them you get a lot of people inciting a flame war about their consistent underachieving. Believe it or not recruiting class rank has a lot to do with these preseason rankings and it makes sense.
Better according to who, ESPN?
Depending on the recruiting agency you are looking at, our recruiting classes the last couple years have been some of the best that we've ever had. ESPN doesn't necessarily think so. That's their problem, and they'll only look like fools (again) when we start winning games late in the year, getting ready for our run in 2015 and beyond.
ESPN, Rivals, 247, etc. We've had better classes than usual, but UNC and Miami have consistently had better. UNC had a one or two a little worse than us for the past 5 years but more that were much higher than ours. Miami basically blows us out of the water most years.
These people don't have time to devout the time Joe, French, and the gang have to evaluating VT to every single team in the country or even the Power 5. Recruiting rankings gives a good indicator about the potential of a team and doesn't eat up much precious time to analyze.
And yet we routinely clean their clocks on the field.
Recruiting rankings have always been a joke. Its all about which schools like a kid, and for whatever reason, VT has never been listed as one of THE schools who move the star ratings of a kid, despite years of kicking ass and taking names on the field while pumping kids into the NFL.
Miami and UVA have something in common: they waste recruits talent every year.
Just because I had to check, we will look at the last 5 years of rankings below based upon the 247 Composite system which averages all major recruiting sources together
2014: VT 27 Miami 12 UNC 29
2013: VT 21 Miami 14 UNC 28
2012: VT 21 Miami 10 UNC 43
2011: VT 36 Miami 33 UNC 19
2010: VT 33 Miami 15 UNC 26
Now from 247 exclusively, these are the rankings
2014: VT 20 Miami 12 UNC 29
2013: VT 17 Miami 14 UNC 28
2012: VT 22 Miami 9 UNC 40
2011: VT 33 Miami 34 UNC 21
2010: NO DATA
So taking that into consideration, the 247 Composite shows that Miami is on average 10.8 spots higher than us and UNC is 1.4 spots lower than us over the last 5 years. That shifts drastically if you look at the last 3 years where Miami is 11 spots higher and UNC is 10.3 spots lower. For 247s rankings, Miami is only 5.75 spots higher than us and UNC is 6.5 spots lower. So realistically, we are above UNC consistently and Miami is ahead of us. We've only had 2 class worse than UNC over the last 5 years, not the other way around.
Hmmm... I thought they were a little better than that. Maybe I was confusing recently with before the scandal recently. But they're on average 2 worse than us. It does make it seem like them being as far ahead of us as they are a little odd, but I don't quite remember how much production they're bringing back this year. They might just have "more" coming back on both sides of the ball. Whether that's how it will work out, who knows paper is really all we have to go on right now.
We're underrated? Cool, we do better when we are underrated.
wow Virginia was ranked in the 60s bahahahaha
I can't believe they are that high...
that's what im saying!!!! clearly ESPN screwed up somewhere
UVA #61?
LOLOLOLOLOLOL
Wonder what they will say when we #BeatBuckeyes
#anOSU
I was so surprised to see UVA above 100.
I have not read the methodology but, this is a Power Ranking and not just a positional ranking.
They are in effect saying that we are in the top 35 in improving teams. Not the top 35 teams and we should beat everyone higher than us, etc.
They must look at who left and the quality on the incoming recruits and lay that criteria against the same for other teams.
It gets them from having to justify ranking by total quality at this stage of the games, just relative improvement potential.
I stopped reading it when I saw Florida in the top 25, yeah I'm sure their offense was better than ours especially during that game against Georgia Southern.
Anyone else shocked to see how far down they dropped Michigan State? Is there something I missed? Did they lose a ton of players to graduating/the draft??
ESPN just screwed itself up. You didnt miss anything.