I know preseason rankings dont mean anything but its always fun laughing at the misery of the wahoos
UVA comes in a whopping 87th and is notably the 4th lowest P5 team
the good guys come in ranked at 25th, 1 spot ahead of our week 1 opponents
https://athlonsports.com/college-football/ranking-all-130-college-footba...
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25 seems to be about the average for us so far. Can't complain there.
I do love Uva being down as far as they are though. Absolutely love it.
And may they never recover.
VT at #25 literally is the average.
Can't really argue with that.
Oh look, Notre Dame, Texas, and Miami are in the top 25. I don't even have anything clever to say... just... really?
Sidenote: Georgia and NCSU are also too high up IMO. NCSU more so than Georgia. They're just not that good and they have the atlantic division to fight through.
It'll take a solid 4-8 weeks for us to really know how good ND is.
I passed over this comment like 8 times before I put it all together. Very nice.
Sorry I couldn't leave you at 48 legs for this
Preseason rankings = last year record - players left + recruits/new coaches + experience.
ND/Texas both have 4/5 stars all over their rosters, and upgrading their coaches and/or coordinators. Miami was a 9 win team, that is building and growing. I think Texas has top 15 potential. ND and Miami belong in the top 20-25 range IMO.
ND hasn't been pulling that good of classes. Back in the day, they basically got the best kids from Catholic high schools across the country. Times have changed. You have to go back to the Lou Holtzths days since ND was elite year in and year out. Now they have a really good season every 3-4 years like a lot of developmental programs.
Texas fans will tell you that they have a lot of 4 star guys on their team, and a few 5 stars, but they have played like 1 stars. There has been a lot of misses with their recruiting, and it's not a given now that most of the top 20 guys in the state will go there. The SEC and other power schools have been dipping into the riches of Texas high schools.
I think Texas is getting love because of Tom Herman. People think he may be the next great young coach. I do know that Herman can really coach QBs, and he gets more out of them than most coaches can. Assuming he has someone decent to work with there this year, AND assuming they can start playing defense better than the French, they might be a team that's in the discussion late.
I wonder if there's a correlation between declining numbers of religious people in the US vs success of the religious football powers
Well Dabo just won a national title, so I'd say religious football powers are still winning *ducks*
But in all seriousness, Notre Dame (and to some extent, BYU) used to offer visibility that other programs could not. That is no longer the case.
leg for
Oregon too
UVA is ranked way too high!
It's strange that WVU is at #47 on average, yet ESPN and Athlon have them ranked in the 20s (like the good guys). So, these other rankings have them in the 50s or 60s? I'm not a closet WVU fan or anything, but I'm not sure what kind of sense that makes.
Oh look, Miami is the June Coastal Champs!
via GIPHY
Again....
VT's road to the ACC Championship game is through Miami.
Correction: everyone else's road to the ACC Championship is through Blacksburg
I like to think more that's where their journey ends.
Maybe they should try to win the division first before anyone starts claiming the road to anything except irrelevancy runs through them.
The road to our Coastal championship does seem to run through them, as neither of us seem to win it when they beat us.
Never saw it either
I'd rather have Miami and ND ranked well so we get a bigger boost when we beat them. However I am surprised NC State is ahead of us. I don't know much about them but didn't realize they had anything TBH
I agree about Miami, but we don't play ND until 2018.
Anyone else feel like we just keep seeing the same predictions every year?

They're the safest choices and generate the most site traffic from large fan bases
It's almost like deja vu all over gain, sort of....
side note the #25 has been pretty kind to us over the years
I'm fine with that.
All we need to do for a better ranking is win games, starting with West Virginia.
Sounds like you are using your inner Madden there.
National championship...

I'd like to see our defense's preseason rating. I think they will be elite this year.
I'm never predicting an elite defense again. It cursed us a few years ago.
From the Athelon ACC preview, and key storylines that shaped Athlon's ACC predictions for 2017:
At this point, you have to give VT the edge over Miami. We had a first year starter at QB last year and generated way more offense than Miami with a third year starter. And it's not like a road game at Miami is a daunting task considering the 30,000 fans they will have there. In Bud I trust, in Fuente I believe. To be the man, you've got to beat the man. 'Insert Ric Flair gif here'
not a gif, but...
We will beat Miam by 21 in their house this year. Bud will eat up an inexperienced Qb and Fuente will accentuate the strengths of our first year starter. I have never felt more confident about beating them.
If there's one thing I know about Miami, it's that every game is different.
I'm expecting them to be fast.
I know VT is as well, but I'd never sleep on Miami.
I do t dispute any of what you said. You are correct! Just my vibe :)