https://collegefootball.ap.org/salisburypost/poll/2019/1
Virginia Tech is 11th in the 'Others Receiving Votes' category (4 spots behind UVA).
Top 5: Clemson, Alabama, Georgia, Oklahoma, Ohio State
Clemson and Syracuse are the only ACC teams in the Top 25.
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Comments
Fairly uncontroversial top 25 outside of Nebraska being in there.
Nebraska could be sneaky good, they were playing real well at the end of the season losing many to top teams by one score. I don't think their 2018 W-L is indicative of their talent and new coaching.
I'm totally with you on that take. I just think it's at least somewhat controversial to include a 4-8 team in the preseason top 25.
The only people who should take offense are those who weren't paying attention to them. I see no problem with it.
Honestly the only team in the top 25 that I don't think deserves it is Syracuse. It's not that I don't understand why they're ranked, but rather that I think the hype around them is hilariously misplaced. Their 2018 schedule wasn't much better than our 2019 schedule (almost identical if you swapped one of our FCS games with Clemson or something), and they went 9-3. Most of the hype comes from playing Clemson close early in the year, and then finishing 10-3 after a win over a Grier-less WVU in their bowl game, and bowl games tend to be a bit overhyped as well as far as indicators of future success go. There are so many more variables for a bowl game than there are for regular-season games, between coaching staff changes and players sitting out of their final bowl game to prepare for the draft.
Yeah, but that was the flukiest 4-8 ever. I remember Bill Connelly talking a lot about Nebraska's second-order wins, a metric he generates where he feeds all the stats but the final score into his computer and it spits out a prediction of who should've won. Nebraska "should have" won most of the games they lost last year, especially the early games. There were multiple losses where they were 90% favorites, not by pre-game predictions, but based on the stats accumulated during the game (excluding points scored, of course) They were a much better team last year than their record indicated.
Once again, I totally agree, which is why I care more about S&P than any other ranking or analytics system. I'm just saying people will likely find this controversial.
I can't think of a more meaningless way to generate a ranking/stat than "should have won".
The Big Ten was not that great last year and Nebraska was still horrible. If they were a much better team, they wouldn't have gone 4-8. They lost to every good team they played and laid a few eggs along the way. Given how they played to start the year I would Akron beats them if that game hadn't been canceled
This. Not arguing that Nebraska is going to be suck this year, but a "should have won" stat would often put the Hokies on the wrong side of the equation because of defense and special teams carrying a putrid offense many years.
I get that he's using this "metric" to determine the actual strength of a team by eliminating funny bounces or those fluky games, however 4-8 demonstrates more than just a fluke loss or two and is likely indicative of poor execution or just being outplayed by better teams more often than not.
Now, maybe they have the potential to be here at the end of the season. I don't think anyone is saying they suck. I just don't think a lot of people are sold on them being here to start the season.
"Should have won" is how predictive modeling works. Which would be forward facing the 2019 season. Yes, it can be wrong on any individual thing. But no, you aren't smarter than it on a macro level.
Neither are you. Predictive modeling is worthless when it comes to college football. It doesn't work in the NFL when there is even less player turnover.
I agree I'm not smarter than the analytics. If I was, I would be cleaning up in Vegas.
Sounds like you could go make some easy money though.
Eh, that's a dubious claim at best. The median NFL career is 3 seasons, and considering the free agency and trade systems I'd expect turnover on any given team to roughly equal or exceed that of a typical college team.
Edit: I found a chart:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Xf6821UK6pa9ydnUPPn0mzojPg-aXNMT...
This chart was made in 2014, but if you assume that rosters turn over about as much each year, that means less than half of new signees stay with a team longer than a season, and only about a quarter stay longer than 2 seasons.
Assuming that a college team brings in 25 recruits each season, if they had similar rates of attrition, they would average only about 51 players that they originally recruited, ie not including inward transfers. I don't have the data on that, but I would have to assume that most teams are pretty close to the 85-scholarship limit, and that most teams have significantly fewer than 34 transfers from other schools at any given time.
Imma hafta disagree. What second-order wins does, essentially, is attempt to quantify luck. Let's face it. Luck plays a significant role in the sport of football, especially in close games. The better team does not always win the game. Sometimes you outperform your opponent in most of the things that lead to victories, and lose because of a wierd bounce here or a shitty call there. Second-order wins take the totality of the box score, compare it to historical data, and say that X% of the time, Team A with these stats beats Team B with those stats. That tells you a lot about the overall quality of the team. It tells you that in 2018, the Huskers performed a whole lot better than their record would indicate, and that barring some mitigating factor, like talent attrition, we should expect their win-loss record to look much better this year.
Everyone is 0-0 right now
They're the only other team I follow closely. Nebraska is set up to cause some commotion in the B1G this year. It's pretty bold to put them in the preseason top 25 since they haven't proven anything yet but they will certainly finish in the top 25.
Relevant:
Wait so da U is not bak?
It's pathetic. They hired a Temple coach that didn't win a single game during his time at Temple. Miami has fallen!!!
Didn't manage to score not a single point!! What a loser!
Not only that, but they also failed to make even a single stop on defense.
counterpoint: His Temple teams didn't allow a single point.
The dude went undefeated for goodness sake. Some people are just never satisfied.
How good is Syracuse's new quarterback going to be? I feel like that offense goes as their QB goes, and Dungey was a really good quarterback. I see them taking a step back this season.
Gotta have em ranked for the September Clemson game.
Their backup has played some games because Dungey's style of play got him dinged up regularly, but I agree it's a bit wait and see on Cuse without Dungey.
Yeah, that's another thing about their offense is that I think it's also reliant on using the quarterback as a battering ram too much. Fuente only really did that with Jerod Evans, a) because Jerod was our only consistent running threat in 2016 and b) Jerod could handle that.
He could handle it, but he sure didn't like it.
Why would David Briggs of the Toledo Blade or Jon Wilner of the San Jose Mercury News care about the ratings for the Clemson-Syracuse game?
I don't actually think the AP is collectively in on some conspiracy to make sure Clemson has another ranked game on their schedule....
I'm confused as to why you went to the length of linking random journalists ballot profiles for something that I (incorrectly, it seems) thought everyone realized was just a lighthearted joke.
Honestly, because I think many people truly believe there is some media conspiracy that invalidates the AP/media in general. It's a fairly common belief so the joke flew right over my head, didn't mean to come off so combative.
No worries man, it's difficult to tell that kind of thing through text. I figured most people would know it's a joke because over time on this board I have always championed more advanced analytics/ranking systems like S&P over the AP. I've also expressed how the AP has grown increasingly irrelevant in the sport, it's damn near completely zero-impact now with the independent CFP rankings coming in later in the season. So I never get up in arms about the preseason polls, though I do enjoy discussing them a little. I think the early season AP polls serve an important purpose to journalists/tv coverage, and getting people excited about early season matchups, no matter how misleading they may end up being. That said, I don't think preseason polls are as inaccurate as some who are more vitriolic towards them do. Bill C even incorporated them into S&P recently.
From ESPN's article on the list:
Honestly, I'm not advocating it, but a good bench clearing brawl would elevate my interest tremendously in these two rematching every year. A little coach on coach sarcastic vitriol couldn't hurt either.
I am advocating it, for the same reasons.
7 Big Ten Teams in the Top 25?! Geesh...
Totals by conference are:
Big 10: 7
SEC: 6
Pac 12: 5
Big 12: 3
ACC: 2
Independent: 1
AAC: 1
Alt view - the Big 10 is going to beat itself up, will see two multi-loss teams in the championship game, and should feel lucky to squeeze the winner in at the #4 seed in the playoffs. Counterpoint - an undefeated Big10 team will likely be the #1 seed in the CFP.
Whichever option it is, it'll be a first round exit for the B10.
Three voters ranked us, two from California and one from Colorado
Let it be known: Jon Wilner recognize game.
Wilner is a bit of a Maverick voter. Hope he's maverick'd his way to the truth this time.
I can get on board with this guy - he left Penn State out of the Top 25 and voted us in.
He's a winner.
Bryce Miller and Bryan Howell aren't too bad either
Which is kind of interesting...
So Norm Wood isn't showing the Wahoos any love in this one.
In all truth - we deserve to be ranked more in 2019 than we did being ranked 20th in 2018.
The young (and now experienced) talent that we have returning is dangerous.
I remember a younger VT team being slept on in 2004 as well - that year sparked a hell of a run.
Gotta love that #17 nod to LolUVA.
Oh no!
We're a basketball school again!!
😑
Thank God we weren't saying this during the Johnson years.
That sort of thing was acceptable before #metoo.
Lyndon won almost as many basketball games as James.
Should also be noted that this is the first time since 2001 that USC is unranked in the AP Top 25 preseason poll.
You mean USCw?
The recruiting powerhouse that has numerous 4* and 5* recruits on the current team that finished 5-7 last year?
Huge number of wealthy alumni and donors who help them recruit really well year to year?
National recruiting rank of 60th for 2020 on 247, ranked 20th in 2019, 4th in 2018 and 2017, 10th in 2016 and 2nd in 2015?
Just finishing a $315million renovation on their football stadium?
Just saying, even blue bloods have their down years and their recruiting troubles, even with all the money, facilities, weather, location, etc, etc.
Unless you live in the state of South Carolina, "USC" refers to USCw. If you mean USCe, you say "USCe".
It's proper to disparage them by the USCw moniker.
Or we could disparage them as:
"the" USC and subsequenlty result in the moniker - "anUSC"
I never said you can't or shouldn't, just that a plain "USC" found in the wild means one thing if you're in South Carolina and another elsewhere.
I agree with you, as I wasn't correcting his proper usage of "USC", and I understood exactly who he meant and figured everyone else understood it also.
"USCw" was solely used as a device to jab "USC" as a lead-in to a comparison of a blueblood program with vast resources that finds itself in a worse situation than Tech, with a coach on the hot seat, losing season in 2018, a currently low recruiting rank for the 2020 class after nearly 20-50 years of solid recruiting, etc, etc.
Gooooooooooood! We've got everybody right where we want them; especially those smug ass hoos!