Saturday, August 22, 2009

AP Top 25 Comes Out: Florida No. 1 (58/60)

Florida is the AP's preseason No. 1 team -- by a wide margin, earning 58 of 60 1st-place votes. No. 2 Texas earned the other two top votes. No argument here if you pick Texas.

(Don't forget to weigh in on my BlogPoll ballot before I file it later today. I want your input!)

Still, I would like to know which two AP voters picked Texas -- actually, I'd like the AP to make all of their voters' ballots not just transparent, but easy to find in a database. That way, fans can judge biases and credibility of each individual voter.

Couple of other notable things from the poll:

*Oklahoma was No. 3, setting up a winner-take-all between Texas and Oklahoma -- as usual.

*Virginia Tech at No. 7, eh? Did AP voters look at summer preview magazines only and not notice that VT lost their starting RB?

*At No. 14, Boise State gets the highest preseason AP ranking for any non-BCS team in the BCS Era. What makes it amusing is that when Boise goes unbeaten, they'll finish higher than that.

*Aside from Boise, the late-teens continue to be the non-BCS ghetto -- TCU, Utah, BYU. Just like the coaches' poll (please stop arguing that the AP somehow is quantum leaps more insightful than the Coaches -- all poll groups are limited. I wonder what would happen if you told AP voters they couldn't use any preseason polls to create their ballots (Coaches Poll, preseason magazines, etc) -- they had to build it by themselves from scratch and original analysis. I wonder how many do that. Hell, I wonder how many BlogPollers do that. But, still, as you'd expect, I like the transparency and "biased integrity" of the BlogPoll over either the AP or the Coaches polls.)

*Notre Dame at No. 23 -- Ha! You know, I took some grief yesterday for not ranking ND on my BlogPoll ballot; the difference between the AP's No. 23 and my "non-ranked" is negligible.

*Either I or the AP is seriously wrong about Kansas.

*At No. 28, Pitt is the highest-ranked Big East team. I'll still take Cincy as the best in the league, and worthy of a peripheral Top 25 spot.

*I have Western Michigan in my Top 25 -- this year's MAC-could-go-unbeaten team (a la Ball State). They don't even have an "Also Receiving Vote" in the AP poll; Central Michigan has 7, which I presume you can attribute to the media loving Tim Tebow; CMU's Dan LeFevour is widely regarded as sort of a Tim Tebow Lite.

Finalizing my BlogPoll ballot this afternoon. Let me know if you have any other feedback!

-- D.S.

3 comments:

Dad Solo said...

Oh my God!!!!!

Those guys who voted for Texas should be identified, hunted down, dragged out of their homes or hiding places, beaten, and forced to listen to TEBOW's witness!

This is worse than when someone actually voted for someone besides TEBOW for all-SEC QB.

Unknown said...

The reason why WMU isn't even touched is due to the fact they lost practically their entire defense. They should have a very strong and very solid offensive team, but defensively they are going to have a lot of learning pains.

Simply put, they aren't a top 25 team, and really don't have any chance of going undefeated, and odds are they will lose to Michigan in week 1 (Currently 12 point underdogs)

jordan delange said...

The Texas voters are Joe Giglio and Kevin Gorman. An easily searchable database is available here