I’ve complained for quite some time that preseason polls need to go. They’re stupid and inaccurate. And of course, they manifest a heavy East Coast bias. Funny enough, there’s proof. As Kyle the Driver points out to me, and Obscure Sports Quarterly was all over, Mark Schlabach of ESPN studied preseason and postseason college football rankings in order to find out who the most overrated and underrated teams were. No surprise, the most underrated teams were from the West Coast and Pac-10, while the most overrated were from the East Coast. Here’s a summary of his findings:
It’s just not even funny how much the Pac-10 outperformed their projections. For everyone who dogs the Pac-10, it’s only because you never watch it. Funny thing is, you’re sitting there on Sundays cheering for your favorite team which is full of West Coast players who all went to Pac-10 schools. Coincidence? I think not. Make sure you check out the rest of Schlabach’s article as well.
