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.
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This entry was posted on Monday, August 20th, 2007 and is filed under College Football. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
I think the numbers that a team or conference are underrated have some merit, but the same for the most part does not apply for being overrated. I’m a Buckeye so I’ll address my team. +33 over 10 years basically means that you finish 3 spots worse than ranked in the preseason polls. Not exactly awful. Many teams who are unranked every year could have 2 excellent years in a decade and end up +40 while a constant top 10 team could have 2 bad years out of 10 and be -40. I’d rather be the team with 2 off years out of 10 than the other way around so call us overrated all you like.
That maybe true, but UCLA and USC have been gushed over by east coast writers for sometime in football and basketball, respectively.
Combine that with the fact that most writers are jealous that they can’t get a Cali chick, and there you have it.
What the Pac-10 needs is another team in addition to USC to get a BCS bid and win, preferably against an SEC team.
A Cal win over Tennessee opening weekend would help, too, a loss and Les Miles is right.
Keep on mind USC has lost 4 times in the last four years, once to Superman and the other three to Pac-10 teams.
[...] Pac-10, getting no love in some quarters from those writers taking the Les Miles approach. [Larry Brown Sports] [...]
I definitely believe it’s best to have your team overrated than under, because at least you’re getting respect. But those Wassou and Oregon St numbers are really glaring.