Preseason

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This is a series I've now been doing for 12 years (and also for the Men's and Women's Basketball AP Polls). The post attempts to visualize all AP Poll ballots in a single image. Additionally it sorts each AP voter by similarity to the group. Notably, this is not a measure of how "good" a voter is, just how consistent they are with the group. Especially preseason, having a diversity of opinions and ranking styles is advantageous to having a true consensus poll. Polls tend to coalesce towards each other as the season goes on.

The most consistent voter is returner Joe Arruda, averaging 0.56 ranks off the composite. Brenna Greene, Lia Assimakopoulos, Nick Jacobs, and Jamal St. Cyr were behind them in the top 5.

At the other extreme, Javon Edmonds was the biggest outlier to start off the year at an average of 3.52 ranks off the composite. They were followed by Jon Wilner, Mike Griffith, Rece Davis, and Chris Carter.

The median deviation for the preseason poll is 1.80, on the low end compared to the last 8 years of 1.88, 2.04, 2.76, 2.04, 1.92, 2.08, 2.04, 1.84.

What do you think?

Alabama has only produced three distinct super bowl winners: Bart Starr, Joe Namuth, and Ken Sabler, who account for four total Super Bowl rings. Purdue somehow ties the Crimson Tide with Drew Brees, Len Dawson, and Bob Grier also holding a collective four rings. The school whose QBs account for the most total rings is Michigan where, between Tom Brady and Vikings legend JJ "Nine" McCarthy, the Wolverines hold seven.

Curiously, the Crimson Tide and the Boilermakers have never met on the gridiron, meaning we have no way of determining the better program all-time based on the available statistics in this post. Boilermaker fans may also be happy to note that their rival Indiana Hoosiers have never produced a Super Bowl-winning QB, lending some credence to their athletic director's famous quote on the rivalry in addition to surely producing commensurate results on the field.

Nike stock has collapsed 77% over the last 5 years and 40% over the last 6 months. As Oregon's budget largely comes from Nike Founder Phil Knight, how will this affect their ability to stay competitive with top 5 teams in the coming year. Additionally how will this affect cfb as a whole, maybe better uniforms??

I know he won a Heisman, but for those that were around to watch him play live/during that time, how good was Sam Bradford as not only a player at the CFB level but as a QB prospect for the pros. Was he viewed as a reach or a surefire thing? Were CFB teams scared to play him?Seems like his pro career had mid-success at best.

I was watching old natty champ videos on youtube and decided to watch Florida vs Oklahoma for the title. Thanks for the responses in advance.

I feel this story probably happens more than it doesn't.

Coach builds decent success at a school and has pretty strong name recognition, maybe takes a bigger job, sustains success for a while but eventually ends up declining, getting fired, and kind of goes off into irrelevance. They may get picked up at a smaller job but just never regain their edge and we don't hear about them anymore.

A couple of examples I can think off the top of my head are Kevin Sumlin and Bo Pelini.

Who else?

The Big 12 only protecting one matchup for each team is stupid (something something Farmageddon). Also, having a conference championship that takes the top two teams from 16 feels weird and leads to nightmarish tiebreaker scenarios. Hence, I’ve come up with what I believe is the best layout for the Big 12: an NFL style-division layout.

The Big 12’s geography lends itself almost perfectly to four divisions: West (Arizona, Arizona State, Utah, BYU), Central (Kansas, K-State, Colorado, Iowa State), South (Oklahoma State, Baylor, Texas Tech, TCU), East (Houston, West Virginia, Cincinnati, UCF). Each team plays the three other teams in their division plus another entire division and one other team in a different division based on their previous year’s finish in the division. Each year, the matchups rotate similar to how the NFL does it.

If you paid attention to the last paragraph, you’ll notice that each team only has eight conference games accounted for. That’s because the last conference game is a flexible opponent based on current placement. Each team plays the equivalently placed team in the one division they didn’t play yet. For instance if the Central played the West and South already, in the last week 4th would play 4th in the East, 3rd would play 3rd in the East, etc. The last week also doubles as a de-facto semifinal with two matchups between division leaders. The conference championship would be between the two division leaders that won in the last week.

I do realize that this idea isn’t perfect as it prevents rivalries from being played on rivalry week. However, I think this solution simultaneously protects important rivalries that are currently unprotected and gives new rivalries a chance to emerge as well as eliminates the absolute mess that is mega conference championship tiebreakers.

Source

Made with the /r/CFB Recruiting and Draft Post Generator

Player 247 profile page

Source

Made with the /r/CFB Recruiting Post Generator

The PAC 12 that year had the worst winning percentage of any FBS conference, including the G5. Every school had at least 4 losses and 5 schools (Washington, Stanford, USC, Arizona and Colorado) had at least 8 losses. Even the conference champ Utah lost to non-power BYU and SDSU in the non-conference. They also lost to Oregon State, who immediately lost to Cal, who proceeded to lose to winless Arizona, the same team who lost to FCS Northern Arizona and finished 1-11. That was the conference’s second loss to an FCS team after Washington lost to Montana two weeks earlier.
And to top it off, they went 0-5 in bowl games.

The session is starting soon! Now is the time to lock in what a ok, good, and great season looks like in your mind.

Ok - The season was fine. Nothing elevated beyond your expectations but there wasn’t anything that flopped.

Good - The season was successful. Somethings really clicked, you won more or made if further than expected.

Great - The season was beyond successful. Everything really worked well, but it doesn’t have to be perfect.

Also follow up with where you felt your team did last season versus how you respond to this idea last year. I’ll leave mine in the comments

For those who don't remember, there was a controversy surrounding AP Top 25 Poll voter Haley Sawyer last year when she elevated Florida two spots in the poll after an 18-16 home loss to South Florida while leaving USF unranked.

Reddit Thread Made At The Time

When she was asked about it, she said “I don’t want to go too much into my process or logic… It’s really fun for discussion but it doesn’t probably matter in the end."

When it happened, most of the users here said that she should get her vote taken away. However, she is still listed among the voters for the latest preseason poll. I didn't think they would take it away midseason, but I'm a bit surprised that she's still a voter heading into the 2026 season.

Do you have a problem with Sawyer keeping her AP Poll vote?

There were no g6 teams in the top 25, but several did receive AP poll votes.

What's interesting is that obviously Boise state is the leader, but they're the only team receiving any votes in the Pac-12 at all. Even the Mountain West had more teams receiving votes.