Phil Steele and his preseason Top 25

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I'd be curious to see all the predictions once again at the end of the year and see how accurate/far off these guys are.
 


I can't believe that guy has been around as long as he has - you will lose a lot of money if you go by his prognostications.
 



I was curious, and am doing whatever I can to avoid work, so I had to compare Steele’s 2019 preseason picks with the AP final rankings. Pretty self-explanatory. I cut him some slack if he was within 10 spots, and therefore didn't give him a mark or note. I may have an error or two in here, but you get the idea.
Bottom line...I think Phil Steele is a better marketer than he is a soothsayer.
 

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He is a "dink of steele". Miami? But, Texas is back-again-until they're not-again. UCF and Memphis ahead of the Gophs? C'mon Man. The main reason he cannot be believed is because he does not have Nebraska top 25. That alone tells you he knows nothing about college football. Nebraska is always top something......
 

BTChamp said:
He is a "dink of steele". Miami? But, Texas is back-again-until they're not-again. UCF and Memphis ahead of the Gophs? C'mon Man. The main reason he cannot be believed is because he does not have Nebraska top 25. That alone tells you he knows nothing about college football. Nebraska is always top something......
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What a joke...a USC that was unranked at the end of 2019 season almost cracking the top 10?
 

FredCoxRocks said:
I was curious, and am doing whatever I can to avoid work, so I had to compare Steele’s 2019 preseason picks with the AP final rankings. Pretty self-explanatory. I cut him some slack if he was within 10 spots, and therefore didn't give him a mark or note. I may have an error or two in here, but you get the idea.
Bottom line...I think Phil Steele is a better marketer than he is a soothsayer.
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15 out of 25 doesn't seem that terrible. Although you typically have pretty sure locks like OSU, Bama, OU, etc. I wonder how he compares to others over the years.
 




btowngopher said:
15 out of 25 doesn't seem that terrible. Although you typically have pretty sure locks like OSU, Bama, OU, etc. I wonder how he compares to others over the years.
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And outside the top 10 (the locks), he only had 2 or 3 within 10 spots...
 

Texas and Texas and A&M are both definitely top 15
 

He must have the Big 10 West beating up on each other with WI at #14 an no one else cracking the top 25. Quite frankly as a MN Gopher fan I like the expectations being a little lower.

Without any non-conference games will top 25 rankings even mean anything? I think every conference should just play themselves and have no conference championship games. Then have a 16 team tournament to end the year with each Power 5 conference getting 2 automatic bids (Big West, Big East. SEC East, SEC West, Top 2 Big 12, Top 2 ACC), 1 Group of 5 (if they have a season) and 5 selection committee bids. bowl games would be optional with everything going on with Covid-19. Can you imagine a season where the division winner would get an automatic bid into the national playoffs?
 



gophernut1 said:
He must have the Big 10 West beating up on each other with WI at #14 an no one else cracking the top 25. Quite frankly as a MN Gopher fan I like the expectations being a little lower.

Without any non-conference games will top 25 rankings even mean anything? I think every conference should just play themselves and have no conference championship games. Then have a 16 team tournament to end the year with each Power 5 conference getting 2 automatic bids (Big West, Big East. SEC East, SEC West, Top 2 Big 12, Top 2 ACC), 1 Group of 5 (if they have a season) and 5 selection committee bids. bowl games would be optional with everything going on with Covid-19. Can you imagine a season where the division winner would get an automatic bid into the national playoffs?
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If they can’t expand the playoff in a regular season they aren’t going to do it in a season where more games means more likely change of a mid playoff Covid related abandonment
 

It's pretty tough to predict the top 25. I looked at 3 or 4 other publications from last year and they all had at least 7 wrong.
 

btowngopher said:
Like the gophers just did?
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USC is a game over .500 in the last two seasons and got steamrolled in the Holiday Bowl by Iowa in what was predicted to be a toss-up. Iowa averaged 24 points a game during the season and put up 49 on USC. How does that compute to almost a top 10 preseason ranking?
 

PMWinSTP said:
USC is a game over .500 in the last two seasons and got steamrolled in the Holiday Bowl by Iowa in what was predicted to be a toss-up. Iowa averaged 24 points a game during the season and put up 49 on USC. How does that compute to almost a top 10 preseason ranking?
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Gophers were a game under .500 the two years before last year. Kedon Slovis and the offense should be very good, as it was good last year even with Slovis as a true freshman having to from back up to starter. They also play in the PAC 10, so there is that. Other than at Oregon they shouldn't be an obvious underdog vs anyone on the schedule.
 

btowngopher said:
Gophers were a game under .500 the two years before last year. Kedon Slovis and the offense should be very good, as it was good last year even with Slovis as a true freshman having to from back up to starter. They also play in the PAC 10, so there is that. Other than at Oregon they shouldn't be an obvious underdog vs anyone on the schedule.
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Were the Gophs ranked preseason last year? USC scoring offense ranked #35, 14 spots below Gophs. Ranked #78 in scoring and total defense, #119 in T/O margin, and #93 in TOP, all well below Gophs. They are not new to the PAC-12 and I would think it would work more against them overall.

So maybe he ranked them based on quality losses? :rolleyes:
 

I enjoy Time Hop on my phone and I have it show me my social media activity from past years. So, I am seeing a lot of comments from a year ago at this time when a lot of these preseason picks, and conference predicted order of finish lists were being published. They are so often wildly wrong, but we all keep reading them because they deal with our favorite subject. They aren't worth the cyberspace they are printed on.
 

PMWinSTP said:
Were the Gophs ranked preseason last year? USC scoring offense ranked #35, 14 spots below Gophs. Ranked #78 in scoring and total defense, #119 in T/O margin, and #93 in TOP, all well below Gophs. They are not new to the PAC-12 and I would think it would work more against them overall.

So maybe he ranked them based on quality losses? :rolleyes:
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I understand they are not new to the PAC-12, not my point. My point is the PAC-12 is not very good, they only lost 2 PAC-12 games last year. No the gophers weren't ranked preseason, not sure what that has to do with anything, if someone predicted them to finish top 10 they would've been correct. So not sure why predicting USC #10 is all that crazy. I would imagine that T/O margin correcting quite a bit. By the way, I also wouldn't think it crazy to predict the Gophers #10. But with schedule changes and everything going on who knows what will happen. What schedules is he even predicting off of, is USC dropping ND and Bama from their schedule?
 

Not many other topics where you can be completely, absurdly wrong, year after year, and yet you can throw out pretty much anything each new year and people will crawl on their hands and knees to give it a click/view.

College football preseason rankings. That’s the good life.
 

btowngopher said:
I understand they are not new to the PAC-12, not my point. My point is the PAC-12 is not very good, they only lost 2 PAC-12 games last year. No the gophers weren't ranked preseason, not sure what that has to do with anything, if someone predicted them to finish top 10 they would've been correct. So not sure why predicting USC #10 is all that crazy. I would imagine that T/O margin correcting quite a bit. By the way, I also wouldn't think it crazy to predict the Gophers #10. But with schedule changes and everything going on who knows what will happen. What schedules is he even predicting off of, is USC dropping ND and Bama from their schedule?
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You are the one that started using the Gopher analogy...in posts #10 & #17. A weak Pac-12 is the point, it is weak so how it helps a .500 team somehow get that high of preseason rank?

I agree, the Gophs at #11 is much, much more plausible than USC there. The fact that Gophs are not ranked at all and USC is #11 makes it a joke.
 


Chucklehead said:
QB from Houston transferred there. He is supposed to be unreal. Good QB can make all the difference.
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No spring practices, limited season, and no soft out of conference schedule means no time to learn a new system. I'm looking on the other side of the ball for the Hurricanes. I think they will have a great defense, and a bad offense.
 

MplsGopher said:
Not many other topics where you can be completely, absurdly wrong, year after year, and yet you can throw out pretty much anything each new year and people will crawl on their hands and knees to give it a click/view.

College football preseason rankings. That’s the good life.
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Kind of like the weather forecast. Sometimes they're accidentally right.
 

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