Pre-season expectations and rankings are almost always a crock of BS, for at least 7-10 of the teams cited in the polls. Lazy media people rank teams they know about, not good teams. How are Michigan and North Carolina doing now?
Regarding Minnesota, I was on the very optimistic side based upon Cobb, the Oline and Defense, projecting a 9-3 season, but I did not know how good TCU was and never expected a loss to wretched Illinois.
Despite all this, it is suddenly a glorious time to be a Gopher Football fan. Before the season, I was skeptical of Iowa and Wisconsin (lost talent) but expected Michigan and Nebraska to be very good. As always I was wrong, and a lot of pompous experts were way off.
I will take a second look at the pre-season rankings and see how the original top 25 ended up. I hate early season rankings think there should be no rankings compiled until at least the second week.
I still have no idea why Clemson was ranked ahead of us, and why Mississippi was #8 before getting crushed by Arkansas in their 2nd SEC win in two years. Clemson???????? Who have they beaten? I I'll stop thinking about the rankings or Notre Dame or this years version of Texas A&M before my head explodes.