Wisconsin Opens at #21 in the USA Today Coaches Poll

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short ornery norwegian said:
with all of the player movement in college football, I think the pre-season ratings just don't mean as much as they used to.

and that is especially true for teams that have new head coaches or coordinators.

It's easy to say "so-and-so was good last year, so they'll be good this year." but if a team has a new HC, a new coordinator, and is bringing in multiple transfers, it takes time to put all of the pieces together.

I admit I'm in a minority here, but I don't pay much attention to any ratings until teams have played 3 or 4 games - and even then, most of that is non-conference play against often weaker opponents.
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Preseason rankings have always been mostly garbage but agree that the amount of roster churn these days have made them even more irrelevant. Too many new faces in new places for anyone to even pretend they know how it is all going to work out before the season starts.

There are the safe bets to be good every year (Georgia, Ohio State.....) but once you get past the best of the best it is a massive crap shoot, and even those teams falter some years.

Preseason rankings are really just there to give the networks something to hype early in the year. The one thing the BCS/CFP got right was waiting until week 8 or whatever to release their initial rankings. Not perfect at that point but at least you avoid the massive wiffs that happen every year when some teams are rated way too high and others way too low in the initial rankings.
 


The initial spread for college FB is mostly based on the Sagarin ratings even though they have little validity until at least a quarter of the season is over.
If you are a bettor that is the window of opportunity.
 

MNVCGUY said:
Preseason rankings have always been mostly garbage but agree that the amount of roster churn these days have made them even more irrelevant. Too many new faces in new places for anyone to even pretend they know how it is all going to work out before the season starts.

There are the safe bets to be good every year (Georgia, Ohio State.....) but once you get past the best of the best it is a massive crap shoot, and even those teams falter some years.

Preseason rankings are really just there to give the networks something to hype early in the year. The one thing the BCS/CFP got right was waiting until week 8 or whatever to release their initial rankings. Not perfect at that point but at least you avoid the massive wiffs that happen every year when some teams are rated way too high and others way too low in the initial rankings.
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Yeah, but we are stoked if they include the Gophs, and pissed when we think Gophs should be ranked and aren't.
 



What a crock! New coach and scheme, coming off a lousy year, and they’re rated 21st? Goes to show preseason ratings don’t mean squat!
 

PMWinSTP said:
Yeah, but we are stoked if they include the Gophs, and pissed when we think Gophs should be ranked and aren't.
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I mean sure....any fan wants to see their team included and gets frustrated by seeing teams ranked higher than they should be.

But that doesn't change the fact that the pre season rankings are worthless whether they include the Gophers or if they don't.

All you have to do to illustrate it is to look at preseason top 25 polls vs. end of season top 25 polls. For this I looked at the 2022 coaches poll preseason and end of season.

There were 14 teams ranked in the preseason top 25 who were not ranked in the final top 25. Included in that 14 were 3 top 10 teams and 9 from the top 20.

The end of season top 10 included 4 teams that were in the preseason top 10 and 6 teams that were unranked to start the season. So 60% of the top 10 teams in the country were seen as unworthy of being in the top 25 last August.

So yeah....would I love to see the Gophers in the top 25 in August.....of course. But the only poll that truly matters at all is the one done in January. The rest are just to give TV networks something to promote and fans something to get hyped or pissed off about during the season.
 


As a Gopher fan, I hate preseason rankings. Polls shouldn't come out until after the 2nd week...at the earliest. Minnesota will always have to claw their way into the top 25 while teams like Iowa and Wiscsonsin seem to get a head start despite being very comparable to us, and based on their past/reputation....Minn. needs to win about 5 in a row to even be considered, while IA or Wisc. move up about 2 spots with each win after their initial 20-25 ranking.
 




Next year the only "poll" that will count is whether a team is in the final 12 for the playoffs or not.
Adding the Pac-12 teams, no divisions, and a schedule with 10 conference games will make watching games much more interesting.
 

MNVCGUY said:
I mean sure....any fan wants to see their team included and gets frustrated by seeing teams ranked higher than they should be.

But that doesn't change the fact that the pre season rankings are worthless whether they include the Gophers or if they don't.

All you have to do to illustrate it is to look at preseason top 25 polls vs. end of season top 25 polls. For this I looked at the 2022 coaches poll preseason and end of season.

There were 14 teams ranked in the preseason top 25 who were not ranked in the final top 25. Included in that 14 were 3 top 10 teams and 9 from the top 20.

The end of season top 10 included 4 teams that were in the preseason top 10 and 6 teams that were unranked to start the season. So 60% of the top 10 teams in the country were seen as unworthy of being in the top 25 last August.

So yeah....would I love to see the Gophers in the top 25 in August.....of course. But the only poll that truly matters at all is the one done in January. The rest are just to give TV networks something to promote and fans something to get hyped or pissed off about during the season.
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I would prefer the Gophers to be ranked in January.
 




every year for the past couple seasons its Minnesota starting off somewhere between 40-50 in full cfb rankings and clawing our way up to mid to high 20s position by the end of the season.... every damn year
 

Not sure how a team can rank that high preseason when they only have like one preseason all conference type player.
 

GopherTakes said:
every year for the past couple seasons its Minnesota starting off somewhere between 40-50 in full cfb rankings and clawing our way up to mid to high 20s position by the end of the season.... every damn year
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For what 2 years?
 

Plato said:
Yes, that was one of the many reasons including the team giving up in the second half that made Chryst redundant.
There is a new sheriff in town now.
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A buddy of mine has been a Badger season ticket holder for 40 years. He said the Wisky AD told Chryst in light of NIL he would have to start connecting with boosters to set up payments. He said, "No, I just want to coach football." That's one of the reasons why he was fired. (That and his terrible coaching.)
 

Halsey Hall said:
A buddy of mine has been a Badger season ticket holder for 40 years. He said the Wisky AD told Chryst in light of NIL he would have to start connecting with boosters to set up payments. He said, "No, I just want to coach football." That's one of the reasons why he was fired. (That and his terrible coaching.)
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Also, not having a recruiting department for like 2 years.
 

GopherTakes said:
every year for the past couple seasons its Minnesota starting off somewhere between 40-50 in full cfb rankings and clawing our way up to mid to high 20s position by the end of the season.... every damn year
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And for those saying early season rankings don’t matter… rankings ALWAYS matter. We might not want that to be true and even disagree that it is true, but they DO matter. It may not be fair or even logical but it matters.

The teams in the top 25 (regardless if they deserve to be there or not) are the ones that get their games recapped in papers all over the country. The teams in the top 25 are the ones that make it into media highlight packages of Saturday’s games. The teams in the top 25 are the ones getting talked about nationally.

When you start the year in the 40’s and claw your way to the fringe of the top 25, you often end up playing your bowl game on a baseball field. When you start the year ranked and spend the season winning at even a 2-1 rate, you tend to stay ranked and tend to remain in the national conversation, and set the table for starting the following season ranked. You are more likely to get a better bowl game too.

I am sick of seemingly every year being the team with the best record to ever play in the ________ Bowl from the Big Ten.
 

The problem with rankings is it is really hard to jump over teams without a loss. So if WI plays nobody for 5 games and goes undeteated and MN has wins over NC and NE, there is a good chance we still are not ranked higher than them, despite them not showing they are better based upon the talent they have played.
 

Schnauzer said:
And for those saying early season rankings don’t matter… rankings ALWAYS matter. We might not want that to be true and even disagree that it is true, but they DO matter. It may not be fair or even logical but it matters.

The teams in the top 25 (regardless if they deserve to be there or not) are the ones that get their games recapped in papers all over the country. The teams in the top 25 are the ones that make it into media highlight packages of Saturday’s games. The teams in the top 25 are the ones getting talked about nationally.

When you start the year in the 40’s and claw your way to the fringe of the top 25, you often end up playing your bowl game on a baseball field. When you start the year ranked and spend the season winning at even a 2-1 rate, you tend to stay ranked and tend to remain in the national conversation, and set the table for starting the following season ranked. You are more likely to get a better bowl game too.

I am sick of seemingly every year being the team with the best record to ever play in the ________ Bowl from the Big Ten.
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Beat Iowa and all this goes away
 

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