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2019
Preseason TipTop 25
Greetings
and welcome to my fifth annual TipTop 25, an altogether different
approach to ranking the top 25 college football teams, at least early
in the season. What makes it so different? Well, for my preseason top
25, I have once again literally drawn names out of a hat:
Why
would I do such a thing? Because every year, there are some people who
like to gripe about the
silliness of preseason college football polls, the premise
being that no one really knows who will be good or not before the
season starts. For example, last year in the preseason AP poll, Wisconsin
was ranked #4, Miami (Florida) #8, Auburn #9, and Michigan State #11, and
none
of those teams finished ranked in the final poll (though Auburn was ranked #15 in the final fixed AP poll). Meanwhile, in the
final poll, Florida finished #7, Washington State #10, Kentucky #12,
and Syracuse #15, and none of those teams were ranked in the
preseason poll.
Now, I have no problem with preseason polls
myself. They're just for fun, and I enjoy looking at them. Yes, teams
that are ranked highly in the preseason AP poll may have an "unfair"
advantage in later polls, but that's only because many sportswriters
aren't very good at rating teams. That's not the fault of the preseason
poll. And while some of the preseason rankings will turn out to be
wrong, for the most part preseason polls tend to be pretty close: 14 of last year's preseason AP poll
top 25 teams finished the season
ranked, and 16 finished ranked in the fixed AP poll, which is a lot more than you're likely to get by simply picking
teams out of a hat (on average, that will get you about 5 correct out
of the 25).
Still, a few years ago I got to thinking:
what if we did
simply pick teams out of a hat, and then go from there each week? And
we could treat all teams with a blank slate, ignoring their histories,
performances from last year, returning starters, etc. We would only
focus on what each team does this year,
with a completely random
ranking to start the season. Now, is this what I think people should be doing
when they rank teams early in the season? Heck no, this is just for fun.
So
for the fifth straight year, I've written out all the 130 FBS teams on
slips of paper, put them in a hat,
and then drawn 25 of them out one by one. Starting with my preseason #1
team for 2019:
That's
right, Georgia Southern is our #1 team to start the 2019 season! See, isn't this
already vastly more fun than the preseason AP poll? Here is the full
preseason top 25 as designated by my magic hat (which, by the way, also
designated Alabama to Slytherin House for the fifth straight year):
#1 Georgia Southern
#2 Purdue
#3 Central Michigan
#4 Navy
#5 Georgia State
#6 Boise State
#7 Penn State
#8 UAB
#9 Utah State
#10 Mississippi State
#11 Washington
#12 Nebraska
#13 Auburn
#14 Michigan
#15 Arkansas
#16 Rutgers
#17 San Jose State
#18 UTEP
#19 Liberty
#20 Fresno State
#21 Louisiana Monroe
#22 Kentucky
#23 Kansas State
#24 Temple
#25 Mississippi
But
I didn't stop there. In order to properly rank teams after the first
week of games, I will also need to know which teams are close to being
ranked, so I pulled
out another 25 teams to give us a top 50:
#26 Texas
#27 Coastal Carolina
#28 Hawaii
#29 North Carolina
#30 Missouri
#31 Georgia
#32 Northern Illinois
#33 Washington State
#34 Cincinnati
#35 Virginia
#36 Texas San Antonio
#37 UCLA
#38 Western Kentucky
#39 Appalachian State
#40 Charlotte
#41 Ohio State
#42 South Florida
#43 Notre Dame
#44 Florida Atlantic
#45 Vanderbilt
#46 Florida
#47 Texas State
#48 Wyoming
#49 Ball State
#50 Texas Christian
Looking
Ahead to the First Week's Games
Games start
August 24, but the first full week of games will be the following
weekend, so we won't start adjusting these ratings until after that.
Sadly,
there
isn't a single game between any of our top 25 teams in the first week,
and in fact, none of our top 25 teams is even playing an opponent that
is close to ranked. But we do have the following games featuring teams
ranked #26-50:
#30 Missouri at #48 Wyoming, #31 Georgia at #45 Vanderbilt, #37 UCLA at
#34 Cincinnati, and #44 Florida Atlantic at #41 Ohio State.
How Last
Year's Preseason Top 25 Fared
So how did last
year's preseason top 25 fare? Awfully! This should be a good preview
for how this year's preseason top 25 teams will perform. Here is last year's preseason top 25,
along with their final record at season's end and final ranking, for
those few that finished ranked (fixed AP poll):
#1 Tulane
|
7-6 |
#2 Illinois
|
4-8 |
#3 Virginia Tech
|
6-7 |
#4 Vanderbilt
|
6-7 |
#5 Boise State
|
10-3 #24
|
#6 Rice
|
2-11 |
#7 Central Florida
|
12-1 #10
|
#8 Colorado
|
5-7 |
| #9 Texas State |
3-9 |
#10 San Diego State
|
7-6 |
#11 Virginia
|
8-5 |
#12 Florida
|
10-3 #8
|
#13 Auburn
|
8-5 #15
|
#14 Louisiana State
|
10-3 #6
|
#15 Texas San Antonio
|
3-9 |
#16 New Mexico State
|
3-9 |
#17 Florida State
|
5-7 |
#18 Georgia Southern
|
10-3 |
#19 Texas Tech
|
5-7 |
#20 North Carolina State
|
9-4 |
#21 Buffalo
|
10-4 |
#22 Oklahoma
|
12-2 #4
|
#23 Air Force
|
5-7 |
#24 Florida Atlantic
|
5-7 |
| #25 Baylor |
7-6 |