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2021
Preseason TipTop 25
Greetings
and welcome to the 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, LSU
was ranked #6, Penn State #7, Auburn #11, and Wisconsin #12,
and
none
of those teams finished ranked in the final poll. Meanwhile, in the
final AP poll, Indiana finished #11, Coastal Carolina #12, Northwestern #14,
and Brigham Young #16, 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: 16
of last year's preseason AP poll
top 25 teams finished the season
ranked, 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 I wrote all 130 FBS teams onto
slips of paper, put them in a hat,
and then I drew 25 of them out one by one. Starting with my preseason #1
team for 2021:
That's
right, Utah State is our #1 team to start the 2021 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 once again):
#1 Utah State
#2 Mississippi State
#3 Charlotte
#4 Arizona
#5 Oregon
#6 Georgia Tech
#7 Colorado State
#8 Arkansas State
#9 Georgia Southern
#10 Baylor
#11 Stanford
#12 Coastal Carolina
#13 Air Force
#14 Syracuse
#15 West Virginia
#16 Iowa State
#17 Tennessee
#18 California
#19 Southern Miss
#20 Kansas State
#21 Pittsburgh
#22 Utah
#23 Virginia
#24 Liberty
#25 UAB
But
I didn't stop there. In order to properly rank teams after the first
full 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 Kansas
#27 Texas Tech
#28 Minnesota
#29 Southern Cal
#30 Mississippi
#31 Vanderbilt
#32 Texas State
#33 Ohio
#34 Washington
#35 Washington State
#36 Nebraska
#37 Arizona State
#38 Wyoming
#39 Illinois
#40 Louisiana State
#41 Troy
#42 Florida Atlantic
#43 Purdue
#44 Oklahoma State
#45 Wake Forest
#46 Georgia State
#47 Louisiana Tech
#48 Missouri
#49 San Jose State
#50 Ohio State
Looking
Ahead to the First Week's Games
Games start
August 28, but the first full week of games will be the following
weekend, so we won't start adjusting these ratings until after that (to
be precise, our next ratings will be published after Mississippi's
Monday night game with Louisville September 6).
We've got one matchup of TipTop 25 teams coming up, #11 Stanford taking
on #20 Kansas State in Arlington, Texas. Another 4 TipTop 25 teams will
be facing teams that are ranked #26-50:
#1 Utah State at #35 Washington State, #2 Mississippi State vs. #47
Louisiana Tech, #10 Baylor at #32 Texas State, and #14 Syracuse at #33
Ohio. And finally, we also have 3 games that each feature
opponents who are both
ranked #26-50:
#28 Minnesota vs. #50 Ohio State, #29 Southern Cal vs. #49 San Jose State, and #36 Nebraska at #39 Illinois.
How the 2019 Preseason TipTop 25 Fared
Due to the
COVID-19 pandemic and uncertainty as to which teams would even be
playing a football season in 2020, I did not do a TipTop 25 last year.
Prior to that, I had done a TipTop 25 for 5 straight years. So how did
my last preseason TipTop 25 fare? Awfully! This should be a good
preview
for how this year's preseason top 25 teams will perform. Here is the 2019 preseason TipTop 25,
along with each team's final record at season's end, as well as final ranking for
those few that finished ranked (fixed AP poll):
#1 Georgia Southern
|
7-6 |
#2 Purdue
|
4-8 |
#3 Central Michigan
|
8-6 |
#4 Navy
|
11-2 #18 |
#5 Georgia State
|
7-6
|
#6 Boise State
|
12-2 #25
|
#7 Penn State
|
11-2 #7
|
#8 UAB
|
9-5 |
| #9 Utah State |
7-6 |
#10 Mississippi State
|
6-7 |
#11 Washington
|
8-5 #24
|
#12 Nebraska
|
5-7
|
#13 Auburn
|
9-4 #8
|
#14 Michigan
|
9-4 #12
|
#15 Arkansas
|
2-10 |
#16 Rutgers
|
2-10 |
#17 San Jose State
|
5-7 |
#18 UTEP
|
1-11 |
#19 Liberty
|
8-5 |
#20 Fresno
State
|
4-8 |
#21 Louisiana Monroe
|
5-7 |
#22 Kentucky
|
8-5
|
#23 Kansas State
|
8-5 |
#24 Temple
|
8-5 |
| #25 Mississippi |
4-8 |