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2022
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, Texas A&M
was ranked #6, Iowa State #7, North Carolina #10, and Wisconsin #12,
and
none
of those teams finished ranked in the final poll (Wisconsin, however, did end up ranked #22 in the Fixed AP Poll). Meanwhile, in the
final AP poll, Michigan finished #3, Baylor #5, Oklahoma State
#7,
and Michigan State #9, 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,
generally tabbing around 16 teams that will be ranked in the final poll. Last
year the preseason AP poll did unusually poorly in this regard, as only
11 of its 25 teams ended up ranked in the final poll (12 finished
ranked in the fixed poll), but that's still more than twice as many as you're likely to get by simply picking
teams at random out of a hat (on average, that will get you about 5 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
131 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 2022:
That's
right, Arkansas is our #1 team to start the 2022 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, as always):
#1 Arkansas
#2 Pittsburgh
#3 Oklahoma
#4 Central Michigan
#5 Wake Forest
#6 Kent State
#7 Hawaii
#8 Arkansas State
#9 Fresno State
#10 Mississippi State
#11 Louisiana Monroe
#12 Missouri
#13 Oregon State
#14 North Carolina
#15 Utah
#16 Ohio State
#17 Air Force
#18 Illinois
#19 Bowling Green
#20 Kansas
#21 James Madison
#22 Troy
#23 Mississippi
#24 Texas Christian
#25 Appalachian State
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 State
#27 Georgia
#28 Louisiana State
#29 Auburn
#30 Washington
#31 Texas State
#32 Connecticut
#33 Middle Tennessee
#34 Baylor
#35 Vanderbilt
#36 Texas A&M
#37 Louisiana
#38 UCLA
#39 New Mexico State
#40 Toledo
#41 Western Kentucky
#42 Boston College
#43 Liberty
#44 Arizona
#45 Louisiana Tech
#46 UAB
#47 Western Michigan
#48 Cincinnati
#49 Southern Miss
#50 Notre Dame
Looking
Ahead to the First Week's Games
Games start
August 27, but the first full week of games will be the following
weekend, so we won't start adjusting these ratings until after that.
We've got two matchups of TipTop 25 teams coming up on September 3rd,
#14 North Carolina at #25 Appalachian State and #22 Troy at #23
Mississippi. #7 Hawaii is not playing another top 25 team, but they
will be hosting a pair nearly-ranked teams, #35 Vanderbilt August 27
and #41 Western Kentucky September 3. In addition, another 6 TipTop 25
teams will
also be facing teams that are ranked #26-50:
#1 Arkansas vs. #48 Cincinnati, #6 Kent State at #30 Washington, #12
Missouri vs. #45 Louisiana Tech, #16 Ohio State vs. #50 Notre Dame, #19
Bowling Green at #38 UCLA, and #21 James Madison vs. #33 Middle
Tennessee. And finally, we have 1 game that features
opponents who are both
ranked #26-50, #43 Liberty at #49 Southern Miss.
How the 2021
Preseason TipTop 25 Fared
So how did last
year's preseason TipTop 25 fare? Awfully! Worse than usual, in fact, as
7 of those 25 teams finished with no more than 3 wins! We're likely to
do better this year in that regard, but overall, what happened last
year should still be a decent 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 Utah State
|
11-3 #21
|
#2 Mississippi State
|
7-6 |
#3 Charlotte
|
5-7 |
#4 Arizona
|
1-11 |
#5 Oregon
|
10-4 #18
|
#6 Georgia Tech
|
3-9
|
#7 Colorado State
|
3-9
|
#8 Arkansas State
|
2-10 |
| #9 Georgia Southern |
3-9 |
#10 Baylor
|
12-2 #6 |
#11 Stanford
|
3-9
|
#12 Coastal Carolina
|
11-2
|
#13 Air Force
|
10-3
|
#14 Syracuse
|
5-7
|
#15 West Virginia
|
6-7 |
#16 Iowa State
|
7-6 |
#17 Tennessee
|
7-6 #23 |
#18 California
|
5-7 |
#19 Southern Miss
|
3-9 |
#20 Kansas State
|
8-5 |
#21 Pittsburgh
|
11-3 #12 |
#22 Utah
|
10-4 #16
|
#23 Virginia
|
6-6 |
#24 Liberty
|
8-5 |
| #25 UAB |
9-4 |