SI's Preseason Rankings

As background, I should say that I am suspicious of preseason polls (and polls in general). Just look at the Coaches poll that was released last week and compare it to the final rankings last year, and you'll see why I view them, at best, with a grain of salt. Essentially, the preseason poll is the final poll of last season with slight adjustments based on a program's perceived loss of talent to loss of eligibility (some would say "lost to graduation" but we know that a large percentage of college football players do not graduate by the time they leave school). Thus, 8 of the top 10 teams in the preseason poll were in the top 10 after the last bowl season. The two that dropped out moved down exactly 6 spots. Of the preseason top 25, 22 were ranked at the end of last season, with the 3 new entrants among the last 5 to be ranked (21 South Florida, 23 Wake Forest and 25 Fresno State). Not exactly a sea change. And you can understand that it has something to do with pollsters probably beginning with last year's final poll and adjusting up or down based on perceived talent changes, much like they do each week based on whether a team wins or loses (but less on who they play or the margin of victory).

One preseason poll that I do tolerate is the one at SI. This is for four reasons: (1) It's not really a poll (collective opinion) but the opinion of one guy named Stewart Mandel, (2) Stew throws out his previous rankings every week and starts from scratch, thus reducing his reliance on the final poll from the prior season, (3) starting from scratch each week allows him to quickly correct misperceptions and makes him more likely to take chances, and (4) it ranks all 119 of the teams in the division formerly known as 1-A.

Today, he released his preseason rankings. UCLA came in at #64. (64!!! Oh, how the mighty have fallen.) This places us 7th in the Pac-10 and closer in the rankings to the 10th place team (20 ahead of #84 WSU) than the 5th place team (25 behind #39 Cal). It also places us lower 9 of our 12 opponents (all but Washington, Stanford and WSU) and 25 places or more behind 8 of our 12 opponents (Arizona is only 11 places higher).

That sounds like a recipe for disaster--if you believe the polls and the rankings. Luckily for me, I don't, so I am going to remain optimistic and excited about this season and hope that the team exceeds these pre-season expectations by far.