There are 6 days till college football season, and today we focus on the preseason rankings.
The preseason AP top 25 poll was released last week, signifying that the season is almost here. The preseason coaches poll was released three weeks ago, and the two polls are almost identical.
The top six in the rankings of Alabama, Ohio State, Florida State, USC, Clemson, and Penn State are the exact same in both polls. And 24 of the 25 teams are the same, just in a slightly different order. Washington State at no. 24 in the AP poll and Utah at no. 25 in the coaches poll were the only differences.
Preseason rankings don’t mean much. All they tell us is what is supposed to happen for the upcoming college football season. The only problem is that what is supposed to happen rarely does happen in sports, especially in college football. But as fans, even if we pretend to hate preseason rankings, we need them to make sense of the college football world. And that leads us to no. 6 on the Southbound and Down College Football Countdown.
There are 6 SEC teams ranked in the AP Top 25 poll
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One of the noteworthy aspects of the first AP top 25 poll of the 2017 season is that there is only one SEC team ranked in the top 10. It’s the first time since 2000 that only one SEC team is ranked in the top 10 of the preseason poll. As recent as 2012 and 2013, there were five SEC teams ranked in the preseason top 10.
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The AP top 25 poll goes to show just how unpredictable the 2017 season is. There are four SEC teams ranked from 12-17 in the poll. Auburn comes in at no. 12, with LSU at no. 13, Georgia at no. 15, and Florida at no. 17. Tennessee rounds out the top 25 with a no. 25 preseason ranking.
Five of those six teams were ranked in the final AP top 25 poll of the 2016 season, with Georgia at 8-5 being the only team that was not.
For all the fun we have with preseason polls, you have to take it with a grain of salt. There were 11 teams in last year’s preseason top 25 that failed to make the final rankings.
Next: Top 10 games of the 2017 SEC Football season
Expect a much different look to the AP top 25 poll by the end of the season.