Re: Most rankings are simply senseless & void of logic..... IMO, I think they are questioning what they have seen from J. Russell up to this point, and not so much Miles coaching ability.
Ivan Maisel 1. USC 2. Texas 3. Michigan 4. Iowa 5. Florida 6. Virginia Tech - Unproven QB 7. Auburn - Unproven QB 8. Miami - Unproven QB 9. Oklahoma - Unproven QB 10. Tennessee - True Sophomore QB 11. Ohio State 12. Louisville - Unproven QB 13. Texas A&M 14. Florida State 15. Georgia - Unproven QB 16. Nebraska 17. Arizona State 18. LSU 19. Boise State 20. Wisconsin I'm going to go out on a ledge and disagree with the assertion that Maisel based his rankings on QB play. Ranking LSU any lower than 10-12 is a joke. Pre-season rankings should take the schedules into consideration and there is no way Maisel did. If you want to rank LSU lower because of Miles being a new head coach, then you need to back off from the USC party and wait to see how they replace Norm Chow...
Re: Most rankings are simply senseless & void of logic..... I think this is short-sighted. The rankings should not be a prediction of how teams will be ranked at the end of the season. That stacks the deck for teams with weak or favorable schedules. In this case, whichever of these three teams wins the east deserves to be highly ranked at the end. If you had your way and the underdog of the three did it,they would be locked out of the BCS (mabee) by virtue of their preseason "prediction" preventing them from climbing high enough in the polls. rest assured, the losers will fall, but can the winner climb high enough? Look at the remarkable series of fortunate events/upsets that had to occur for us to climb to the top two in 2003. Of course, this would be a moot point if I ran the world, but you gotta play with rules you given. see my quote from the end of the 2003 season: http://www.tigerforums.com/showthread.php?p=84838#post84838 But it'll never happen, so let's start the season with an objective guess of which teams are best, irrespective of scheduling bias, and let the chips fall where they may!!
Re: Most rankings are simply senseless & void of logic..... What i find funny is that LSU played Iowa to the wire, and would have beaten them if not for a freak play at the end.. both teams return a similar amount of guys.. yet Iowa is 4th and LSU 18th? come on...
Re: Most rankings are simply senseless & void of logic..... This is insane. But the thing that insults me the most is seeing Texas A & M ranked higher than both LSU and Georgia. Texas A & M ended up being ranked at #30 after the Cotton Bowl. And all of a sudden, they've picked up so much talent? Not even in Coach Fran's dreams.
I saw this as a "how do they rank going into Week 1" poll but you're right, it's how he sees the entire season as a whole. Has to be, otherwise that Tenn. at #9 ranking looks pretty whack, for example. That being said, a 3 or 4 loss LSU team finishing 18th...you won't be able to see the front of the Miles residence since there will be a small forest of "For Sale" signs planted on the front lawn.
by god we are LSU. no way we should lose more than 2 games even with a new head coach, new d coordinator, unproven, slightly inexperienced quarterback losing possibly 6-7 guys to the NFL draft. I pity Les Miles for inheriting a no-lose tolerance situation if something doesn't gel.
Just for sh*ts and grins, when was the last time LSU didn't lose more than 2 games before 2003? 1996 with Dinardo as coach. 10-2 with two bad losses by Florida and Alabama. Wanna hazard a guess the last time before that one? 1987. 10-1-1. Like it or not, LSU suffers from the same lack of respect from the media or the general public as Auburn does. Until both teams can string together about three one loss seasons in a row, they will always be underrated at the beginnings of seasons that follow a three or four loss campaign.