http://www.athlonsports.com/ "Last year, LSU battled through some difficult adversity caused by Hurricane Katrina and won the SEC West and the Peach Bowl under first-year coach Les Miles. This season, the Tigers could be even better, but a challenging road schedule might prevent them from a return trip to the SEC championship game."
obviously, the media can do rankings as they like, but i hate it when they rank according to how they think the season will go instead of how good the team will be. they dont know how tough/easy the schedule will be.
There's no way to judge their predictions if all they list is who is the "better" team. If they list how well their season will go, that's something we can look back on after the season & judge their credibility based off of.
I think they must consider schedule if they want an accurate ranking. What matters is how many wins a team can post, not how talented their players are. Many Auburn fans keep saying that Auburn was the best team in the SEC last year, they just happened to win fewer games than LSU and Georgia. Of course, all that matters is the wins/losses in the rankings
Yes, well, that win over Wisconsin certainly proved to everyone how great Auburn truly was last year.
To not rank LSU in the top 10 is embarassing...to Athlon, of course. Yes, if you look at returning starters, starters lost off of both lines and the schedule, you may shy away from LSU...but, c'mon, a #11? Surely, USC is ranked just as low given their immense losses, to early entry, graduation and otherwise. I'm sure they'll rank USC as low as #2 as a result. :dis:
Yes, and your performance against UGA in the champ game showed how great you guys were :dis: Yeah we laid an egg against Wisconsin, you layed an egg against Georgia. We had a good game against Georgia and Alabama. You had a great games against Miami. You can't base anything off of one game. But as Red says, the W/L column is the only one that matters. LSU won the west, UGA won the east. UGA won the SEC.
The tigers lost almost all of the offensive and defensive lines, have the top 2 or 3 running backs either injured or recovering from injury, questionable health of the starting QB, and play one of the toughest road schedules in the country. #11 in the PRE-SEASON poll isn't that bad considering. Besides, I would rather them be in the top 5 in the post-season polls. Who really cares about these early polls.
Let's see.... using my beloved Hawkeyes 2002: unranked, finished 8th 2003: Ranked 18th, finished 8th 2004: Ranked 16th, finished 8th. 2005: Ranked 8th, finished out of the top 25. Yep, these guys' predictions are like money in the bank.
