LSU #11 in Athlon Sports ranking

Discussion in 'The Tiger's Den' started by red55, May 15, 2006.

  1. CParso

    CParso Founding Member

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    As mentioned earlier, every team has those kind of losses going into this year. Not one of the top teams didn't lose an important component of their team.
     
  2. DarkHornet

    DarkHornet Louisiana Sports Fan

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    This is the point to be made here.

    Pre-season rags may be in the business of trying to predict how things will play out at the end of the season. That's fine, that's their business.

    The Human polls, however, are NOT in the business of predicting how things will look at the end of the season before the seasons starts. But all to often, teams get ranked in the preseason polls based on how tough their schedule is, in combination to how talented the team is. Many may go on these preseason magazines to base their rankings, I don't know.

    This would even be okay, if over the course of the year the polls were willing to correct themselves. We've seen from past evidence that this is not the case.

    Let's take this somewhat hypothetical, but mostly realistic possibility for this year. Let's argue that LSU and Notre Dame are about equally talented, heck, for argument's sake, let's say that LSU is slightly more talented than Notre Dame this year. This would mean that (not taking schedule into account) LSU would be higher ranked going into the season.

    Now, in reality, people look at Notre Dame's schedule, see that it is very possible to go unbeaten, where as LSU has many tough road games. So LSU starts out somewhere from #8-12, and Notre Dame starts out somewhere between #1-5, solely based on the likelihood of them going unbeaten, or finishing with the better record.

    Now we play out the season, and let's say LSU and Notre Dame both go undefeated. Will the human polls move LSU above Notre Dame because LSU was the more talented team, and their preseason judgements based on schedule didn't seperate the teams as expected? Past evidence says no. The human polls hold on to this myth that you can't move a team down unless they lose, even when the only reason they were higher in the first place was because they had an easier schedule.

    How is that fair? You doubly REWARD a team for having an EASIER schedule. Seems kind of backwards to me.

    As I stated earlier in the post, the preseason mags are in the business of trying to project the season, but the human polls are not in that business. The problem is that human polls tend to start out with similar rankings for similar reasons.

    I'll step off of my soapbox now...:po: :cuss:
     
  3. youcandoit1687

    youcandoit1687 Founding Member

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    ur right about the strength of schedule in that circumstance but look at teams like oregon a few years or back where they have an easy schedule but start way down low so they never have marquee victories so they cant move up. i believe that it is best to schedule a strong schedule if u believe your team is talneted and can win. the hope is that it is moer impressive in the human polls and KEEPS u ahead of easier schedule teams. ohio state this year lost to the #2 & #3 teams going into their bowl game in texas and penn state. i believe that if they hadnt played texas OOC, they might not have made the fiesta(in favor of oregon this year.)
     

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