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Behind the Preseason Ballot

+3 HS
BrutusB's picture
August 21, 2018 at 12:30pm
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The Athletic had a really interesting piece breaking down the AP Preseason poll and looking at how the season usually plays out based on past seasons.  (Note: The AA is premium content, so I'll only post snippets but would recommend subscribing.)

Here's good news for us:

The national champion is probably ranked in the preseason top five.

 

Since 1989, 21 of 33 national champions — including four split champions that didn’t finish No. 1 in the AP Top 25 — have started the season ranked in the top five in the preseason AP poll. That includes each of the four champions of the College Football Playoff.

This news is less encouraging:

An average of 5.5 teams ranked in the preseason top 10 finish in the top 10. An average of 1.6 preseason top-10 teams end up unranked.

Teams ranked No. 8 or better in the preseason have finished in the top 10 more than 50 percent of the time. No. 1 (86.2 percent) and No. 2 (82.8 percent) are the only ones above 62.1 percent, however.

Don't waste time looking at teams 11-25:

The bottom half of the preseason AP Top 25 is a crapshoot.

An average of 15.9 preseason top-25 teams finish in the AP Top 25. As few as 13 preseason ranked teams have finished ranked (1997) and as many as 20 have done it (1996). Only 25 of 87 teams ranked Nos. 23-25 in the preseason have finished in the top 25.

This year, that means Texas, Oregon and LSU shouldn’t necessarily feel confident about being properly evaluated in the preseason.

Lastly, maybe we should be glad to be #5:

An average of 1.4 preseason AP top-four teams have finished in the top four of the BCS or Playoff rankings at the end of the regular season.

The BCS and the Playoff rankings systems operate differently, but we now have 20 years of true national championship systems to look back at.

Preseason AP No. 1s and No. 2s have finished the regular season in the BCS/CFP top four 11 times each in 20 years. Teams ranked third, however, have struggled to stay in the national title picture, with only two teams in 20 years ending the regular season in the top four. In other words, previous teams in Georgia’s position entering the 2018 season have not fared well in the national title race.

 

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