Phil Steele's top 40

S

SINCE73

250+ Posts
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Florida
Ohio State
Oklahoma
USC
Clemson

West Virginia
Missouri
South Florida
Georgia
Penn State

Texas Tech
Auburn
Louisiana State
Utah
Texas

Virginia Tech
BYU
South Carolina
Notre Dame
California

Wisconsin
Oregon
Tennessee
Florida State
Pittsburgh

Alabama
Wake Forest
Tulsa
Arizona State
Kansas

Boise State
TCU
Maryland
Iowa
Rutgers

Oklahoma State
Florida Atlantic
North Carolina
Arizona
Western Michigan
 
Clemson? Yeah, right.

West Virginia's new coach went 8-25 at VMI and his career ended with a racial slur. That's not going to end well.
 
Clemson should have a strong offense. Who knows about their defense.

Phil S is usually the closest at the end of the season historically.
 
Steele does a good job of keeping his analyses objective. I can't think of any data out there to justify rating Texas higher. You can't really quantify an expected impact from young, highly-rated, but untested players (which is where Texas is hoping to get improvement from).
 
I like his ranking of Georgia. He's not ranking the teams talent, strengths, etc. He is taking their schedule into consideration (most other rankings wont do that).
 
Texas is about right for a preseason ranking. He has Penn State pretty high, but they have a lot of returning players, so who knows?
 
Texas Tech at 11th ?

No way.
Yeah..yeah they have lot of returning starters.
Unfortunately many of them are on defense and their defense sucked last year.
 
Steele is about as good as it gets usually.
He takes in account the schedule & where he thinks people will end up whereas the others generally dont.
 
I can see why someone would rank us 10-15 given:
1) Texas plays a pretty rough schedule this year.
2) Texas has questions at several skill positions.
3) Texas will have a new defensive scheme.

However, Texas has temendous upside considering:
1) We saw what they were capable of against Arizona State.
2) Questions at skill positions could be negligable given the recruited talent on the 40 acres.
3) The secondary should be more developed.
4) The continued improvement of Colt and the emergence of Chiles.
5) Home field atmosphere should be better given the NEZ.
 
In years past Phil Steele's publication was the undisputed king of preseason rags, but it's a shell of its former self imo. Phil got so comfortable with marketing the magazine as "the most accurate" that he has fallen into the trap of cynically gaming his predictions to meet that goal (and thus retain that tagline) year after year.

The criteria for "most accurate" is which position a team finishes relative to where the prognosticator placed them in the preseason. If I pick Tech fifth in the Big XII south and they finish second, I missed by three spots! The discrepancies are tallied at the end of the year and we find out which mag came closest. Fair enough.

What does Phil do every year? In a six team division he'll pick two teams to finish 1st, two to finish 3rd, and two to finish 5th! Most accurate preseason mag 7 years running!!!
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Pffft, so transparent.
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Anyway, rant over.

All that aside, one thing you can predict like the coming of the seasons is Phil Steele overrating Penn State in his preseason power rankings.
 
top 4 is tough. Arizona doesn't belong on that list and I think we'll all find out that Mizzou is a poser as well. Clemson too.
 
I love being ranked 15. I wish we started every year ranked out of the top ten. It leads to hunger on the team and that is always good.

One of my favorite seasons was 1977 when we were not in the top 20 to start the year. SI had us just out of the Top 20 and said that we might be good. Earl's Heisman season. It's fun to watch your team climb to the top. More fun than hoping the team isn't overrated or overconfident.

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Kansas at 30? S. Florida at 8? Notre Dame at 19? This guy is starting to take his ad-nauseum analysis to ridiculous extremes. I do agree on the Horns position at 15....unfortunately.
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Well, that's that. No need to play the games. That sucks because I was looking forward to seeing the new stadium. Oh well, maybe next next year.
 
Cal at #20???

aint gonna happen..another 7-5 year in the making...8-4 if they luck out some..
 
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