Looking more closely at the rankings

Funny how most college football fans agree that any rankings should wait and be released at least a few games into the season. Yet I guess it's nice to have something to pore over and analyze other than depth charts and practice reports.

So...I was looking over the rankings and evaluating them through Pollspeak.com yesterday. Here's how Georgia came to be #6:

Summary for Georgia
Week 1 (Preseason): Aug. 18, 2012
Last updated: Aug. 18, 2012 -- 11:31 AM

Best Ranking	3
Worst Ranking	13
Most Common Ranking (16 times)	6, 7
Average	7.55

You can see which writers voted Georgia where by clicking here. Most of them had us at either 6 or 7, aka the mode. Another thing you can do through the site is see how each voter does against the field, ie. which rankings were "extreme" or close to it compared to their peers'. If you think that evaluation holds its weight well, then Chris Fowler is a pretty damn good pollster.

The most interesting thing to me about the AP preseason rankings is LSU's Honey Badger Factor. Along with most writers I think LSU is the best team in the country, right now. If I had a vote I wouldn't consider putting them any lower than #3. Yet Les Miles' squad had some outlier votes at 8 and 10. So I wonder how much the Mathieu dismissal affected things. Personally, the dismissal only stands to help the Tigers defensively. Mathieu was at best an average defender and often undersized. Yet his impact as a returner is unmistakable. And he was a Heisman finalist.

Anyway. The rankings are here, like em or not. Might as well have some fun with them.