Rivals has a very early top 25 out.
January 9th, 2010 at 11:48 PM ^
Remember when U M basketball was ranked #13 preseason?
January 10th, 2010 at 11:26 AM ^
But I will. Remember when Michigan football was ranked 5th in the nation and then we lost back to back games against Appy State and Oregon?
January 9th, 2010 at 11:54 PM ^
This makes me laugh EVERY YEAR. How in the world do they know what next year will hold, JUST 2 days after the national championship game?
January 9th, 2010 at 11:55 PM ^
All the B10 teams that won are in the top 25. This is no morevaluable than getting predictions on the 2010 season from the members of this board, entertaining for a minute but in the end pointless.
January 10th, 2010 at 12:00 AM ^
They are probably the two most logical choices. After that who knows?
January 10th, 2010 at 12:09 AM ^
The Pryor hype machine is going to be out of control for the next eight months. The bumper crop of clean cut American heroes just graduated, so there is a void to fill and Pryor finally looked pretty good in a big game in the Rose Bowl. The Vince Young comparisons will reach another level of nauseating.
If Pryor goes down for any length of time, OSU will be in serious trouble. Their offense seems to be something along the lines of accomplish nothing, let Pryor run around, something good will happen often enough. This won't work with a minor league retread not named Weinke in the backfield.
Wisky played pretty well at the end of the year, but nine seems way too high, eh?
February 11th, 2010 at 12:48 PM ^
For the 2:30 minutes that I watched the Purdue upset of OSU, it looked a little like Purdue had 4 defensive backs and 7 linebackers on the field; whenever Pryor scrambled around behind the line, he was contained not by fat guys almost out of breath from battling their man and chasing him 5 yards, but by relatively agile athletes whom he couldn't just embarrass with a juke. Maybe we could pull that off this year. Keep Pryor contained and wait for him to trust his arm. Because he seems to be dumb enough to trust his arm, despite repeated evidence that it's a bad idea.
January 10th, 2010 at 12:06 AM ^
Though I think that the preseason polls are crap anyways, basing the upcoming years Top 25 on the outcomes of bowl games is stupid. I don't know how Connecticut is ranked 19. They may well be a good team next year, but this ranking is completely based on a team that played a great season because they were emotionally charged and playing for their fallen teammate, which will probably not be the case next year
January 10th, 2010 at 9:55 AM ^
Dude - they lost 3 straight games after that kid was killed. It's hard to argue that made them better.
January 10th, 2010 at 7:07 PM ^
Just to play devil's advocate here...2 of those 3 were Cincinnati and West Virginia. One could argue that the only reason that they were still in those games is because of emotion.
January 10th, 2010 at 10:11 PM ^
They did lose 3 straight games, but by a total of 10 points, and two of those teams were ranked. I understand that they didn't win those games, but they sure did put up a hell of a fight. And then they won the 3 games after that.
January 10th, 2010 at 12:18 AM ^
I just read through the whole thing, here's the link:
http://collegefootball.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1037628
I don't know that it's the best early top 25 ever...some highlights (it's dated 9 Jan):
1. USC #5 -- no Pete Carroll, no win forever, major offensive struggles, losing Joe McKnight and Damian Williams
2. TCU #6 -- "The Frogs must replace standout DE Jerry Hughes, star LB Daryl Washington and CBs Rafael Priest and Nick Sanders, but TCU always finds a way to put together a quality defense." That's not happening.
There are major holes everywhere, 2010 might be a chaos year after a relatively predictable year.
January 10th, 2010 at 12:24 AM ^
Whatever. Cue up 20 inferiority posts re: UConn...sigh...I am tired of it.
I get that UConn is a decent team; I believe that Michigan will be better than decent next fall. The development on offense, implementation of more of the playbook, maturing redshirts, more opportunity to employ various electron sized slotbacks, the same god damn defensive scheme for more than 4 months...this will all pay off.
I will enjoy it when it does versus UConn next autumn.
January 10th, 2010 at 1:09 AM ^
The higher UConn is ranked when we play them, the better. Somewhere in the top 20 is fine by me.
January 10th, 2010 at 1:37 AM ^
I just beat UConn with my new and improved Michigan team (with new recruits) 63-0 in my video game.....psht!! They will be easy!!!!....... Reality doesn't really matter when you have video games.
(I'm joking btw.....but not really)
January 10th, 2010 at 7:14 AM ^
No one has any idea what will happen next year. They are not counting incoming recruits, injuries that may occur in the spring and general non sense. We all know the Pryor talk is going to get really OLD really FAST. The kid is a box of rocks. He has deal with all the hype while learning a 3rd grade version of their playbook. That is way to much for him to handle!
January 10th, 2010 at 7:36 AM ^
Having a ranked UConn team coming in for the season opener would be a great way to christen the newly refurbished and completed stadium. It would build excitement for the home opener and provide positive momentum at the start of the season, I hope it happens.
January 10th, 2010 at 8:18 AM ^
When we first got the news about Sailboat Bill scheduling UConn, I was among those who dismissed UConn as an insufficiently sexy opponent that would do little for us if we win and would be catastrophic for us if we lost, something similar to playing App St.
I was dead wrong. They are going to be a tough opponent for an opener, and given their pre-season ranking a victory will be a great way for us to start the 2010 campaign. A loss will suck, of course, but in no way will it be similar to The Horror.
January 10th, 2010 at 9:34 AM ^
Having preseason rankings and rankings in Sept. is just a wold guess for the most part.
January 10th, 2010 at 9:52 AM ^
But thanks for posting anyway