Michigan #17 in preseason AP poll
The top five is Alabama, Ohio State, Oregon, Stanford, and Georgia.
Other B1G teams in the rankings include Nebraska at #18, Northwestern at #22, and Wisconsin at #23. Michigan State is sitting just outside the rankings as the highest ranking team in the "others receiving votes" category.
Link: http://espn.go.com/college-football/rankings
August 17th, 2013 at 10:22 AM ^
17 sounds about right to me.
I mean, of all the meaningless preseason polls, the Associated Press rankings are probably the most prestigious.
August 17th, 2013 at 10:34 AM ^
August 17th, 2013 at 10:23 AM ^
August 17th, 2013 at 3:52 PM ^
August 17th, 2013 at 10:24 AM ^
AT WORST, SHOULD BE NUMBER ONE.
August 17th, 2013 at 10:29 AM ^
August 17th, 2013 at 10:37 AM ^
August 17th, 2013 at 10:59 AM ^
Better than the premier league!
August 17th, 2013 at 1:44 PM ^
Drew Sharp agrees with you -- on the "don't think we should even be ranked" part.
August 17th, 2013 at 10:26 AM ^
August 17th, 2013 at 10:28 AM ^
Love going into the season underrated... Means the team has something to prove and less attention... Needless to say, August 31 can't get here fast enough.
August 17th, 2013 at 10:31 AM ^
August 17th, 2013 at 11:00 AM ^
OSU is esentially an SEC team now in the eyes of the media with St. Urbz (hallowed be his name) at the helm.
August 17th, 2013 at 10:33 AM ^
August 17th, 2013 at 10:47 AM ^
I hate to admit it, but until someone actually beats Ohio, they deserve their accolades. Luckily, Michigan could end up with two opportunities to do just that.
August 17th, 2013 at 10:59 AM ^
Another cake walk schedule before they come to Ann Arbor doesn't hurt them either.
August 17th, 2013 at 11:25 AM ^
Have hit the nail on the head-- who the heck does OSU Play?
August 17th, 2013 at 12:31 PM ^
August 17th, 2013 at 12:59 PM ^
http://www.fbschedules.com/ncaa-13/big-ten/2013-ohio-state-buckeyes-football-schedule.php
Take a look at their November schedule -
at Purdue
open date
at Illinois
Indiana
at Michigan
Then compare to ours -
at Michigan State
Nebraska
at Northwestern
at Iowa
Ohio State
This will make beating them that much more sweet.
August 17th, 2013 at 10:47 AM ^
Here's the partial report from Pollspeak, showing the level of agreement between this poll and the Coaches' Poll. If you've never run these reports before, the "1" in "Agree" means a team is in the same spot in both polls, and the "1" in either Higher or Lower means that a given team had a different rank in the Coaches' poll.
| Rank | Team | Agree | Higher | Lower |
| 1 | Alabama | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| 2 | Ohio State | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| 3 | Oregon | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| 4 | Stanford | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| 5 | Georgia | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| 6 | South Carolina | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| 7 | Texas A&M | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| 8 | Clemson | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| 9 | Louisville | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| 10 | Florida | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| 11 | Florida State | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| 12 | LSU | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| 13 | Oklahoma State | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| 14 | Notre Dame | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| 15 | Texas | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| 16 | Oklahoma | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| 17 | Michigan | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| 18 | Nebraska | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| 19 | Boise State | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| 20 | TCU | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| 21 | UCLA | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| 22 | Northwestern | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| 23 | Wisconsin | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| 24 | USC | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| 25 | Oregon State | 1 | 0 | 0 |
August 17th, 2013 at 10:53 AM ^
Ps all 4 of those other top 5 teams would smoke Ohio.
August 17th, 2013 at 11:04 AM ^
August 17th, 2013 at 11:14 AM ^
No. Or, yes. Double-negative questions are confusing... but you can vote for your own team.
August 17th, 2013 at 10:48 AM ^
Thanks to the OP for bringing this to our attention...but I'm so sick and tired of preseason polls. They're so worthless. Week 4 at the earliest are they worth anything.
The upside is that an overrated ohio will stay near the top with their cake schedule which means more room for them to drop when they show up in November.
August 17th, 2013 at 12:23 PM ^
Michigan: 4 games -- Ohio, ND, @NW and Nebraska. 2 vs. "others receiving votes" -- @MSU and @PSU
Ohio: 3 games -- @Michigan, @NW and UW. 1 vs. "others receiving votes" -- PSU.
Nebraska: 3 games -- @ Michigan, UCLA and NW. 2 vs. "others receiving votes" -- @PSU and MSU.
NW: 4 games -- Michigan, Ohio, @ UW and @ Nebraska. 1 vs. "others receiving votes" -- MSU.
MSU: 4 games -- Michigan, @NW, @Nebraska and @ ND. 0 vs. "others."
Our road to the B1G Championship is the toughest, but not nearly as bad as last year. Just focusing on winning the B1G, I'd rank the games as far as importance in the following order: 1) Nebraska; 2) @NW; 3) @MSU; 4) Ohio; 5) @PSU. Obviously, the wins I'd enjoy most are 1(!) Ohio; 2) ND and 3) @ MSU.
The reason why I think Nebraska is the most important game is because it's intra-division, it's at home, and Nebraska has an edge over NW and MSU, because they play both at home.
I also think a 1-loss Ohio team, even if they're B1G champion, doesn't make the MNC over a 1-loss SEC champ or a 1-loss PAC 12 champ, therefore, we must Beat Ohio!
August 17th, 2013 at 1:58 PM ^
Good point about Nebraska playing MSU and NW in Lincoln. Yeah, we need to beat the Huskers this year.
Fortunately, that will happen, I think. We match up well with them. I thought it was pretty clear that we would have crushed them at Lincoln last year if Denard had stayed in - or, for that matter, if we had thrown DG in there instead of Mr. Not Ready. Out of our six possible losses - @NW, @MSU, @PSU, OSU, ND, NU - I'd say I'm most confident about beating the Huskers at home. Depending on how Iowa's season goes, it might just be the case - unlikely, but conceivable - that beating NU at home is easier than beating Iowa on the road.
August 17th, 2013 at 10:39 PM ^
Nebraska is getting a lot of hype due to the sr QB thing but they lost their top RB and I believe 7 starters off a very average defense. I feel comfortable with that game at home as long as Devin is healthy. Nebraska has reminded me a lot of Penn State when they first came into the conference - a bit overrated.
August 17th, 2013 at 11:26 AM ^
weren't we 16th in the nation that year? Just saying. . .
August 17th, 2013 at 11:27 AM ^
August 17th, 2013 at 2:01 PM ^
August 17th, 2013 at 11:27 AM ^
Seems about right, given the uncertainty at a couple of positions. I think as fans we know so much about our team that we don't perceive the same question marks as others from the outside, but I'm fine with #17. Honestly, I know very little about Clemson, yet people are high on them. Feels like an overrated ACC team, but who knows. I'm sure Clemson fans feel differently.
Amazed that OSU is rated that high. Yes, they went undefeated last season, but it felt like a pretty flukey run that is not going to be replicated. I don't see them going 6-7 or anything crazy like that, but 2-3 losses are definitely in the cards. Miller stayed healthy last year which is amazing, but given his style of play I don't expect that to continue. Without him, that offense sputters unless the running game drastically improves, and that defense doesn't resemble those old Tressel outfits. Along with Oregon, I see these two teams being the biggest "disappointments" of the high-ranked squads.
August 17th, 2013 at 10:43 PM ^
Besides Urban, they have a 3rd yr starting QB and an easy schedule. And are coming off an undefeated season that if not for sanctions would have had them facing ND for a phantom national title. I think it will be difficult go undefeated in back to back seasons but other than @NW and @UM they dont have a really tough game on the schedule. They have a road trip to a poor Cal team, so other than traveling 3000 miles to trip them up, that is a "maybe" some trouble game. They get Wiscy with a new coach at home and an injured PSU at home. @NW seems like a trap game but everyone in the world has been saying its a trap game for 6 months so it is no longer a trap game. But 2 tough road games and thats about it. I expect them to trip somewhere but more than 1-2 losses seems improbable short of Miller getting hurt.
August 17th, 2013 at 11:31 AM ^
and they have MSU at #15
August 17th, 2013 at 11:48 AM ^
You decide they are because pride or disappointment makes them so.
However, the interesting thing is that Georgia plays Clemson, South Carolina and LSU in the first month of the season. (Are you kidding me) And Alabama gets Va Tech and Texas A&M the first two weeks. Now this is the way they do it in the SEC, frontloading their schedules when losses don't kill you nationally, and then beat up teams through the remainder of the season to build momentum and be stronger at the end.
Compare that to this school's big early test with ND in UTL II. So you have some early matchups which will automatically change season seedings making this early rundown a gamblers choice of proxies.
Rooting out pretenders from contenders takes about a month or more, anyway, and by then Texas as that perennial favorite that never finishes despite everything that plays into their choice every year should be on the outside looking in again.
It will be interesting to see if Ohio, which rarely ever plays a non-conference road game, has any actual troubles this year with the Golden Bears in Berkeley.
Alabama is a sound No. 1 until someboby takes them down. And then you have Oregon and Stanford, which sound about right. The only question mark of a Top Ten team is Louisville, which some have picked for a potential national championship date with Alabama. I'm not buying their bandwagon message.
There's been some trouble in Columbia with Clowney getting under the skin of teammates, we'll see whether the Gamecocks
August 17th, 2013 at 11:59 AM ^
August 17th, 2013 at 1:05 PM ^
August 17th, 2013 at 2:03 PM ^
Yeah, I don't think there are 21 teams in the country better than Northwestern. However, I'm not sure which of the ones ranked ahead of them should be dropped. The season will tell, obviously. I think on average 30% of the teams initially ranked are not ranked at the end of the year - and I don't think NW will be unranked at the end of the year - so yeah, I'd say they're under-ranked. Slightly. I'd guess they end the year in the 15-19 range.
August 17th, 2013 at 8:18 PM ^
I've always viewed NW as one of those mid-major tournament teams (think VCU) that can beat anyone but relies so heavily on one side of the ball to cover up their defensive limitations that it is hard to see them consistently win more than 9 games. I mean, they'll have games where they just blitz people and run away with the game, but if you can slow down the spread even a bit they really don't have another gear, and the defense rarely can stay with uber-athletic squads. Luckily for them only a couple of teams in the conference have those types of athletes, but you can still see their ceiling better than other teams.
August 17th, 2013 at 12:01 PM ^
That's right about where we should be. I figured somewhere between 15-20 to start off the season, and beating Notre Dame might get us somewhere in the vicinity of the top 10.
OSU might be slightly overrated at #2, personally I'd rank Stanford and maybe Oregon ahead of them, but I hope they stay there all year. Let them run the table until November 30th, when they're so close to the BCS title game that they can taste it, and we just crush their dreams right before their very eyes.
Few things on this planet would make me happier.
August 17th, 2013 at 12:23 PM ^
August 17th, 2013 at 12:45 PM ^
August 18th, 2013 at 12:17 PM ^
Yah because going 12-0 is easy to do.
(See what I did there.. 12-0 and 1200 mgopoints all in the same post? I was waiting all this time for this exact post!)
August 17th, 2013 at 1:14 PM ^
August 17th, 2013 at 1:18 PM ^
August 17th, 2013 at 1:40 PM ^
August 17th, 2013 at 1:45 PM ^
August 17th, 2013 at 2:07 PM ^
This is the first time ever that Michigan has been ranked #17 in the Preseason AP poll.
August 17th, 2013 at 2:51 PM ^
August 17th, 2013 at 5:26 PM ^
August 17th, 2013 at 10:21 PM ^
They open against Georgia so we will know pretty soon how they are looking.