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Originally Posted by bouray
--If the preseason polls had started with OU #10, AU #11, and USC #12, would all these folks in the media be clamoring for a USC team to be in the championship? If so, why? If not, is it fair for a team to get an automatic slide into the national championship cuz people felt they were going to have a good year? After viewing the first game of the season against Virginia Tech, you could see USC was not the same dominant team as last year. Wouldn't it be a little more fair to throw out the preseason rankings cuz they don't mean anything? Look at LSU, Miami, Georgia, etc for examples (all teams that started the year ranked very high, but lost games early on and are out of the championship picture).
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I thought this was also very interesting. Pre-season polling is very fun. But, the traditional way of polling just is not getting done what needs to be done. Or atleast what is desired to be done. Polling should not only reflect the prior weeks, but it should more clearly represent that current week. If USC came off a bad week against Stanford and you place them ahead of Auburn, aren't you saying that the USC team could be Auburn? Obviously not if they played like they did in Stanford. Saying a team had an "off-week" is not enough justification. Yes, you have to consider their past as well as their situation. However, when you can look at a team and see they have obviously improved while another team hasn't, how can that not play a much larger role?
On Auburn's game vs. Alabama, I think alot of people fail to see how intense this game is. This is the biggest rivalry in college football hands down. No game even comes close to comparison. I think you're right, Auburn clearly did not play as well as recent weeks. They had an off-week, and again I do think you really have to take that into consideration(I believe pollsters did). If Auburn had scored another touchdown and Alabama would not have scored the touchdown in the last minutes of the fourth quarter, I wonder how polling may have been different. I know it's the biggest rivalry game and that often makes it tougher than even playing a top 5 team. But damn, if Alabama actually had a real quarterback(they're using 3rd string) and their top running back(Hudson), Auburn would have lost that game.