Polls

For the second straight year WVU will be picked by almost every college football source to be somewhere in the top 20 teams. While it is great to read about Slaton, White et al. in every preseason magazine (and we read them all as we will stay on the commode until the legs fall asleep) are these magazines any good at predicting success for the upcoming season? A quick glance at 7 different preseason polls shows that you at home could probably do just about as well by picking 20 traditional powers out of a hat. The following comparison is the amount of teams in the top 20 of the preseason versus the final AP top 20 poll.

Athlon had 60% of the teams found in the final poll. They missed Boise State, Wisconsin, Rutgers, Arkansas, BYU, Wake Forrest, VT, and BC. Out of the 12 schools they had in their preseason poll that also made the final AP poll there was an error margin of +/- 5.4 spots.

Lindys had 65% of the final AP poll. They missed all the same as Athlon except they had VT in their preseason poll. The margin error was +/- 5.1 spots.

Phil Steele had 65% of the final AP poll. He missed on the same as Lindy's. His error margin was +/- 8.0 spots.

The Sporting News had 65% and the same as above on missed. The error margin was +/- 5.5 spots.

College Football News had 65% of the final poll and the same missed teams. Error margin of +/- 5.0 spots.

Sports Illustrated had 60% of the final AP Poll as they missed the same as Athlon. The error margin of teams in both the preseason and final poll was +/- 5.0 spots.

Finally, the Blog Poll had 65% correct and the smallest margin of error at +/- 4.8 spots. So those people at home really do know more than the experts sometimes.

Boise State, Wisconsin, Rutgers, Arkansas, BYU, Wake Forrest, and Boston College failed to make anyone's preseason top 20 and VT was left off of a few. Teams that were in the preseason top 20 that failed to make the final AP top 20 were Clemson, FSU, Utah, Miami, Arizona State, Iowa, and Georgia. Also none of the reviewed polls had Florida as the champion and the teams with the most error that made both polls were Notre Dame and Oklahoma as both underperformed preseason expert predictions. The lesson, preseason polls are a lot of fun during the boring summer, but take them all with a grain of salt.