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Alabama Football: What to make of the pre-season Coaches Top 25 Poll

By Ronald Evans

ATLANTA, GA - JANUARY 08: The Alabama Crimson Tide celebrates beating the Georgia Bulldogs in overtime and winning the CFP National Championship presented by AT&T at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on January 8, 2018 in Atlanta, Georgia. Alabama won 26-23. (Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
ATLANTA, GA - JANUARY 08: The Alabama Crimson Tide celebrates beating the Georgia Bulldogs in overtime and winning the CFP National Championship presented by AT&T at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on January 8, 2018 in Atlanta, Georgia. Alabama won 26-23. (Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images) /
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For Alabama football fans, the Crimson Tide being ranked No. 1 in preseason is ho-hum. Where other teams rank is more interesting.

The preseason USA Today Coaches Poll is out. Alabama football is again ranked No. 1. The ranking comes as no surprise to Crimson Tide fans. To many CFB fans, the human polls no longer have the clout given them in the pre-CFB Playoff era.

The Coaches Poll elicits particular derision from the well-known understanding that Sports Information Directors, rather than coaches, do most of the voting. How well the SID’s coordinate with their head coach is not known.

The human polls, particularly the preseason ones get a bad rap for being wrong. There is some data to challenge their perceived inaccuracy. A Stanford Ph.D. named Ed Feng used the AP and Coaches preseason polls to track how often the higher ranked team won a bowl game over a lower ranked team. The result was close to 60 percent accuracy for the preseason polls. By comparison, Feng says the closing betting lines on bowl games correctly picked winners just 61.5 percent of the time.

Take Feng’s data as you will, but perhaps we should give the human polls a little more credit.

What is noteworthy in the Coaches pre-season Top 25 Poll

  • The Crimson Tide is ranked No. 1 for the fourth time in the last six seasons and the third time in a row.
  • Alabama football gained 61 out 65 first-place votes.
  • In the 2018 regular season, Alabama football will play three pre-season, Top 25 teams. Auburn at No. 10; Mississippi State at No. 18 and LSU at No. 24.
  • Auburn opens with a game against Washington at No. 6. As hard as it might be to accept, an Auburn win would help Alabama. (Rooting for the Huskies will be much more fun).
  • Miami is ranked No. 8 and an LSU win over the Canes would also help Alabama football.
  • The Miami Hurricanes are a preseason Top 10 team for the first time in over 10 seasons, going back to Larry Coker as the head coach. Credit to Chris Lowe for pointing this out.
  • Talking about LSU, Boise State at No. 22 and UCF at No. 23 are ranked higher.
  • The SEC has five ranked teams; the ACC has four; the B1G, five; the Big 12, five and the Pac 12 has three.

Here is the full Top 25 list

  1. Alabama
  2. Clemson
  3. Ohio State
  4. Georgia
  5. Oklahoma
  6. Washington
  7. Wisconsin
  8. Miami
  9. Penn State
  10. Auburn
  11. Notre Dame
  12. Michigan State
  13. Stanford
  14. Michigan
  15. USC
  16. TCU
  17. Virginia Tech
  18. Mississippi State
  19. Florida State
  20. West Virginia
  21. Texas
  22. Boise State
  23. UCF
  24. LSU
  25. Oklahoma State

Next. 5 Reasons the Tide wins another CFB Championship. dark

Closing thought

There is a better than 50 percent chance LSU is unranked when Alabama football travels to Baton Rouge. While tracking the path to another CFB Playoff berth, Tide fans are almost forced to also root for Auburn, Georgia (or South Carolina) and Mississippi State.

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