OVERRATED!!
Aside from being my all time favorite dick cheer, every year there are a number of teams who shit the bed and don’t live up to lofty preseason expectations (thus being labeled overrated). On the flip side, there are also teams who grab a couple of roided up Juco transfers and post amazing seasons that their fans will talk about for years to come. I did a quick analysis of the data to find out which teams lived up to (or poo pooed) their preseason expectations. For my method, I looked at each team in the preseason and final AP and coaches poll rankings and compared their average poll positions. If a team was no longer ranked in the final polls, I had to use the Jeff Saragin ratings (aka the dipshit poll) to perform the calculation. The results are below:
And the award for most overrated team goes to…..Michigan! That’s right; the winningest team in CFB history pulled a Notre Dame this year and left a tightly coiled pile of losses on the lawn of the Big House. Rich Rod may be on unemployment by this time next year.
The most underrated team…TCU. LT’s alma mater was hardly noticed at the beginning of the season when they received only a handful of votes in the coaches poll and finished at a unanimous 7th place in both polls.
So who was fairly rated? Both USC and Pittsburgh finished at exactly the same average poll spots. Way to live up to expectations and not a penny more!
Other notable observations: VT was slightly underrated this year…Notre Dame finally got legitimate rankings (starting and finishing outside of both polls)….
Jeff - I like it man - good to see stats.
Texas Christian? Good for them, my dad always talks about them and how they used to be a pretty good team back in the day. They were in the Southwest Conference which at one time had teams like Arkansas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas, Texas A&M, and Texas Tech and won two national championships. This however, is a problem: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/Superfrog.jpg
Yeah, it’s good to see stats you can trust for once…looks like the Big 10 and SEC were very overrated this year…
Don’t get too excited with your “trust” theory of your numbers or claims somehow this post works numbers better than others found by your website posters - “JB” you did use an algorithm-based computer poll to compensate for absurdly biased human polls where no votes were received, always remember the preseason poll is subject of a definite mixup thanks to the fact that top 25 teams MUST play one another so there will always be a winner and loser with rank implications, other unforeseen factors may cause shift in the ranks such as injuries or dark horse teams which shake up a conference, and most importantly the overall stupidity of “pre season rankings” based on nothing more than the promises and hollers of teams like Clemson to have a great year.
My stats are solid for what information is available. Being overrated entails being given higher respect than deserved, which is solely an opinion based phenomenon. Thus, the pre-season rankings in this study are the critical measure. I agree on the inherit biases of the human polls and you could use the final computer rankings, but then you’re not comparing apples to apples (see my exception of using the Saragin poll). You could also make the argument that my results prove the futility of pre-season rankings as only 8 teams finished within 5 places of their initial ranking. The entire system is flawed (No playoff, favors the big name schools year over year).
Injuries prove a team’s depth…dark horse teams are UNDERRATED (or their overrated opponents make them look good) and this comes out in the numbers (TCU, Utah, Ole Miss). I’m glad you mention Clemson as they are the epitome of my overrated argument (Notre Dame aside)…they consistently underwhelm every season