ESPN's Steady Drumbeat

On SportsCenter this morning:

"The SportsCenter Championship Series"

ESPN's college football staff is putting on its Swami hat to project each week of college football action and  top 10 rankings before projecting a 16-team playoff and national champion.

We'll see where they take this, but I'm sure the cynics will have a field day if preseason predictions ring hollow.  At worst it's a minor annoyance instead of hundred-decibel shoot-your-TV event as happened last year with the "USC 72, Jesus 13" slobberfest in December.  However, there is the possibility that ESPN's staff could harmonize around a program of their choice and restart that steady drumbeat thing again that gives birth to bloggers typing cynical anti-media screeds like The Narrative.

Their top 10 list as of today:

1. Texas
2. Ohio State
3. USC
4. West Virginia
5. Notre Dame
6. Auburn
7. Iowa
8. Florida State
   
9. Miami
   
10. Louisville

Also mentioned: LSU, Florida, Michigan, Clemson, Oklahoma

I'm not sure how any sensible person not living in Austin and whereabouts can choose Texas at No. 1 (two quarterbacks and they're both freshmen) so this thing is already on shaky ground.  Luckily, it's the preseason and this series doesn't matter all that much aside from energizing yap time at the water cooler for a few days.  No harm, no foul.

Comments

[Ricky]

Agreed about Texas. They have good talent, but I can't trust freshmen QBs for a BCS-ranked team. I think Ohio State is no.1, based on what they can do on offense with Troy Smith, Ted Ginn, and company.

[Mike]

I don't put much faith in the polls until at least week 4. By that time some major OOC games will be played and we will have a feel for who is a contender and who is a pretender.

[Dwigt]

Here's my problem with the whole Ohio St. is #1 discussion. Why is it ok to say their offense should be great and therefore they are #1 but not ok to apply the same logic to Notre Dame who returns far more players on both sides of the ball?

I hate ND as much as the next guy (probably more seeing as I'm a USC alum and huge Trojan fan) but I'm not willing to blindly dismiss them just because of who they are (at least not when it comes to pre-season polls).

The fact is they return ridiculous talent on the offensive side and even where their defense wasn't great last year (remember they were running a brand new system) they still return almost their entire D as well. Compare that to Ohio St. who returns a ton of offensive skill players but lose almost their entire defense.

I just don't buy the Tressel is a great defensive coordinator argument - people said the same about Pete coming into last year and we all saw what happened in the Rose Bowl. Great defensive coachng can only take you so far, eventually the loss of talent (which USC experienced at an alarming rate over the course of the season) catches up to you.

I refuse to believe that some pundits are suggesting that Ohio St.'s offense will be on par with USC's of last year because IMO that is the kind of offense it takes to allow you to squeak by with the kind of defensive losses Ohio St has experienced.

My top 3:

ND - offense, offense, offense. Their D should be better too after a 2nd year in the system. Lots of returning starters.

USC - the D will carry them early and all their tough games are at home

Ohio St - explosive on O but too many defensive losses (2 returning starters on D!?)

That said I still doubt ND goes undefeated. We all saw how a great O and average D could struggle (see USC's close calls against ND, ASU and Fresno St). ND plays too tough of a schedule to win out and IMO loses at least 2 games - one early and one to USC :-)

[TrojanHorse]

WVU and Louisvilel in the top ten, I DON'T THINK SO

[Nick S]

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