Utes ranked 24th in preseason Coaches Poll

It is wonderful to see the Utes consistently ranked in the top 25. It is lining up to be awesome year.

I know those schools think their replacements to Tim Tebow and Colt McCoy will do well to fill their predecessors shoes but #3 and #4? that’s seems a little high. I guess that what happens with big name schools.

Way to open the season. I hope the home-field advantage puts us over the top and that Pitt, because they have to at least rank one team from each BCS conference, is slightly inflated.

We’ll see. Best case is that Pitt is underrated, and Utah is even more underrated.

GO UTES! Can’t wait for the season to start.

The only team in the top 5 that doesn’t have major questions is Ohio State. ALA lost all but 2 starters on defense I think, and FLA and TEX have lost just as much, most importantly at QB. This is a year where I truly think the best teams in the country are Ohio State, Boise, and TCU. Those are the only complete teams I see and they are ranked way too low.

Ok, maybe my hatred of Bama and Saban in making me biased, but they have 2 returning starters on D, and the rest of the squad is all sophs and Jrs who have never played. That means they are unproven, and I can’t see why you would rank a team #1 when you haven’t seen 10 of the players on defense play in a game.

They might be great, but in the SEC, offense does not always travel so the defense will have to carry them and I’m not sure that many inexperienced players can. Here’s the other thing, their last 6 SEC opponents have a bye before playing them. They’re not going back to the title.

We do preseason rankings at all. I hate them with a passion. I see absolutely no reason how past season performance should have any influence over how we are ranked, and anyone with a brain knows that preseason ranks effect where you are ranked by the end of the season.

A team who starts at 1st will stay at first as long as they keep winning. Even if an unranked team like Utah runs the table and goes 12-0, beating 4 ranked teams by the end of the year, they won’t be able to jump 1-loss teams like Florida/OU, especially if their losses come in the 1st half of the season. Even an 1-2 team who was initially ranked high will probably stay ranked until they lose their 3rd game.

We have essentially narrowed the field of NC contenders to about 12 teams, without playing a single game in the season. No matter how well anyone out of the top 12 teams do, they will not be able to jump someone with the same record as those teams that are placed ahead of them. And any team not in the top 12 won’t be able to jump any 1-loss team in the top 12 despite staying undefeated.

Teams should not be ranked by anyone until all the OOC games are done, and more like 6-7 weeks into the season. Otherwise all the bowl games are already decided pending the outcome of the season. That seems backwards to me.

The only way to beat it though is to go undefeated and destroy your bowl opponent. Then you have bragging rights forever. I guess that is what really counts anyway.

GO UTES!