Aug 7th, 2010
The preseason polls are kind of silly, since they are based on nothing at all.
Former Stanford coach Buddy Teevens led Dartmouth to a 2-8 record in 2009 -- and didn't get fired -- Photo by Mark Washburn
Well, you could claim they are based on the expertise of coaches or media members, but they base their opinions on whatever magazines they happen to read and whatever people tell them. But those are all based on last year’s results, which are irrelevant. The New Orleans Saints don’t start the season with a three-game lead in their division because they won the Super Bowl last season, do they? Well, do they?
However, the preseason polls have significance, especially the USA Today coaches poll released Friday.
First of all, it establishes the pecking order, and, as we all know, teams typically slide up or down the scale based on how they do each week. If everybody went undefeated (which would be a neat trick), the final top 25 would closely resemble the preseason top 25. That’s not the way it should be, but it is.
The other thing is, this poll is valid longer than any poll during the season, other than the final regular-season poll. The preseason USA Today poll is good for more than four weeks, and there’s nothing any team can do to change it (except get put on probation).
All of this brings us to the fact that Cal is unranked in the USA Today poll released Friday, and we are here to rate the top 11 most significant aspects of the USA Today poll from the Bears’ point of view. (Going with a top 11 pays homage to Spinal Tap guitarist Nigel Tufnel and his louder-than-10 system. A top-11 list is one better, isn’t it?)
As always, we begin at No. 11 and work our way to No. 1, much like David Letterman does (with similar comedic effect, no doubt).
No. 11 — For only the second time since 2003, Cal is unranked.
No. 10 — The Bears received only 6 voting points, and not since 2003 have they received fewer. Navy and Connecticut got more votes. (Now that’s embarrassing.)
No. 9 – Cal received more votes than USC. (The fact that the Trojans are ineligible to receive votes in the coaches poll becasue they are on probation is purely incidental information. This is one of only two item in this top-11 list that is favorable for the Bears, so they need to run with it.)
No. 8 – No Pac-10 team is ranked in the top 10, the first time since 2000 that has happened.
No. 7 – The Big East is the only other BCS conference without a top-10 team, and being grouped with the Big East in any football-related issue is not a good thing.
No. 6 – Only two Pac-10 teams are ranked in the USA Today top 25, and both are from the state of Oregon. When Corvallis has more preseason juice than Berkeley, it’s painful. (Again, only the Big East had as few as two schools in the top 25. Horrors.)
No. 5 – Only three Pac-10 teams received fewer voting points than the Bears — one of them was ineligible (USC) and another was Washington State (which hardly qualifies). That leaves only UCLA as receiving less respect from the nation’s coaches.
No. 4 – Cal received the same number of voting points as Arizona State, and the Sun Devils were picked to finish ninth in the Pac-10 in the conference media poll.
No. 3 – Cal received more votes than Texas Tech and Texas A&M, two of the high-powered football programs that chickened out when it came to joining the Pac-10. (This is the second — and last – positive item for Cal.)
No. 2 – The Bears were ranked No. 12 in three of the past four USA Today preseason polls, including 2009, and this spoils that remarkable run of consistency. And we all know that consistency is the route to any success, according to the 2010 edition of the Official Coach-Speak ‘ Handbook.
No. 1 – Stanford is ranked ahead of Cal in the coaches preaseason poll for the first time since 2002. That has to hurt after the way Cal has dominated the Bay Area football landscape under Jeff Tedford. The Bears perhaps can take some solace in the fact that the Cardinal ended up 2-9 in 2002 under first-year coach Buddy Teevens while Cal went 7-5 in Jeff Tedford’s first year.
