2022 SEC Off Season Thread

[FearlessF]

FOX Sports analyst Joel Klatt unveiled his preseason college football top five on Tuesday afternoon.

Not surprisingly, Klatt has Alabama atop his personal poll. Ohio State is next, with defending national champion Georgia coming in third.

Those seem to be popular picks for the first three teams on various preseason rankings lists. It's after the top three where you find some variance among experts.

Klatt has Texas A&M and Notre Dame rounding out his top five. The Aggies are coming off an 8-4 season and Gator Bowl berth, though they were unable to play in the game due to COVID-19. Jimbo Fisher's team went 9-1 and won the Orange Bowl in 2020, narrowly missing the College Football Playoff.

The team that beat out the Aggies for a CFP spot that season? Notre Dame, which went 11-2 in 2021, but lost to Oklahoma State in the Fiesta Bowl.

Klatt is clearly a big believer in new ND head coach Marcus Freeman.

Klatt appears to be a Big Ten believer, judging by the fact he has Michigan and Michigan State just outside the top five. Utah and Clemson are also lurking.

The most notable omissions from Klatt's list are Oklahoma and USC. We'll see how his rankings match up to the preseason Coaches and AP polls when they are unveiled in August.

[Cincydawg]

As noted, about everyone has the same top three and then variation, the teams apparently lower than that have questions (as do the three).

It's mildy amusing of course, but irrelevant to much of anything.  An unranked team can make the playoffs at 12-1.  I'm going with UCLA having a shot, as do some others.

[847badgerfan]

you can only find true chili in Texas and New Mexico

according to Utee94

You can find it in my kitchen on occasion.

Talked to Burny last night. You can find it in his Tennessee kitchen.

[Cincydawg]

My wife likes my "chili", which is southern style I reckon, tomatoes and ground beef, served over rice.  No beans, I used to use beans but I discovered I really don't like them in chili.  It goes well with beer, like 420, which my wife also likes.

The Sweetwater brewery/bar is a nice location, pretty good food, great patio, but not in this weather.

[Cincydawg]

Steele credited Georgia with having four top-five individual units: receiving — which includes wide receivers and tight ends — offensive line, linebackers and defensive backs. Steele has Georgia’s receiving unit as No. 4 in the country, its offensive line as No. 2 in the country, its linebackers as No. 3 in the country and its defensive backs as No. 1 in the country.

I understand why Stetson Bennett is widely ranked so low, he's short, he was not highly recruited, and he's short.  I do find it rather amusing in a sense, he seems to get it done one way or the other.  His NFL potential is probably UDA at best, probably not even that.  

[847badgerfan]

My wife likes my "chili", which is southern style I reckon, tomatoes and ground beef, served over rice.  No beans, I used to use beans but I discovered I really don't like them in chili.  It goes well with beer, like 420, which my wife also likes.

The Sweetwater brewery/bar is a nice location, pretty good food, great patio, but not in this weather.

So I do this fusion dish, inspired by a meal I had at a place up North that didn't survive 2020.

It's Texas chili over Korean fried rice, finished with fried lo mien noodles.

Pretty good. But it's no longer chili.

[OrangeAfroMan]

Sounds like some kind of flying spaghetti monster.

[FearlessF]

rice and noodles???

too many carbs

[Cincydawg]

I find the UK and LSU placement interesting.  I'm surprised Arky is so low, might be schedule related?  

[OrangeAfroMan]

If these numbers were anywhere close to correct, they shouldn't bother with the games.  
A division-winner can hinge on 1 upset.....and upsets are inevitable.  I'd love to know their methodology.
.
I think when it comes to these and the "% chance of winning" graph during a game, with its wide variances, needs to really be called what it really is:  teams in thhis situation at this part of the game have won this % of the time.  
.
All this stuff in the hands of the average fan get bastardized, with no help from those producing it all.

[bayareabadger]

I find the UK and LSU placement interesting.  I'm surprised Arky is so low, might be schedule related? 

I can dig into the numbers at a later point, but the percentages tend to compound in certain ways.

FWIW, Arkansas has a brutal non-conference, but the crossovers aren’t anything special.also worth noting, one team was within three games of those favorites in the standings last season.

[Cincydawg]

Says they are based on FPI, which projects winning chances, or tries to.  Presuming FPI means anything at all, one can calculate the odds of winning each conference game and thus the odds of winning said conference.  I don't personally value preseason FPI that much at all, but it's a list, and I LOVE lists.

[Cincydawg]

Everything you need to know about College FPI - Stats & Info- ESPN
Everything you need to know about College FPI - Stats & Info- ESPN

FPI is an attempt to quantify how we rank every team and choose favorites, I guess everyone here knows this.  It seems to work pretty well, according to the above.  It deals in probabilities, so it sort of can't be wrong in a sense.

[Mdot21]

Alabama wins. The end.