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Does Dantonio get to vote?

nothing against osu, or that they're undeserving of #2 (or #1 for that matter), but i was really hoping for fsu/bama to be 1/2.

Aside from hiring the head coach of the fourth place team in the American West Division, what exactly has Texas done over the off season in order to catapult themselves from a 5-win team to the Top 25?

The board for the 2017 season: Major Applewhite, Houston; David Bailiff, Rice; David Beaty, Kansas; Bret Bielema, Arkansas; Craig Bohl, Wyoming; John Bonamego, Central Michigan; Terry Bowden, Akron; Jeff Brohm, Purdue; Matt Campbell, Iowa State; Rod Carey, Northern Illinois; Mark Dantonio, Michigan State; Butch Davis, Florida International; Dave Doeren, North Carolina State; DJ Durkin, Maryland; Shawn Elliott, Georgia State; Larry Fedora, North Carolina; Luke Fickell, Cincinnati; Jimbo Fisher, Florida State; P.J. Fleck, Minnesota; James Franklin, Penn State; Willie Fritz, Tulane; Justin Fuente, Virginia Tech; Bryan Harsin, Boise State; Clay Helton, Southern California; Tom Herman, Texas; Doc Holliday, Marshall; Mark Hudspeth, Louisiana-Lafayette; Paul Johnson, Georgia Tech; Joey Jones, South Alabama; Mike Leach, Washington State; Lance Leipold, Buffalo; Tim Lester, Western Michigan; Seth Littrell, North Texas; Rocky Long, San Diego State; Mike MacIntyre, Colorado; Gus Malzahn, Auburn; Derek Mason, Vanderbilt; Urban Meyer, Ohio State; Jeff Monken, Army; Philip Montgomery, Tulsa; Scottie Montgomery, East Carolina; Jim Mora, UCLA; Dan Mullen, Mississippi State; Pat Narduzzi, Pittsburgh; Ken Niumatalolo, Navy; Barry Odom, Missouri; Gary Patterson, TCU; Mike Riley, Nebraska; Rich Rodriguez, Arizona; Nick Rolovich, Hawaii; Nick Saban, Alabama; Tony Sanchez, UNLV; Mike Sanford Jr., Western Kentucky; Scott Satterfield, Appalachian State; Bill Snyder, Kansas State; Frank Solich, Ohio; Rick Stockstill, Middle Tennessee; Mark Stoops, Kentucky; Tyson Summers, Georgia Southern; Dabo Swinney, Clemson; Matt Wells, Utah State; Mark Whipple, Massachusetts; Kyle Whittingham, Utah; Bobby Wilder, Old Dominion; Everett Withers, Texas State.

Could have been Stoops or even Fickell.

Aside from hiring the head coach of the fourth place team in the American West Division, what exactly has Texas done over the off season in order to catapult themselves from a 5-win team to the Top 25?

Hmmm, I sort of doubt this is a serious question, but I'll answer it in a serous way because I'm bored.

Reasons
- Texas played well below the way a team with it's numbers tends to. So it had a bad record because it lost close games. Those tend to even out, so a bump up is likely. Herman's first team played above where its numbers said it should, his second was about where they said it should be, give or take weird inconsistency.
- Texas returns a high-potential QB off a good first season. They return their top 3 receivers, a mess of offensive linemen of a team with solid rushing numbers. They return almost everyone on a defense that was super young last year and solid to good in some spots.
- While their head coach had a fourth-place team (tied-third in most parlances) last year, they also got a new coach with an winning percentage of 84 and as many top-10 finishes as either Chryst or Franklin (selective statting is silly BTW).

Their schedule is not easy, though they get new coaches at Baylor and Oklahoma. The roster should have a pretty good blue chip ratio, though 247 doesn't have that updated. Those bottom three spots often end with name teams with 4 or even five losses, so it's not some great signifier.

These are all solid enough reasons. But the most important reason is polls are generally without meaning, the format is designed to lean to bland consensus and all reasons are fine because college football is deeply bonkers and often doesn't follow a script. Teams don't do anything to move up or down because no one even agrees on how they're trying to rank the teams.

The good news is that such polls no longer have any impact on anything beyond discussion.


We all know the coaches who vote spend perhaps 2 minutes on this exercise.


I bet if we here had an internal poll of 15 or so of us, it would mostly look about the same (aside from a possible B1G weighting).


It would differ past 15 or so.


Helmetosity is worth a lot in preseason polls.


It's easier usually to talk about over rated teams than find under rated teams.


I'm getting a bit encouraged about the Dawgs having a decent OL and thus a pretty good year.