I'm not sure how you'd reasonably put together a real effort at pre-season rankings, early or not. The only school I remotely try to keep track of anymore--and that, just barely--is of course LSU, and we have something like a 66-player turnover from last season. If we're even remotely the norm, I don't know how that many guys who haven't played together, worked with the staff, etc. can have any sort of accurate forecast.
Maybe pre-season rankings were always click-bait, but at least I used to think intelligent people could make reasonable arguments for their opinions (ELA, for example). Now.....I just don't get the point of trying to see through the chaos.