I don't think it's lazy. I do think it's pointless. Especially in the free agency era.
It might be one thing in the old system to look at teams that maybe did well last year and are low on returning starters, or teams who did poorly last year but were young, and really understand how the teams are likely to do this year with the departures/returnees. You have some young team maybe that finished 6-6 last year but you could see noticeable development through the year and you put them in your top 25 as a "surprise" team. Or you have a team that you think got lucky in a few very close games last year to finish at 10-2, returns their skill players but loses a bunch of big uglies in the trenches, so you fade them and don't include them at all.
Seems to me now that it's more and more a crapshoot. You have to try to project a bunch of players based on what they did (or didn't) do at their LAST team, coming into a new system, based maybe on a spring game and coachspeak. I have to think in this new era of CFB, getting it right more often than not means getting lucky.