More On Preseason Polls

I found Preseason.stassen.com on a messageboard a few weeks ago.  It is one of those websites that you look at and, 30-minutes later, you wonder where the time went. The site compiles preseason rankings from various publications and comes up with a set of composite rankings. The 2006 Preseason Consensus Rankings are currently available over there. Their preliminary set shows Notre Dame as the current preseason favorite, followed closely by Ohio State.  In order, Oklahoma, West Virginia, USC, Texas, Auburn, Florida, LSU, and Cal round out the top 10.  Most sports fans take preseason rankings with a grain of salt, but this listing is, at the very least, a bit more interesting since it pools all of the preseason rankings, somewhat minimizing media and location biases. It is worth noting that the 2005 preseason consensus top 25 correctly showed Southern Cal and Texas as the top 2 teams.  But, it also picked three of the more disappointing teams of the season (Tennessee, Michigan, and Oklahoma) to finish in spots 3-5. Over the past five seasons, Phil Steele has been the most accurate at correctly predicting the final rankings. The Sporting News and Lindy's have also had a pretty solid rate of success. At the other end of the spectrum are ATS Consultants, Gameplan, and (surprisingly) Street & Smith; all of whom have shown little more accuracy than your average college football fan.