College Football fans wait several months for the AP/Coaches preseason polls to come out in early August and buy several of the preseason magazines including mine. Naturally I have always found these polls to be interesting and for the last several years I have projected the preseason AP Top 10 prior to the season and have hit on at least 9 of the 10 teams each year and last year hit all 10! This year I expanded my projection to 26 teams and today with the USA Today

Coaches Poll being released I thought it would be a good time to analyze how I did FOUR months ago with my prediction.
First way back on April 6, I put out my projected preseason AP Top 26, I will mentioned it numerous times that this was NOT MY preseason Top 26 for next year, but it is where I project the AP Top 26 to come out at the start of the season. I have also strategically projected 26 teams and not 25 because I felt one of the bottom 3-4 teams could slip due to injuries, suspensions, transfers or preseason magazine projections.

With today’s coaches poll being released I thought I would get a first analysis of how my new expanded projection did and was thoroughly pleased! First, all 26 teams that I projected made the top 26! I had all 13 teams in the Coaches’ Top 13 projected to be placed there FOUR months ago. Notre Dame who lost their starting quarterback in late May was the only team that I ranked in the Top 10 to not make the it (they are #11) and the team I projected to be #11 four months ago Clemson, move up and filled their spot.

Some noteworthy moves since my projection are Oklahoma St, who I projected to be #22 in April was #14 in the Coaches Poll and my preseason college football magazine might have had something to do with that as I had the Cowboys #8. TCU, which has seen their star DE suspended for the first couple of games was projected by me in April to be at #15. They dropped 5 spots and were #20 in the Coaches Poll (I had them #21 in my magazine).

You can now see that there is really no need to wait those agonizing five months prior to the season to see if your team will be ranked in the preseason Top 10/25…just make sure you are checking out my blog in early Spring for my projected AP Top 25!

Projected Poll Results

Let me know what you think of this breakdown on Facebook or Twitter!

Only 28 Days Left Until the First College Football Game!