The HLS Totally Non-Homer Top 25 – Preseason Edition 2008 : #15 – #6

If you’d like to know all there is to know about THLSTNHT25-PE, click here, then click here to read about those teams that didn’t quite make the cut, then click here to learn about our #25-#16 teams.

And once you’ve finished with all that, please move forward, and learn all there is to know we had time to write down about THLSTNHT25-PE: #15-#6, in which we hurry through so that we may get on with talking about our projected #1-#5:

• #15 Arizona State: Highest Position in a voter’s ballot: 11. Average rank among all ballots: 16.66. Returning the highest number of starters in the Pac-10, a team that started out 8-0 last season during what most expected to be a "rebuilding year," now may have their sights set on contending for a national championship. Coach Dennis Erickson gave Sun Devil fans a whiplash of joy in his first year at the helm in Tempe, and there's little reason to expect momentum to fall off in 2008, particularly with veteran signal-caller and potential-Pac-10-career-passing-yardage-record-holder Rudy Carpenter.
• #14 Michigan State: Highest Position in a voter’s ballot: 9. Average rank among all ballots: 15.66. A vote for MSU seems to be a vote of confidence in 2nd year coach Mark Dantonio. After all, the Spartans did end up going 7-6 in 2007 after starting off 4-0. And, as Kirk Herbstreit so famously said, "That's why they're Michigan State." But gone, now, are the days of John "The" Smith. Hopefully a nice, balanced purge of some old personalities while returning 7 offensive starters and 6 defensive starters will allow the Spartans to have a nice, balanced season sans El Smith Tailspin. MSU did only suffer one real head-scratcher of a loss against Northwestern. 4 of their other 5 losses occurred against teams ranked in the top 15 at game time.
• #14 BYU: Highest Position in a voter’s ballot: 9. Average rank among all ballots: 15.66. After leading the Cougars to an 11-2 season that nearly managed to really screw with the BCS system in 2007, Bronco Mendenhall must replace 8 starters on defense. Luckily, they need to replace just 1 starter on offense. Besides, using a system best described as "The Winged-T of Defense," it's not hard to imagine that the adjustments being made by opposing offenses will help mask some of the Cougars' defensive holes. And oh, by the way, they still get to play in the MWC no matter who starts on defense.
• #12 Wisconsin: Highest Position in a voter’s ballot: 6. Average rank among all ballots: 15.33. The Badgers have to like the way things are looking in the Big 10. Michigan is set up for a down/rebuilding year during a season when Wisconsin must match up against the Skunkbears and Ohio State in consecutive weeks. What probably looked like a brutal 3 weeks of games against Michigan, OSU, and PSU now seems like a time of real possibility to take command in the Big Televen, particularly since the badgers have nearly their entire team back from a 9 win, 2007 season. And while we get this gut feeling that HC Bret Bielema is probably areal S.O.B., we know for a fact that he's a clever S.O.B.
• #11 Virginia Tech: Highest Position in a voter’s ballot: 8. Average rank among all ballots: 12. This team went 11-3 in 2007 with losses to a #2 LSU (and eventual MNC), #2 BC, and #8 Kansas. They lose a bunch of guys in 2008, particularly on the defense, and HC Beamer is already talking about how there will be no QB controversy, which, as we all know, guarantees a QB controversy. Oh yeah, and they also lost leading tailback Branden Ore to a dismissal, their #2 tailback to an injury, and their #3 tailback to, what, destiny? (No. It was also injury.) So, um, what are they doing up here at #11 in the HLSTNHT25-PE? No idea. We're very busy people and sometimes people make mistakes. Besides, you wont remember any of these rankings in January anyway, and when the Hokies win 9+ this year, we'll be sure to tell you we told you so.
• #10 Ohio State: Highest Position in a voter’s ballot: 2. Average rank among all ballots: 11.33. Ohio State looked mighty good last year right up until they collided with the buzzsaw that was LSU in the MNC game. Then they looked as bad as they looked in their previous MNC game. But hey, at least they were invited to the dance, right? This year, the Bucknuts look forward to replacing whoever was trying to replace Troy Smith at QB with all-everything, first-year-frosh Terrelle Pryor. We have to admit, it does sort of feel like OSU is up here in the top 10 simply by virtue of being king of the Big Televen hill until someone out there knocks them off. It does help a lot that they get to figure out their QB/passing-game while probable Heisman contender Beanie Wells runs over everything in his path. How many college football players are so loved as to earn their own fan-site?
• #9 Auburn: Highest Position in a voter’s ballot: 9. Average rank among all ballots: 11. What we like about Auburn is that, despite new offensive and defensive coordinators, and, a "new" offensive scheme, the Tigers return 15 very savvy starters - so savvy that we are forced to place "new" in "quotation marks," because we saw what these guys can do with that "new" scheme and about a week of practice in the form of a season-high 423 yards of offense against Clemson in the Chick-fil-A Bowl. (Excuse me: Mmmmmmm.... Chick-fil-A......) We'll take that as a solid preview of things to come in 2008 after a full Spring and Fall-camp. So long as they can overcome Tommy Tuberville's annual mental-meltdown over the difficulty of SEC competition, the Tigers could well sneak up on an unsuspecting, lacking-in-current-game-film SEC. We're not the only ones who think so.
• #8 Missouri: Highest Position in a voter’s ballot: 5. Average rank among all ballots: 9.66. Having gone 12-2 last year and garnering a lot of attention for a program usually better known for almost beating Nebraska, these Tigers look to build on that momentum by returning 10 starters on defense and 2007 Heisman finalist Chase Daniel (sans 's', Bob Davie) behind center. They've got a prime-time game against Illinois to start the season August 30th and then take all of September off while practicing against the likes of SE Missouri St., Nevada, and Buffalo before providing a litmus test for Nebraska. Still, with the exception of Texas at the Midway point, and Kansas to end the season, there's little reason to think that 2008 wont look a lot like 2007.
• #7 Clemson: Highest Position in a voter’s ballot: 4. Average rank among all ballots: 9.33. This has to be the year for Clemson, right? Bid Daddy Bowden and FSU are down, which is good for the Tigers (notice we have 3 Tigers in a row?), since Clemson hasn't won the ACC since 1991 - 1 year before Pappa Bumfuzzled and the Seminoles invaded the ACC. This all rests on the capable (?) shoulders of Tommy Bowden and the often-dazzling backfield of James Davis and CJ Spiller. And while we don't know if T. Bowden's seat is warm this year, if they can't win the league this year, why not make the Bowden turnover a two-fer special? What probably keeps Tommy up at night, aside from the idea that his father just might out-last him in the ACC, is that they've got real personnel problems on the offensive line.
• #6 LSU: Highest Position in a voter’s ballot: 1. Average rank among all ballots: 6. After Notre Dame played LSU in the 2007 Sugar Bowl, a lot of Irish fans thought the Tigers (seriously people, how about some creativity?) might be the best squad in the land, although we figured LSU would take a hit while trying to use a new QB in 2007. But it turned out we were only partly right. They didn't have any trouble with a new QB at all. This year, after losing Flynn to graduation and Perilloux to the ATF or some other federal agency, the Tigers must again use an unknown quantity at QB, and they have to replace most of their oh-my-God-cover-the-baby's-eyes-scary defense. And we still haven't mentioned that the architect of all that defensive pain left to HC Nebraska. Still, you don't win the MNC the previous year, exist in one of the most talent-rich areas of the country, and then get knocked out of many pre-season top-10s, so here they are at #6.