The HLS Totally Non-Homer Top 25 - Preseason Edition 2008 : #5 - #1
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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 here to learn about teams #15-#6.
And once you’ve finished with all that, please move forward, and learn all there is to know about THLSTNHT25-PE: #5-#1, in which we secretly harbor the belief that the Irish really could beat everyone on this list, what though the ods…
#5 Southern Cal: Highest Position in a voter’s ballot: 3. Average rank among all ballots: 5.33. A team with so much talent that the fact they return 4 starters on offense and 7 of defense just, well, doesn’t seem to matter. During the Pete Carroll era, the Trojans have redefined “reloading.” Still, with all that talent, Southern Cal has managed some really strange results, including losing to Stanford last year and an inept UCLA the year before. Teams that, at the time, had no business giving an elite program any problems. This season, they start Mark Sanchez at Quarterback, and if his abuse of the Notre Dame secondary in 2007 is any indication of ability (good question), then for about the umpteenth consecutive season, the Trojans will have excellent QB play. Unlike Palmer, Leinart, or Booty before him, Sanchez can and will at times run to give Southern Cal just what it’s been sorely lacking: another weapon. Pete Carroll also likes to gush about Joe McKnight, using Reggie Bush as the bar against which to measure Joe. All their talent at the skill positions could flounder, however, if Southern Cal has a hard time replacing all but 1 starting offensive lineman. And, somewhat interestingly, offensive line is the one area Carroll has had relative difficulty recruiting. Emphasis on “relative.” Still, in what can only be described as a bit of serendipity for the Trojans, there are 5 players on th the OL who have some sort of starting experience due to the huge number of injuries across 2007’s starting line. The defensive unit is chock full o’talent, but it seems like each sub-unit took a hit in the form of players moving on to the NFL. Last year we said SoCal’s defense could well be one of the best ever. This year, not so much, but the step down in potential from best ever would still mean they’re sitting pretty. Southern Cal opens the season at Virginia and follow that up 2 weeks later with Ohio State in LA. They get their top Pac-10 competition at home as well as Notre Dame. Ultimately, while their scheduling is to be applauded, it also works out for a nice ride the the championship game (and deservedly so) if they go undefeated. In other words, it’s not likely any other teams could squeeze them out of a MNC shot.
#4 Georgia: Highest Position in a voter’s ballot: 3. Average rank among all ballots: 5. Running back Knowshon Moreno is arguably the most talented back in the country, and surrounding him is the largest number of returning starters in the SEC. Knowshon ran for 1300+ yards last season and he wasn’t even a starter for the first 3 games. Meanwhile, the Bulldogs must play Florida, Auburn, LSU, and South Carolina on the road, but Mark Richt’s away-game winning percentage is 86%. Plus, they’ve got a very good QB in Matt Stafford, a defense stacked with talent that could match up against anyone in the country, and, thanks to HC Mark Richt’s own commitment to Special Teams excellence, one of the most consistently excellent special teams units in the country. Also of note, before the last game of 2006 (against GT) Richt turned over play calling duties to young (and apparently fertile) OC Mike Bobo. Why? Because Richt felt that calling plays was hurting his ability to emotionally lead his team from the sidelines. The result? A jump of 7+ points per game, 50 yards rushing/game, and 10+ in turnover margin while Richt lead his team to 7 wins in a row to finish the season. Could this bode well for Weis and his decision to relinquish play-calling duties?
#3 Texas: Highest Position in a voter’s ballot: 2. Average rank among all ballots: 4. We’re always fascinated when we talk to a Texas fan or resident and hear that the relationship between HC Mack Brown and Horns fans is tenuous. How can that be the case for a guy that’s won a NC? Well, maybe it’s just that the fans realize that in a state as talent-rich as Texas, any decent coach should be able to win a NC, particularly when your QB is an unstoppable force of nature. As for Texas’ fortunes this year, the 2 things we really like are the capability of QB Colt McCoy when he’s not getting his spine checked out and what should be one of the top-5 offensive lines in the country. What we don’t like is that QB and OL practically make up the entirety of the returning starters on Brown’s roster. However, all of the first 5 weeks of the season lay out nicely for Texas as they take on Florida Atlantic, UTEP, Arkansas, and Rice before getting a bye week just before their first (probably) real test out of Colorado. That’s a full month and more to work out the kinks with new starters before their season really even begins. And given Mack Brown’s “new” coaching philosophy, he’ll probably have the Horns firing on all cylinders by October (so long as he really sticks to his new philosophy).
#3 Florida: Highest Position in a voter’s ballot: 1. Average rank among all ballots: 4. Can a single man put a team in contention for a national championship? Yes, if that man is Tim Tebow. Get to know Mr. Tebow now, because he’s clearly setting himself up for a run at some high level government office many years from now after giving it a go in the pros as a linebacker. The most perfect athlete in all the land for Urban Meyer’s Pop-Warner-on-HGH system, Tim will run over, around, and through defenses this year, delivering body-blow after body-blow until it’s just the right time for a devastating hook in the form of Percy Harvin Jr. (so long as his ankle holds up). Oh sure, the Gators won the MNC 2 years ago, but Urban’s true “genius” is only now just peaking as the Florida offense produced 42.5 points per game in 2007, up nearly 2 touchdowns from 2006 when the Florida-Jump-Hook-Pass play still looked awkward even for the Florida-Jump-Hook-Pass play. Now Tebow is running that and many other bizarre looking plays that create a fragile alliance between eligible receiver rules and the laws of physics to perfection. And now they’ll be running the system in a “hurry up” mode to make opposing defenses feel like they might simply die from exhaustion before the game is decided. Tim Tebow Fever, catch it! Hey, speaking of hot things like fevers, has the Florida defense stopped applying aloe to their rears after the Capital One game? Nice way to send Carr out, fellas. That’s okay, according to Phil Steele, 48% of the starts last year were made by freshman and sophomore Gators. They’ve got lots of time to learn how to defend the pass.
#1 Oklahoma: Highest Position in a voter’s ballot: 1. Average rank among all ballots: 2.33. I’m sort of proud of this pick by HLS. It’s not, as far as I can tell, the sexy pick. Seems like Georgia fits that bill this summer. But there are elements to the Sooners this year that are tough for us to ignore. For starters, their QB (Sam Bradford) does not miss when he throws the ball. He completed 69.5% of his passes last year. And it’s not like he just threw 10-12 passes a game. The Sooners averaged 258 yards passing last year. And to protect the QB, Mike Stoops can line up the best offensive line in the country (there will be no argument about this until someone can prove it wrong with actual game play). In between all the hanging out in the pocket, completing passes for nice yardage, the Sooners like to mix it up here and there with a rushing game that averaged 191 yards/gm in 2007. And now, because of the new clock rules, Oklahoma will be running the offense in “no-huddle” mode. So the offense that averaged 42.3 yardspoints per game last year could very well average even more this year, particularly as they ravage the first 6 weeks of the season in preparation for the 2nd half of the season. If ever there was a schedule designed to help win a MNC, this is it. You get to play a historical power in Washington while they’re under the weight of Willingham, then really debut your finely-tuned team against Texas on national television to really kick off your campaign. Then you play the 2nd half of the season against competition just good enough to force the media to pay attention even if you aren’t playing in the “game of the week.” There are of course, things that give us pause about the Sooners. First, they 2 regular season losses last year didn’t happen against a Texas. They happened against unranked Colorado and Texas Tech. However, the Colorado loss came before the Texas game (a Sooner win) and the TT loss came a week ahead of the win over Oklahoma State. Look ahead to rivalry games much, Sooner players? Still, we suspect those losses will serve as excellent coach-speak lessons learned as Bob Stoops no doubt harps on some variation of the “one game at a time” mantra on the way to a potential MNC season.
Well, that was fun, wasn’t it? Thank god for the invention of the Top 25, otherwise we’d have had much less to write about in June and July. We’d also have had less motivation to slog thru the 8pt font of Phil Steele late at night while the wife wasn’t watching. Our eyes are tired, but our souls are better for it.
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#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 
#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.” 
#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 
#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., 
#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 
#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 
#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. 
#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 
#7 Clemson: Highest Position in a voter’s ballot: 4. Average rank among all ballots: 9.33. 
#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, 
Utah: Highest place in a voter’s ballot: 16th. Average rank among all ballots: 22.66. After starting the 2007 season with a 1-3 record, the Utes may have been wondering if the program really had fallen on the expected hard times post-Urban Meyer. But the one win was a 44-6 blow-out of the “#11″ UCLA. Of course, none of us really understood just how bad UCLA was that early in the season, but the Utes did manage to pull together 8 more wins and just one more loss to finish out the season. That’s a good coaching job no matter what conference you’re in, and no matter how many Wyomings and New Mexicos you get to play.
Florida State: Highest place in a voter’s ballot: 18th. Average rank among all ballots: 23.33. The ‘Noles are probably just happy to be stuck in neutral with a 2007 record of 7-6 and a “hard fought” bowl loss to Kentucky as the fans, and probably some of the players, anxiously await the retirement celebrations for Bobby Bowden that will also (more importantly?) herald the dawning of the Jimbo Fisher era.
Tennessee: Highest place in a voter’s ballot: 20th. Average rank among all ballots: 23.33. Seems like a weird notion that a coach that has a 77% winning percentage over 17 years and a national championship under his extended belt would be on the hotseat, but that’s the very position that Phil Fulmer finds himself in, and you can smell the frying fat all the way up here in Chicago (no, that’s not Krispy Kreme). They went 10-4 last year, but Tennessee is only 3-5 in bowl games since the NC and they’ve only appeared in 1 BCS game in that time.
Georgia Tech: Highest place in a voter’s ballot: 23rd. Average rank among all ballots: 24. No, no. The rather lofty heights for a program still recovering from the Chan Gailey era has nothing to do with the fact that the new coach took a bunch of really tiny kids and beat Notre Dame last season. Ok, yeah, it’s probably got everything to do with that. Last year’s 7-6 record does say one thing about the fans of Georgia Tech, however: They’re probably not gonna be real happy with a “rebuilding” season that looks like 3-9 in 2008.
Nebraska: Highest place in a voter’s ballot: 21st. Average rank among all ballots: 24.33. Lots of talk about “the return to Nebraska Football,” with the arrival of Bo Pelini. And lots of harumphing and usage of the term “black shirts,” given Pelini’s defensive prowess. I guess we’ll just have to wait an see.
Wake Forest: Highest place in a voter’s ballot: 21st. Average rank among all ballots: 24.33. After a 9-4 record last year (at Wake!) and a BCS appearance the year before (at Wake!), some may be surprised to learn that Jim Grobe is still the HC (at Wake!). Hate to say it, but you know all of those, “John McCain is so old” jokes? All ripped off from their original “Jim Grobe is so old” format.
UConn: Highest place in a voter’s ballot: 23rd. Average rank among all ballots: 25. Remember when UConn didn’t even have a D1 football program? In 2003 they finally had a full 85-man scholarship roster, and in 2004, Randy Edsall lead them to their first bowl game win. But then they suffered a bit of a dip, during a time with just 6 seniors on the roster (sound familiar?), and it took until 2007 to really recover with a 9-4 record and co-Big East Championship.
Fresno State: Highest place in a voter’s ballot: 23rd. Average rank among all ballots: 25. Pat Hill and the Bulldogs recovered from a brutal 4-8 season in 2006 with a nice 9-4 season last year along with a blow-out bowl game win over GaTech when the Jackets were probably not all that into it. This year they return 17 starters, including 10 on an offense that ramped up their point production by 10 ppg last year.
Pitt: Highest place in a voter’s ballot: 24th. Average rank among all ballots: 25. Any vote for Pitt is less a vote for head coach Dave Wannstedt, and more a vote for RB LeSean McCoy. McCoy is the sort of talent that could very well carry a team like Pitt, in a league like the Big East to a record of 9-3 in the regular season, particularly against a slate that starts with Bowling Green, Buffalo, and Iowa.
Air Force: Highest place in a voter’s ballot: 25th. Average rank among all ballots: 25.66. Sharing the honor of being one of only 2 military academies to beat Notre Dame in 2007, the Falcons put together a 9-4 record while implementing Troy Calhoun’s more “modern” offense. But last year this squad featured a very senior and savvy roster. This year, the Falcons only return 8 starters - 3 on offense. Yikes.
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