My utter disdain and contempt for any preseason poll notwithstanding, last year I played the role of sight-impaired squirrel to Alabama’s proverbial nut.
Despite being named CFT’s preseason No. 1 around this time last year, the Tide somehow managed to navigate its way through the Curse of Nostradumbass -- see Florida, 2010; OU, 2009 -- and end the season as BcS champions for the second time in three seasons.
This year, the curse has landed squarely at the feet of the Men of Troy.
Loaded with talent -- but not a lot of depth -- at nearly every position, and coming off a two-year bowl ban, USC has its sights set on returning to the halcyon days of Pete Carroll -- minus the NCAA sanctions of course. While the Trojans are No. 1 in the minds of CFT (and the Associated Press), a case could certainly be made for a handful of other teams as well.
In fact, you could make a solid, reasonable argument for the teams we have at Nos. 2-4 -- Oklahoma, Alabama and LSU, respectively -- to be the ones sitting atop the preseason rankings instead of USC. Taking it deeper, a case could be made for a baker’s dozen or more teams to fill out the remainder of the Top 10 as well.
Simply put, there are a lot of really good football teams, at least on paper, at the FBS level in 2012, which makes the meaningless exercise that is any and all preseason polls that much tougher.
So, without further ado… well, one additional ado: for all of Ben Kercheval’s conference-by-conference predictions, please click HERE as the latter did a helluva job doing all of the heavy lifting on this part of our 2012 preview. And there’s also a place where you can voice your opinion one vote at a time by casting your cyber ballot for who you feel should be the preseason No. 1.
Anyway, with the ado done, below is CFT’s complete Top 25 rankings, with links out to brief snapshots of the season that was and the season that will be. Now, flame away in the comments section...
1.) USC
2.) Oklahoma
3.) Alabama
4.) LSU
5.) Michigan
6.) Georgia
7.) Oregon
8.) West Virginia
9.) Wisconsin
10.) Florida State
11.) South Carolina
12.) Clemson
13.) Texas
14.) Michigan State
15.) Arkansas
16.) Virginia Tech
17.) Ohio State
18.) North Carolina
19.) Florida
20.) TCU
21.) Boise State
22.) Nebraska
23.) Stanford
24.) Louisville
25.) Virginia