As I’m sure everyone reading this already knows, the AP’s pre-season poll came out Saturday with the obligatory fanfare and ado. Unfortunately, no Conference USA team was even close to cracking the Top 25. Tulsa was the conference’s lone representative in the “Others Receiving Votes” category with 7 total points. In contrast, in the USA Today coaches’ poll, UCF not only joined Tulsa in the ORV, but the Knights finished ahead of them 2 points to 1.
Obviously, this is not a good starting point for CUSA, who has yet place a team in the final Top 25 of either poll since the 2005 reconfiguration, but that’s hardly anything new or worthy of a blog entry. It does, however, fall pretty much in line with where the 2007 polls ended (see previous link), with Tulsa landing 4 points in the AP and 5 in the USAT and UCF picking up 4 points from the coaches.
That last tidbit begs the question: just how much thought goes into these polls, especially when it comes to teams not in the BCS-AQ conferences? Apparently, the coaches who included UCF in their rankings are pretty optimistic about UCF picking up right where they left off despite the Knights losing their top running back—as well as the nation’s—in Kevin Smith, and his understudies having to work behind an offensive line sans 3 of last year’s starters. That’s a lot to overcome and expect to not miss a beat.
In Tulsa’s case, it can be argued that the Golden Hurricane didn’t get the love it deserved in the first place, having finished last season at 10-3 and walloping Bowling Green in the GMAC Bowl, but it’s easy to understand the sentiment when Tulsa in turn got almost equally walloped by Oklahoma early in the season and failed to beat UCF in two attempts, including the CUSA Championship game. Less-than-impressive showings vs. 2007’s CUSA dregs didn’t help their case, either, so it really was a stretch to argue them a Top 25 team at the end of last year (especially after UCF’s boredom-inducing loss to Mississippi State in the Liberty Bowl). Nonetheless, it’s hard to explain how Tulsa gets nearly double the votes in the 2008 preseason poll than it did in the final 2007 poll when the ‘Cane is replacing not only its starting QB, but its CUSA Offensive Player of the Year starting QB in Paul Smith (who obviously had to beat out UCF’s Smith for the honor). Granted, for all we know Tulsa’s offense can make any decent QB a record-breaker (it seems like Smith had been there a decade), but still, that’s a big question mark when it comes to Tulsa being better than they were last season.
What FTF really doesn’t understand is the lack of love for East Carolina. Last year, the Pirates finished 7-5 (6-2 in-conference), started the season by playing Virginia Tech within 10 in Blacksburg, and ended it by stunning Top 25 Boise State in the Hawaii Bowl. They’re also easily one of the best-off CUSA teams (if not the best) in terms of returning personnel. While ECU does move into 2008 without Chris Johnson, who led the nation in all-purpose yards last year, the Pirates do return their leading passer and second-leading rusher in QB Patrick Pinkney, their leading receiver in Jamar Bryant, and also have a CUSA All-Freshman performer, Jonathan Williams, poised as the replacement for Johnson. They also return the vast majority of their defense. By all indications, if anyone in CUSA is in a position to make a run at the polls this year, it is East Carolina. That Tulsa and UCF are getting votes (which is reasonable in itself; don’t get me wrong) while the Pirates aren’t shows you just how much the pollsters actually do their “mid major” homework as opposed to just copying-and-pasting the previous season’s final standings and calling it a prediction.
