Preseason outlook

In preparation for the first game of the season this Saturday, I did some looking around to see what I could find in the way of rankings and predictions. I was pleasantly surprised to find a pretty decent amount of coverage and some very thorough analysis in at least one example.

To give an overall ranking idea, I looked here and found OU at #7 which is a pretty good spot. They also have a short rundown of strengths and weaknesses of all the teams and ranks them all the way to 119. Nice site. Continuing for comparison purposes, I looked here and found three polls of interest. The AP, Coaches, and the CBSSports.com 120. All but the last one have OU at #8, with the last one putting OU at #10. I tend to put a bit more stock in the first two than the last one, but being in the top 10 is fine by me. One odd thing I noticed here is if you look at the Oklahoma team report it shows us at #10 on the Coaches poll also, but on the poll itself we are at #8. I'm guessing it was a glitch, but hard to say which is correct.

Then I looked here and found a bit of a surprise. The Congrove computer ratings have OU at #3 with Texas at #4. I realize that is only 4 spots above the highest rank so far, but in the top 10 that is a pretty big jump. Judging by the other information on that site, it looks like the analysis is extremely thorough and pretty accurate based on past performance. They have a historical portion where you can see all the past rankings and how they stack up. Take a look at the progression from '93 to the present here. As far as predictions go, they have a rather complete and thorough preview of how they think the season will play out here. They have USC vs. LSU for the championship and pick OU to play Louisiana in the Fiesta Bowl. Not a bad way to finish up, but having just played in the Fiesta Bowl last season I would hope for a bit more. Besides, though there was no shame in losing to an undefeated team last season, it still left a bad taste in my mouth :(

If you want to get down to specifics, they have a Big 12 preview as well here. They pick OU to win the South and Nebraska to win the North, with OU winning the conference. I could definitely see it going down the way they predict it. The interesting thing though is the way they show it. They actually show individual breakdowns of wins and losses for each team. If you click on a particular team, it goes further and shows the schedule and prediction down to fractional point spreads for each game. Impressive to say the least. For example, they have OU going undefeated with the closest spread on the OU vs. Texas game. The upcoming game against North Texas has a spread of 37.33 points. I guess we'll find out later today whether they know what they are talking about or not.

Personally, I would like to see a closer game than that. Not because I think North Texas is that good, but because I don't want our guys getting too cocky with Miami coming up right after. Even though most of the polls show Miami ranked pretty low, I think that is going to be a very challenging game for the Sooners. Miami is still a solid program and our new guys will still be working out the kinks a bit in only the second game of the season. I would prefer to work out the issues during this first game so they are ready to go for Miami and the rest after. Of course if they don't put up enough points that could hurt the ranking a bit. That won't matter as much at first, but when the first BCS poll comes out in October, I would prefer to be sitting strongly in the good.

All in all, I'm feeling pretty good about where we stand at this point in the season. I'll try to remember to post a follow up of sorts when the game is over.