Yea for Polls | by Jay

First poll of the preseason is out. USA Today/Coaches has the Irish at #3.

There's a good dispersal of #1 votes, unlike last year where Southern Cal got 60 first places, Texas got 2 and nobody got another. This year we've got first place votes for OSU, Texas, ND, Southern Cal, Oklahoma (whoops) and Auburn.

It's funny how teams rise and fall between the last bowl game and the beginning of the following summer practice. What magical things happen in the offseason that cause voters to drastically recalibrate their opinions, without a single down of football being played? (I can understand dropping a team down if key players graduated, but bumping other teams way up seems like so much crystal ball gazing. But hey, it's the Coaches Poll, where even Duke gets a vote at the beginning of every year. It's all hunches at this point anyway.)

Last year's final poll looked like this. And since the Rose Bowl, you've got this:

biggest gainers team 06 05 final diff 5 Oklahoma 1,320 274 +1,046 15 Michigan 778 32 +746 12 California 798 68 +730 10 Florida State 874 209 +665 17 Iowa 519 15 +504 3 Notre Dame 1,348 866 +482 6 Auburn 1,206 760 +446 13 Louisville 785 342 +443 8 Florida 1,054 718 +336 11 Miami 839 558 +281 23 Tennessee 216 0 +216 18 Clemson 493 310 +183 Arizona State 182 2 +180 22 Nebraska 261 109 +152 1 Ohio State 1,487 1357 +130

biggest losers team 06 05 final diff 7 West Virginia 1,202 1235 -33 14 Georgia 784 900 -116 3 USC 1,348 1483 -135 2 Texas 1,378 1550 -172 25 Texas Tech 198 422 -224 9 LSU 1,037 1281 -244 20 Oregon 373 837 -464 Boston College 87 584 -497 16 Virginia Tech 591 1176 -585 21 TCU 270 914 -644 Wisconsin 37 739 -702 UCLA 29 774 -745 24 Alabama 210 1066 -856 19 Penn State 406 1421 -1,015

Feeling a little whiplash there, Nittany Lions?