SEC Apologists Already Using AP Preseason Poll To Sell Biased, Inaccurate Arguments

The preseason Associated Press Top 25 poll is out, and as usual, it has little-to-no predictive value. But none of that has stopped the SEC and its promoters at ESPN from referencing it to support their contention that the SEC is the best, most amazing, most difficult, most incredible, and most perfect conference to ever exist.

This phenomenon has become a yearly tradition in college football: AP Poll voters consistently overrate SEC teams in the preseason polls, thanks in large part to the name value and program tradition connected to many of the conference's schools. Then, as the season plays out, after many SEC teams play four non-conference games to start the year, those teams can point to the number of wins or games against AP Top 25 teams as evidence of their strength of schedule.

Peter Burns from ESPN's SEC Network expressed it perfectly. "LSU, Oklahoma, Florida and Mississippi State all have more top-25 teams on their schedule (7) than Penn State (3) & Indiana (3) play combined (6)," he posted. "Another reason why everyone laughed at Big 10 when they tried to flex about the ‘toughness’ of their 9 game conference schedule." 

Couldn't be a more perfect example of SEC talking points than that. Like it was written by Greg Sankey's assistants, even.

Texas and QB Arch Manning go into the season ranked first in the AP Top 25 Poll. (Photo by Todd Kirkland/Getty Images)

SEC Is Deep, Tough, Still Benefits From AP Preseason Poll

As an example of how this plays out in practice, look at the 2024 preseason AP Poll.

Georgia was preseason No. 1. Texas No. 4, Alabama fifth, Ole Miss sixth, Missouri 11th, LSU 13th, Tennessee 15th, Oklahoma 16th, and Texas A&M 20th. A&M, LSU and Oklahoma finished unranked. Alabama was 17th, Ole Miss lost five spots and fell to No. 11. Missouri fell to 22nd. Georgia dropped to sixth. Texas stayed at No. 4, and Tennessee moved up to ninth. Only the Vols improved on their preseason ranking, and just two finished equal to it.

Is this some grand conspiracy from AP voters to help the SEC? Of course not. It's just a natural result of the uncertainties of preseason rankings, the value of name recognition, and the difficulties of playing tough schedules. There's attrition, underperformance, injuries, and surprises. It's what we love about college football. It also makes preseason polls unreliable at determining strength of schedule.

But it's still being used that way, especially by people like Peter, because it suits their narrative. Now that the preseason poll is out, he and they can use it to argue that the SEC schedule is impossible and harder, and so on, because of where teams ranked in August. And SEC schools will generally play difficult schedules. That doesn't mean they deserve this level of fawning adoration.

For example, we can look at the FEI rankings created by advanced analytics, not human voters. 

RELATED: New College Football Analytical Rankings Show SEC, Big Ten Dominance Over ACC, Big 12

In that ranking, USC is 14th, instead of unranked. Minnesota is 22nd, instead of unranked. South Carolina is 24th instead of 13th. LSU is 11th instead of ninth. Tennessee is 10th instead of 24th. Ohio State is first. Texas is sixth, instead of first in the AP Poll. These differences have huge impacts throughout the entirety of the season, by setting expectations. They shouldn't. 

Here's another example: by the analytics, Penn State actually has four games against top-25 teams: Oregon, Ohio State, Indiana and Iowa. They play the No. 1 and 3 teams by FEI – one on the road. Certainly sounds a bit different put that way, doesn't it? 

Look at polls, sure. Just know that preseason ones aren't always that great.