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June 28, 2011

National Championship 2: Oregon vs LSU - The Ranks

When the LSU Tigers and Oregon Ducks meet September 3 in Cowboys Stadium it will be really big.  This game is like BCS National Championship 2.  If there were some sort of playoff in place of a regular season almost everyone that follows college football would put both LSU and Oregon in just about any playoff scheme you might imagine.  A recent New Orleans Times-Picayune article reminded me just how good the 2011 Tigers and  Ducks are expected to be.  The Times-Picayune article was focused on the fact that LSU is ranked high by five of the top preseason magazines but naturally, I noticed that Oregon is also rank high by these top preseason magazines. Here is what I am talking about:  

  1. The Sporting News ranks LSU #1 and Oregon #5
  2. Lindy's ranks Oregon #3 and LSU #4
  3. Athlon ranks Oregon #3 and LSU #8
  4. Phil Steele ranks Oregon #4 and LSU #7
  5. Blue Ribbon ranks LSU #3 and Oregon #5.
The Times-Picayune article reminded me of a table that I saw on LSUsports.net (LSU's Official page) that listed several more expert rankings of the Tigers and Ducks 2011 squads. An aggregate of 18 expert ranks yielded that LSU is ranked an average of 3.06 and Oregon is ranked an average of 3.75.  So the average rank places LSU as the preseason #3 and Oregon as the preseason #4 but not by very much.

Seven of the 18 expert sources ranked Oregon ahead of LSU.  Meaning of course that 11 of the expert sources ranked LSU ahead of Oregon, no ties. Five expert sources, including The Sporting News, ranked LSU #1.  While none of the expert sources ranked Oregon #1, two expert sources, Sports Illustrated's Andy Staples and the Orlando Sentinel's Matt Murschel, ranked Oregon #2.

I don't think there is any truly accurate way to guess a team's rank prior to the first game.  I saw somewhere that Auburn was ranked #22 preseason last year.  However, these high preseason ranking suggest that the nation is in for show September 3rd. 

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