Coaches Say ACC = WAC

The first USA Today Coaches' Poll was released yesterday. I do not have any historical data on the relevance of the first poll of each season but I could care less. I am really fired up for college football this year and this gives me a chance to talk about it. As was predicted during last season's Rose Bowl the USC Trojans are the overwhelming #1. They received 45 of a possible 60 1st place votes. With a lot of stars returning and a who's who of high school All-Americans waiting for their chance to shine, USC looks like a tough team.

A fair number of people in the Northwest want to hate on USC but their record speaks for itself. They will be getting everyone's best game and have to travel to Autzen this year. Unfortunately, Autzen is no longer the intimidating venue for opponents it once was. The Ducks are 15-9 (.625) at home against BCS Conference schools in the last 5 years. (I value games against non-BCS teams very lightly and choose not to count them. We can get into my theories on playing cupcake teams at a later time.) Whatever your belief on using non-BCS victories in compiling historical information, we can agree that hopefully Autzen becomes the venue it was in the late 1990s. I'd be remiss not to mention that if you count the 'others receiving votes' category the Ducks are 36th. Here's to hoping that improves as the season wears on. (The 2nd game of the season will likely dictate how fast that does or does not happen.)

I enjoy looking at conference breakdowns in the rankings so have provided that for the first poll of the season below. We'll have to revisit this at the end of the year to see how it panned out.

SEC: 6
Big Ten: 4
Big XII: 4
Pac-10: 3
Big East: 3
ACC: 2
WAC: 2
MWC: 1