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R-E-S-P-E-C-T Who's getting too much of it? Too little of it?
"Ov-er-rat-ed." They're just four measly syllables, yet sometimes they're all it takes to rile up a particularly defensive fan -- or kick him when he's down. And while you don't hear an "underrated" chant all that often, try making it through a postgame player interview without hearing one of the following: We just felt like no one's giving us any respect. ... We wanted to come out and prove all the doubters wrong. ...
Or: But just whose complaints of disrespect are justified? And by the same token, which underachieving teams do we keep making the same mistake of rating too high? We're nearing that time of year for the deluge of preseason rankings that are sure to doom a few unqualified recipients to a season of disappointment, while motivating a few of their overlooked counterparts to take the nation by storm. Therefore, it seemed appropriate to take a look back at the past five years and find out which teams most overwhelmingly failed to live up to their preseason hype, and which outdid theirs most dramatically. For each season, a team was assigned either a positive or negative number corresponding with how much higher or lower it finished from its preseason AP Top 25 ranking. (Starting or finishing unranked was treated the same as being ranked 26th.) These numbers were added up into one total sum for each program. To avoid as many statistical flukes as possible, only schools with at least two appearances over the five-year span were included (sorry, Washington State), and at least one of those had to be in the past two seasons (ditto, Syracuse). And so, we hereby present our scientific evidence supporting the most "overrated" and "underrated" teams from 1996-2000:
As you can see, the data backs up a lot of current popular perceptions -- that USC is the country's poster choke artist, that the media gives Texas way too much benefit of the doubt, that Notre Dame ain't what it used to be. Some other interesting observations: Few people realize Penn State's struggles are now four years running. Three teams -- Tennessee, Florida and Nebraska -- were apparently victims of their own success, having won national titles during the same span. And finally, wonder whether these numbers were presented to Ohio State's John Cooper during his farewell meeting?
Apparently all those angry Kansas State fans were right after all -- their Wildcats are the Rodney Dangerfield of college football. Oregon fans have been deservedly crying foul lately too, though this year the Ducks won't sneak up on anyone. Finally, it's interesting to note that the last two teams on this list of "overachievers" -- Arizona State and Georgia -- both fired their coaches last year. Apparently they didn't overachieve enough.
No team lives up to its preseason billing more consistently than Florida State -- made all the more impressive by the fact that the ranking is always top five. On the other end of the spectrum, no team baffled pollsters more over a two-year span than Arizona, which started the '99 season No. 4 following an unanticipated 12-1 campaign in '98, only to finish it out of the poll completely. So what does this all mean? Well, no one's expecting Kansas State fans to start wearing "We're +28" T-shirts anytime soon, but hopefully this will clear up some misconceptions and add some more fire to those heated summer arguments. And, hey, if the math didn't make a lot of sense, don't worry. Neither does the BCS, and that thing only determines the national championship. CNNSI.com's Stewart Mandel will offer his latest Offseason Beat notes regularly from now till Kickoff 2001. If you have questions, comments, ideas or scoops for the Beat, click here.
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