If you've been following my rankings from previous years, you'll know that I haven't done much writing of my own. I've been wanting to add an opinion column to this blog for a couple of seasons now, but I just haven't had the time. To be honest I'm not sure I'll have time this semester either, but I'm gonna give it a shot anyway. So basically the structure will be that I'll be talking about something random that I thought was interesting from the previous week in college football. I'm going to try really hard to get it up here every Wednesday, but we'll see how that goes. Also, I will be posting weekly rankings every Sunday starting in Week 7 (like the BCS). The only exception to the Sunday release would be if the actual BCS isn't released yet in which case I may post my rankings and then add in the stats once they're available.
Anyway, Week 1 is here! Mississippi State plays tomorrow in Memphis at 7, I hope we do well. So this morning I was checking up on new sports news on Yahoo Sports, my main source for NCAAF info (which may or may not be the best source), and I saw something that gave me the perfect idea for my first rant. Media coverage for Mississippi State is abysmal. So the experts from Rivals made they're weekly picks of about 20 "important" games. And guess what Mississippi State wasn't on it. Okay, to be fair this time, State is playing on Thursday and they only pick from Saturday games (although I'm not really sure why?). However, I have seen them do this before.
Alright let me start by saying I understand that just 3 years ago we had won 4 games and none of the seasons before that were even good. I understand that reputation plays a lot into a lot of college sports, but when teams like Texas are getting all the "oh last year was just a fluke, here's how they're gonna win the national championship this year" articles, and Mississippi State gets all the "well they did "okay" last year, but I doubt they'll even make it to a bowl this year". How do you justify that. How do you vote us the number 20 team in the nation (the top 6th of all teams) and then rag on us like that. I just don't think its fair. How are we ever going to do better in recruiting if high school kids have this perception of us being the "mississippi state, who's that" school.
Maybe I'm overreacting, but I just wonder what it would take to shake the past. Do we have to win a national championship? For example, Georgia (and I'm not hating on Georgia necessarily, just an example I thought of) hasn't won more than 6 games in the last 2 seasons, however, "they'll bounce back this year" so they're ranked ahead of State! We even beat them last year. Justify that one, "experts".
I know its just a preseason poll, but I think that's kind of my point. Preseason polls are basically popularity polls, or at least that's the way they turn out. So maybe we are doing better because we managed to be on the list, but is 20 really where we deserve to be? Maybe, but behind teams like Georgia? Notre Dame? I don't think so.
Give us a break "experts", or at least give us a chance before you bash us as being just like we used to be. Hopefully, we have a good season to prove you wrong, or at least raise our reputation a little bit. Comments? Hit me up below.
