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In late July, the Amway Top 25 preseason coaches' poll was released, ranking the Wisconsin Badgers 14th in the nation. Sunday afternoon, the Associated Press (AP) released their preseason college football poll, also placing head coach Gary Andersen and his football team No. 14.
This seems pretty accurate. As B5Q writer Rex Sheild recently mentioned:
At team's media day, GA said #Badgers preseason ranking was simply a sign of respect for the program, and that's it. Yep, pretty much.
— Rexford Sheild (@RexfordJunior) August 17, 2014
| Rank | School | Points |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Florida State (57) | 1,496 |
| 2 | Alabama (1) | 1,361 |
| 3 | Oregon (1) | 1,334 |
| 4 | Oklahoma (1) | 1,324 |
| 5 | Ohio State | 1,207 |
| 6 | Auburn | 1,198 |
| 7 | UCLA | 1,106 |
| 8 | Michigan State | 1,080 |
| 9 | South Carolina | 1,015 |
| 10 | Baylor | 966 |
| 11 | Stanford | 885 |
| 12 | Georgia | 843 |
| 13 | LSU | 776 |
| 14 | Wisconsin | 637 |
| 15 | USC | 626 |
| 16 | Clemson | 536 |
| 17 | Notre Dame | 445 |
| 18 | Mississippi | 424 |
| 19 | Arizona State | 357 |
| 20 | Kansas State | 242 |
| 21 | Texas A&M | 238 |
| 22 | Nebraska | 226 |
| 23 | North Carolina | 194 |
| 24 | Missouri | 134 |
| 25 | Washington | 130 |
| Others receiving votes: UCF 94, Florida 87, Texas 86, Duke 71, Iowa 68, Louisville 48, Marshall 41, Oklahoma State 37, Virginia Tech 26, TCU 23, Mississippi State 22, Michigan 19, Texas Tech 19, Miami (FL) 16, Cincinnati 15, Boise State 10, Oregon State 10, Northwestern 8, BYU 8, Penn State 5, Vanderbilt 2, Navy 2, Nevada 1, Louisiana-Lafayette 1, Utah State 1 |
LSU, No. 13 in the coaches poll, is also ranked No. 13.
Besides facing the "Mad Hatter" Les Miles and the talented Tigers in a little under two weeks, the Badgers play only one other AP preseason Top 25 team in the nation this season (at least at the moment), that being the Nebraska Cornhuskers at No. 22.
Along with Nebraska, Ohio State and Michigan State, ranked No. 5 and No. 8, respectively, represent the rest of the Big Ten in the AP poll.
Per SB Nation's recent article, here are some things to note about the poll:
There are some significant changes to college football's ranking system since the last time we were here. We talked about some of these in relation to the Coaches Poll, but let's go over the AP Poll and what it means.
1. The AP Poll stopped counting in the BCS rankings in 2005 and won't count towards the new playoff system -- at least not directly.There's a chance the committee is influenced by the AP rankings when picking their own list (a process that starts after Week 9).
2. It'll probably retain more prestige and influence than the Coaches Poll will, just by the nature of who votes. Media members are usually able to watch more games in a given weekend than coaches are, who are spending nearly every waking hour, ya know, coaching. Even the people who probably vote in the Coaches Poll -- media relations officers or other sports information officials -- spend a large portion of the weekend with their particular team (not to mention the inherent bias of the voters in the poll).
3. Since 1976, only five schools ranked number one in the preseason AP Poll have finished the season in that spot. The last team to do so? USC, in 2004.