laughable pre-pre-season "Non-AQ" rankings

[Y 4 Ever]

Leave it to Graham Watson to give us a good chuckle in the offseason.

She just released her "post-spring non-AQ power rankings"

Not surprisingly, she has Boise #1, TCU #2 - no shocker there.

She has Utah at #3. Can't argue too much.

But then, that's where things start to get interesting

SMU at #4? Navy #5? Airforce #6? And Houston #7?

And then here comes BYU, bringing up the #8 spot. Behind SMU, Navy, Air Force, and Houston, and just edging out Middle Tennessee and Nevada.

I guess a lot of this will be answered in week 2 after we stomp AFA. But she must be smoking crack if she has SMU "ranked" this high...and BYU this low.

http://espn.go.com/blog/ncfnation/post/ ... r-rankings

[ProV1]

They still haven’t settled on a cornerback

Don't they mean Quarterback?

[Y 4 Ever]

They still haven’t settled on a cornerback

Don't they mean Quarterback?

Come on, now, you can't expect Ms. Watson to get something RIGHT, can you?

[Lawboy]

I get a couple of those teams higher than us early, but not Houston. They lost QB as well, so they should drop. The others returned good QBs I believe, and that is usually how the media ranks things. We will be back up there is we start 2-0 is all I know.

[Cougy_Monster]

I guess I can sort of, for a second or two, understand why an objective (cough cough) 3rd party would rank BYU lower in the preseason this year but I think lots of folk will be pleasantly surprised at how many quality wins the Cougs pull off this year. I wonder how long it will take for the country to accept that even when Bronco replaces a QB the Cougs still just reload and don't ever need to rebuild anymore.

Preseason rankings are a strange beast. I think some of these prognosticators are actually a little peeved that the teams play the games and mess up what should have happened.

[YBrit]

She obviously has no idea about the QB situation. She's more concerned about the Cornerback situation...hmm...

[stuckinbig10country]

Houston's QB, Case Keenum, is back. Houston still does not play defense, and while they may go out and win a couple big games, they will lose one or 2 gimme games because the defense will give up 60 and the offense only scores 50.

[ Post made via Mobile Device ]

[scott715]

She said our OL was patchwork. Well that is probably our strongest unit on the team. Only lost our center, a couple of guys were recovering from surgeries. She really does not know our team.

[GolfDiveNCougs]

My impression of Graham in the last couple years (or however long she's been doing the "non-Cartels") is that she's trying to say and do all the right things to break into a male dominated profession, and that means paying her dues with the small fish, while towing the company line, and hoping that some day she'll get a "real" conference to cover (she was a Missouri grad if I remember right. Be tough for her to EVER get Big12 with ESPN tho). That line is to make the obvious calls (ala Boise this year), but not to give any more credit to decent teams than absolutely necessary, and when you don't have the info, be vague.

Just further evidence in my mind that there's no such thing as real journalism any more, sports, political or otherwise. There's just obscenely wealthy individuals and entities who are RAMMING their perspective down as many throats as possible to increase their money and power.

Graham is just a cog. One reason BYU often takes a hit with ESPN is that we're not on the in-crowd, likely won't ever be, so they don't make a dime off of covering us like the disgusting amounts of money they've bought the BCS for, and so even though we're now a top 25 team year-in and year-out, public perspective of how good we are is the biggest thing they can influence. Therefore, they'll try and make a good team that they don't make money off of look mediocre, so they aren't the idiot not covering a very good team.

Annoying, but not unexpected.

[BigCougsFan]

Graham is just a homer. Just like that Lya Wydrosky or whatever her name is called from the SL Trib.