What's the Deal with These Preseason Polls?

It's a foolish exercise as there shouldn’t be any Top 25 polling until at least October and, even then, the only one that matters in the College Football Playoff poll (which really should only rank the top 10-15 teams at the most).

Nevertheless, here we are in mid-August, conference media polls have been out for a while now and the two Top 25 polls have been released.

So let's react starting with the USA Today Top 25 coaches poll and the Associated Press Top 25 poll. 

The Hawkeyes were shut out of the initial rankings in each, unofficially checking-in at #26 as the team with the most points on the outside of the poll in the coaches rankings and unofficially 28th in the AP standings. Iowa was the second-highest ranked Big Ten West team in each with the highest being Wisconsin who checked in at #18 and #20 in the AP and coaches polls respectively.

If this disparity was confusing, then the official “unofficial” Big Ten media poll conducted by Cleveland.com was down right bonkers.

The Badgers received 31 first place votes, 28 (!) more than Iowa (3). 

Really? Big Ten voters think this Wisconsin team is this much better than the rest of this division?

What am I missing?

And my issue with this poll isn’t so much an Iowa thing as it is a Big Ten West thing. Lord knows it takes a lot to trust this Hawkeyes program to deliver back-to-back 10+ win seasons, but still can anyone, with any certainty, predict who will actually win this division? 

I think, think, think, you can narrow down the West-contending teams to Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and Purdue, but that’s about where the certainty for this season ends.

Minnesota returns 8th year QB Tanner Morgan, gets RB Mohamed Ibrahim back from injury and returns most of its starters from a team that beat the Badgers last November.

Purdue returns the best QB in the division (Aidan O'Connell), has a relatively light schedule, and will probably beat Iowa at home late in the year.

Oh and the Hawkeyes? They’re the reigning division champions, return 14 starters, are poised to have one of the best defenses of the Kirk Ferentz era, and, most importantly, they get the Badgers in Iowa City.

Sure the offense was atrocious... but again, the offense WAS ATROCIOUS and Iowa still won 10 games and the division outright. Also, that side of the ball really can’t get much worse, it can only get better. 

I don't want to short change the Badgers though. They do feature perhaps the best RB in the conference in Braelon Allen and, though it has to be largely retooled, will likely feature a ferocious shut-down defense like Wisconsin seemingly always does under DC Jim Leonhard. 

Also, save for the 2020 pandemic season, Iowa can't seem to solve the Badgers when division supremacy is on the line.

Still, I can't get past the lingering questions surrounding our northern rivals:

• Quarterback?
  • Of the top-four teams in the Big Ten West, Graham Mertz is clearly third in line, miles behind O’Connell and maybe even Morgan. As of right now, Mertz is only superior to whoever the hell Iowa is trotting out there under center on Saturdays.
• Schedule?
  • Wisconsin has road trips at Ohio State (9/14), at Michigan State (10/15), and at Iowa (11/12). Going 1-2 is a win in that situation. On top of that, they head to Nebraska the week after their trip to Iowa City which is never an easy time no matter how hilariously pathetic Scott Frost’s program is right now.
  • In contrast, Iowa has to go to Ohio State (10/22) but they get Michigan (10/1) and Wisconsin (11/12) at home. The Gophers have a fairly tough slate (crossover games at Michigan State and Penn State, plus road games at Nebraska and Wisconsin), but the Boilermakers’ Week 1 opponent is their toughest cross-over game—a home meeting with Penn State.
• OK, OK, but at least they have the recent pedigree to fall back on. . .
  • Except the Badgers haven’t won the division in three seasons now, fell at Minnesota last year with the division on the line and got blown out at Kinnick in 2020. Simply put, Wisconsin is not the Big Ten West-dominating machine the program was in 2017. At least not right now.

Still I must be missing something. The Badgers must returning a ton of talent from a team that lost four games right?

No @bigten school has more returning starters than @TerpsFootball

Which team are you most excited to see on the field this season? pic.twitter.com/mYeL9NDRtC

— FOX College Football (@CFBONFOX) August 8, 2022

MAKE IT MAKE SENSE.

If there was a team to defer to blindly in the West it would have to be (famous last words) Iowa, but that’s not the issue here. I do believe the Hawkeyes do deserve to be the default pick to win the division, but really not by much.

And that is the real issue here. The Badgers are the overwhelming favorite to win this thing despite a brutal schedule and as many, if not slightly more, question marks than two to three of their top contenders in the division.

Iowa, once again, is a complete afterthought. I've long had a theory that the Hawkeyes are so "boring" that most voters forget to predict a record for them each year, and when going  back to realize they've forgotten the Hawkeyes they just scribble down 7-5.

The Iowa Hawkeyes since 2020:
won 16 of 20 regular season games
appeared in a Big Ten title game
had a top 15 defense both years

Yet, Iowa is unranked in both the AP and Coaches Poll. And has a win total of just 7.5 in 2022.

Overlook Iowa at your own risk.

— Ben Stevens (@BenScottStevens) August 16, 2022

This theory seems to be bearing out this offseason. 

I understand that the top of the Big Ten West pales in comparison to the cache of the East division headliners, but if media members and athletic department interns are going to vote on these things they have to at least put in some effort.

Just blindly voting Wisconsin miles ahead of the rest of the division in polls and in the preseason Big Ten poll going off nothing more than name (I guess?) is a bit lazy and shows we should probably ignore most of these things.

But since I've already spent 900+ words on these polls so please, somebody make it make sense.