FANPULSE: Preseason College Football Top 25

We asked, and you answered. We’d like to extend our thanks to the commentariat for stepping up and providing enough votes for the SB Nation FanPulse poll that we’re actually able to provide you a meaningful Bring on the Cats Top 25. If you haven’t signed up yet, be aware that this is a season-long endeavor and you can still make your voice heard by heading here and following the simple instructions. After so doing, each week you’ll get an e-mail inviting you to fill out the new week’s poll.

Without further ado, then: the SB Nation FanPulse College Football Preseason Top 25!

The Clemson Tigers apparently have the hearts of the nation as we head into the final weeks of training camp, and the poll mostly has the usual suspects in the places you’d expect. Times are lean for the Big 12, with only three teams getting into the top 25.

We’re sure, though, that what you really want to see is the Bring on the Cats top 25. Amazingly, you’re pretty much already looking at it. With the exception of the 10-13 teams, which you ordered in the exact inverse of the nationwide poll (10 Washington, 11 Oregon, 12 Texas A&M, 13 LSU), every single team in the BotC Top 25 is within one slot of their position in the national poll.

You matched the overall poll precisely with your top six as well as your bottom four, as well as Penn State at 14 and Wisconsin at 17. Otherwise, every difference is a simple swap; you had Florida 7 and Notre Dame 8, UCF 15 and Utah 16, Iowa 18 and Auburn 19, and Northwestern 20 and Iowa State 21.

The top five teams which missed the cut for you were Boise State, Oklahoma State, Washington State, Army, and Mississippi State. Nationally, that went Washington State, Syracuse, Boise State, Stanford, and Army; Virginia and Minnesota also got some love. Army is probably the most exciting inclusion in the Also Receiving Votes category, as their support appears to be pretty strong across the board for a potential breakthrough into the actual poll.

As for what other blogs did with their polling... surprisingly, everyone else appears to be mostly on the same page as the national poll. There are the obvious exceptions, of course; every blog covering a team which is actually in the mix “overrated” their team to some extent, with two exceptions: Clemson (obviously) and Georgia, where the fine folks at Dawg Sports did not take the opportunity to try and unseat Clemson or Alabama from the top two.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have to give a shoutout to this week’s Kings of Self-Delusion. The folks at Coug Center ranked Washington State at #16 in the pre-season poll, the highest ranking of any team which didn’t actually make the top 25. Our frenemies at Troy Nunes is an Absolute Magician tried to steal the limelight here, as they ranked Syracuse at #18, but came up just short.

So! There you have it. In a couple of weeks, we’ll finally get some real games on the board and we can change our opinions and reshuffle this deck all over again. Look for those e-mails early in the week after opening weekend, and be aware that you won’t have a ton of time to turnaround those votes because of Labor Day timing issues.

Thanks for participating, and let us know what you think of the rankings! Who did you wildly over- or under-rate?