Over at Football Study Hall, kleph gathered up a bunch of magazines (Athlon Sports, Lindy’s Sports, The Sporting News and Phil Steele, to be exact), looked at their top 25 lists and their All-American teams and then crunched them all together to get a general picture of where they have things in the preseason.
Georgia finished seventh, behind three other SEC teams, including South Carolina in the East. Alabama was the #1 pick; every magazine has the Tide listed at the top.
Meanwhile, Chase Stuart took the point spreads the Golden Nugget published last week and ran them through his SRS ratings to get a top 25 based on those.
We don’t have a full slate of games, but we do have at least 1 game for 83 different teams. Theoretically, this is different than using actual game results: one game can be enough to come up with Vegas’ implied rating for the team. That’s because once we’re confident in Oklahoma’s rating, Tulsa being 18-point underdogs in Norman gives us a good estimate for how Vegas views Tulsa. I assigned 3 points to the road team in each game in coming up with the implied SRS ratings. For example, Arizona is an 11-point favorite on the road against California. So for that game, we assume Vegas believes the Wildcats are 14 points better than the Golden Bears; if we do this for each of the other 247 games, and then iterate the results hundreds of times, we can come up with a set of power ratings.
My impression when I saw the spreads was that Vegas likes the Dawgs (if you remember, Georgia is currently favored in every regular season game). Stuart’s math backs that up, as Georgia is ranked fifth in the implied SRS ratings. (Bama and Texas A&M are the SEC teams ranked higher.) He’s got this to say about it:
Another team Vegas is pretty high on is Georgia. The Bulldogs return Aaron Murray, the quarterback who finished atop my 2012 passer rankings. Last December, I argued against Georgia on the basis of a (for the SEC) creampuff schedule; this year, it makes sense to assign Georgia a high rating but a low ranking. In addition to division games against Florida and South Carolina, the Bulldogs get LSU from the West and face Clemson out of conference. And then in Atlanta, they’d still need to beat the West champion (presumably Alabama, A&M, or LSU). Georgia may be good, but they have a tough road to get to the BCS title game.
Sounds about right.
Get The Picture 
Amazing how little respect Georgia Tech gets nationally. They played (tough) in the conference championship game of the ACC and beat USC in a bowl (!) and there’s nary a mention of them being on our schedule. Interesting.
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Neither FSU nor USC cared about being in those respective games, and played like it. Also, Tech got blown out by Middle Tennessee. They sucked.
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I actually agree with you hence the (!). I’m just surprised how little respect they get. I mean, it’s not even a little. It’s zero. I guess I’m just looking at it through red and black colored glasses and sulking that we can’t claim that annual, out of conference, in-state, rivalry game against a major conference opponent as a feather in our cap.
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Hang on Puff. Simply put; if some bigass teams don’t grow a defense between now and season opener, there will be Dawg Tracks of difering O players all up and down the field. We only have to watch the D’s of LSU, SC,FU,in that order, to see if there are more than two players on their teams who can hit thwe line of scrimmage without tripping over their cojones. Right now there is only one guy we have to double block and run at his position . Our D will determine if there is a shootout. I have this insane confidence that our D will standup.
Course, I’m a deadout believer in Vegas’s forecast – so there. Didn’t mention Clemson’s defence. Sure didn’t.
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I thought the line was -1 Clemson somewhere else a couple weeks ago. That sounded right. I would expect the -3.5 for the Dawgs to come down a little. The other lines look to be about what i would expect.
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Actually, Clemson was favored by three early this spring.
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So the JHC suspension moved the odds our way? I guess Vegas really likes Connor Norman. Don’t know what else has changed since then.
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Vegas took the time to look at what Clemson lost, perhaps? I dunno. -3.5 for UGA on the road seems a bit much for me, but I do think UGA wins that game provided we get through the next 50ish days without an arrest (which is certainly not a guarantee).
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Lines are not a prediction from Vegas. They represent how Vegas thinks the betting public will perceive or is perceiving (aka betting on) a matchup. In this case, if the two UGA Clemson lines are from the same casino, it means people were loading the wagon on the Dawgs. So that casino has to move the line to entice bets on Clemson. Vegas is not in the game of gambling. The want 50/50 bets so they’re guaranteed not to lose. Money for them is in the “juice.” Their only vulnerability is against folks who “middle” which is the people who bet UGA at +3 and Clemson at +3 and final score winds up somewhere in between. Of course the juice on all other bets likely outweighs the middle bets.
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I don’t think they’re from the same casino.
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In that case I think JHC’s suspension is irrelevant here.
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Actually the Montana faction has weighed in. They are close to Nevada and are storming the casinos to place bets on UGA. They have never heard of Clemson and think that helmet is for hunting safety.
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This is, of course, all academic. After all, the games still are going to have to be played, aren’t they?
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That’s almost three months from now, Mayor. You want me to shut the blog down ’til then? 😉
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To pass the time, maybe we can get the good Mayor to wax nostalgic on how unfair it is for UGA to have to play Florida in Jacksonville
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Yeah Mayor. Would you rather spend more time with your wife for the next 3 months, or talk football?
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I thought the Mayor landed the gig driving that redheaded assistant?
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Nay nay. Redheads like more adventurous folks than those who think you fall off the earth if you leave the Athens city limits. I signed up for that “test drive”, might take her to Jacksonville…. That will surely get rid of that old fart.
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Who are you calling an old fart? Pot…kettle… 🙂
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Old farts who travel to party are more acceptable to redheads. Now if this is for three months I may have to give my seat and trip with the redhead. Doubt I could survive that and I don’t want to mis the rematch in Atlanta.
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Would you guys stop this!? I think I’m getting red-headed throat cancer.
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Now that sounds kinky.
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Damn! Didn’t mean a double entendre.
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Still think Bammer regresses to the means (should have lost to LSU & UGA last year), and doesn’t win the conference or MNC this year. That being said, I too would vote them #1 right now.
The love for SCU is much tougher for me to understand. I’ve always understood the off season hype machines/snowballs that get out of control, only to get bigger and bigger. I’ve just never seen one based on one play and/from one player. They lost more than anyone in the conference and that includes losing a tailback that was a perfect compliment for their qb. Lattimore made Shaw better than he is. Best case scenario for SCU this year is 9-3, and that’s dodging the big 4 out of the West.
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Word.
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Jadeveon Clowney
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Counterpoint: Jadeveon Clowney.
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Who will have no Devin Taylor helping him out…
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Don’t kid yourself – SC’s d-line will still be quite good. It’s the back seven that looks like it’s losing a bit.
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I think SoCar is getting more love than is warranted based soley on Clowney being an all-time badass. I think Texas A&M is getting the same treatment due to Manzeil being the star he is. Both have serious issues (A&M more so than Carolina). At the same time, however, I accept that anyone who wants to question UGAs defense is well within the boundaries of fairness. This defense was led by two first round picks and another in the 2nd, yet it still sucked last year for all but 2-3 games. Who is going to rush the passer? Who is going to stop the run? Who is going to play safety?
While I think UGA will have answers for most of those questions, doubt creeps into the mind often when pondering them. Then you factor in the first two games and how brutal they are (two legit top-15 teams to open the year) and you harken back to 2011 when the same schedule played out, and it can be hard to be positive. I do think the offense will carry UGA past Clemson. I really do. I think that game has 38-31 written all over it. The SoCar game scares me to death, though.
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We need to do our part in the SC game. We need to make our house as loud and hostile as they did last year. We need to back up our team. I hope they have a chip on their shoulder about the lack of respect they are getting.
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Yeaaa!!!
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“Last December, I argued against Georgia on the basis of a (for the SEC) creampuff schedule; this year, it makes sense to assign Georgia a high rating but a low ranking.”
This is just stupid. First of, he’s the same guy that said Bama shouldn’t be #2 b/c of their schedule. Welp…
He argued that Georgia and Bama both had an advantage in scheduling, but that the winner of the SEC probably might deserve a berth to the championship game (with A&M having a legitimate gripe). Maybe he should watch that game, the Cap One Bowl, and the BCS Championship game again and stop relying on flawed articles from prior to two pretty important games to shape his opinion of 2012? Maybe?
Whatever…I’m sure Georgia was just a product of its schedule
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Look here, Irwin, you need to get with the program, dude. If the Dawgs have a tough schedule, they have to be rated lower because there’s no way they can successfully navigate a tough schedule. If they have an easy schedule, they have to be rated lower because they’re only playing patsies. Then, of course, if the Dawgs soundly beat a team that was supposed to be tough, they no longer are tough, but are exposed as a patsy that we just didn’t know was a patsy at the time. And if a team that is supposed to be a patsy plays us tough, that proves what a lousy team we are, because we almost lost to a patsy. I hope I’ve been helpful here!
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Yezzir! It’s called Dawg Poled(Polled).
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Look here, Irwin, you need to get with the program, dude. At least we don’t play Louisville
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Stuart invalidates his methodology with Texas at #6.
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Don’t blame him. He’s just taking what Vegas gave him.
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Didn’t read it, and it seems more involved, but Chris Stassen has been doing this for years.
http://preseason.stassen.com/
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