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Oklahoma State Is (Probably) Not Going to Start as Top 10 Team in 2017

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This isn’t of the utmost importance, but hey it’s almost May, and there is not a lot going on right now. The AP Top 25 poll will be released in August, and I’m already excited to see where Oklahoma State will rank on it. They ended last year at No. 11, return their most important pieces and figure to be somewhere in that area come the fall.

But one man who has some experience in predicting these thing says OSU will not start the season in the top 10. Phil Steele has been predicting the AP Top 10 for a long time now, and last year he nailed all 10 teams (albeit in a slightly wrong order). Here was his prediction in March:

  1. Alabama
  2. Clemson
  3. OU
  4. Florida State
  5. LSU
  6. Ohio State
  7. Michigan
  8. Stanford
  9. Tennessee
  10. Notre Dame

And here was the actual AP Top 10 released in August 2016:

  1. Alabama
  2. Clemson
  3. OU
  4. Florida State
  5. Ohio State
  6. LSU
  7. Stanford
  8. Michigan
  9. Notre Dame
  10. Tennessee

So yeah, that’s pretty impressive. Here is his prediction for this year:

  1. Alabama
  2. Ohio State
  3. Florida State
  4. USC
  5. Oklahoma
  6. Clemson
  7. Penn State
  8. Washington
  9. Wisconsin
  10. Florida

No Pokes. Again, this is all subjective and could change over the next few months, but Steele is pretty good at this.

The eight year totals are very strong. When I predict the AP Top 10 in February/March (about a half year ahead of the actual AP poll), I have now hit on 76 of 80 teams. That means hitting all 10 teams in four of the eight years and missing by just one team in the other four years. Once again, predicting the top ten teams in the AP poll 5-6 months in advance, the record is now 76 out of 80 or 95%!

This is not a particularly difficult exercise. I would liken it to predicting all 68 NCAA Tournament teams. It sounds difficult, but it really comes down to guessing on which one or two teams is going to sneak in at the very end.

Pollsters are predictable. They don’t know how good teams are going to be so they gravitate towards blue bloods (especially in the top 10) when filling these things out.

I would expect OSU to check in somewhere between 11-13 when the top 25 comes out in August. For what it’s worth, OSU is currently No. 26 in FPI and behind OU, TCU, Texas and just ahead of Baylor in the Big 12. ?

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