BleacherCoaches.com

Preseason polls are the worst thing in college football. They are rarely (if ever) right and it also puts teams like Ohio State, Michigan, USC, Notre Dame in the cat birds seat every year.

Preseason rankings only exist because the sport and the media need to create interest in the sport. It looks better if two "ranked" teams are playing instead of just "Oregon versus South Carolina". People watch the game if it's "21 versus 19".

Your overrated/underrated argument is probably true because teams like Ohio State usually get ranked highly. However, it avoids the issue. Ohio State is still a better program than Penn State. Look at wins and losses. Look at head-to-head. Look at Big 10 titles. Look at BCS bowl games. There is no argument here. If Ohio State is consistantly ranked in the top 10 to start the season and Penn State is consistantly ranked in the 20's. It makes sense that Ohio State would be overrated more often. That does not mean they do not have as good a program. Last year, Ohio State finished the season at #2 but since they started at #1 they were overrated. The year before, Penn State finished at #3, but they were way underrated because they started way back. Understand.

Saw something surprising in print the other day. JoePa's record in the Big Ten is 69-43. That's actually only 13 games over .500 (lose 13 more of those 112 games and his record would be 56-56). I really thought his record in the conference was better than that.

Penn State has done terribly in the Big Ten. PSU fans cling to the "glory days" when we weren't in a conference and were beating up on Rutgers and Temple every week and going 10-1 in the process. The anti-PSU crowd says the same things the anti-FSU crowd does: your coach won 5,000 games beating up on absolutely nobody.

Yes, I love Joe Paterno and Penn State, but facts are facts.

Paterno's record versus quality teams is very bad. His Big Ten record is just as bad. Bowden's is much the same way, when you consider how disgustingly poor the ACC was, pretty much until expansion.

Penn State needs the Big Ten and the Big Ten needs Penn State. There's a little thing called "shared revenue" in the Big Ten.

All that being said, I love Penn State and look forward to the days when Paterno retires and this program is allowed to go where it should have gone long ago.

TAE, The funny thing is that the "shared revenue", or lack there, of is what kept Paterno's idea of the Eastern Athletic Conference from coming to fruition. If Paterno would have agreed to share ALL conference revenue, others would have paid attention and the landscape of College Football in the East would be quite different.

hilltoppanther wrote:TAE, The funny thing is that the "shared revenue", or lack there, of is what kept Paterno's idea of the Eastern Athletic Conference from coming to fruition. If Paterno would have agreed to share ALL conference revenue, others would have paid attention and the landscape of College Football in the East would be quite different.

You mean Pitt may actually be an average football program???

Not sure how that relates to my post?

Maybe he saw the error of his ways.