Much like Shaquille O'Neal and acting, Michael Jordan and baseball, and the Beastie Boys and rapping, the media loves to predict things -- they're just not very good at it. The annual summer tradition of each conference's media forecasting their league's standings has come to a close for 2016, and on the surface everything looks pretty logical. Alabama in the SEC? Stanford in the Pac-12? Houston in the American? What's not to like.
Until you remember the media's collective track record at predicting things.
A year ago, this same group of people had Auburn winning the SEC (they last in the SEC West), Iowa finishing fourth in the Big Ten West (they finished the regular season undefeated) and Georgia Tech playing for the ACC championship (they went 1-7 in ACC play). The MAC's media correctly pegged Bowling Green to win the West, but not a single one of the 24 voters had the Falcons winning the conference (they did).
Of the eight conferences that pick an outright preseason champion (the Mountain West and Conference USA only pick division winners, and each of them whiffed on one of those apiece), only one -- the ACC -- picked its preseason champion correctly in 2015.
No one knows how the 2016 college football season will play out, but we do know how we think it will play out will be unequivocally, comically wrong.
So I've compiled each conference's preseason poll for the sole purpose that we may dig this up in December and point and laugh at how bad we are at predicting things.
AMERICAN
East Division
1. South Florida
2. Temple
3. Cincinnati
4. Connecticut
5. East Carolina
6. Central Florida
West Division
1. Houston
2. Navy
3. Memphis
4. Tulsa
5. SMU
6. Tulane
Champion
1. Houston
2. South Florida
3. Temple
ACC
Atlantic
1. Clemson
2. Florida State
3. Louisville
4. NC State
5. Boston College
6. Syracuse
7. Wake Forest
Coastal
1. North Carolina
2. Miami
3. Pittsburgh
4. Virginia Tech
5. Duke
6. Georgia Tech
7. Virginia
Champion
1. Clemson
2. Florida State
3. North Carolina
4. Louisville
BIG 12
1. Oklahoma
2. TCU
3. Oklahoma State
4. Baylor
5. Texas
6. Texas Tech
7. West Virginia
8. Kansas State
9. Iowa State
10. Kansas
BIG TEN (The Big Ten does not run a traditional media poll, so the Cleveland Plain-Dealerannually conducts an unofficial one for them.)
East
1. Ohio State
2. Michigan
3. Michigan State
4. Penn State
5. Indiana
6. Maryland
7. Rutgers
West
1. Iowa
2. Nebraska
3. Wisconsin
4. Northwestern
5. Minnesota
6. Illinois
7. Purdue
Champion
1. Ohio State
2. Michigan
3. Iowa
CONFERENCE USA
East Division
1. Middle Tennessee
2. Western Kentucky
3. Marshall
4. Florida Atlantic
5. Florida International
6. Old Dominion
7. Charlotte
West Division
1. Southern Miss
2. Louisiana Tech
3. Rice
4. UTEP
5. UTSA
6. North Texas
MAC
East Division
1. Bowling Green
2. Ohio
3. Akron
4. Buffalo
5. Miami (Ohio)
6. Kent State
West Division
1. Western Michigan
2. Toledo
3. Northern Illinois
4. Central Michigan
5. Ball State
6. Eastern Michigan
Champion
1. Western Michigan
2. Toledo
Northern Illinois
4. Central Michigan
Bowling Green
Akron
MOUNTAIN WEST
Mountain Division
1. Boise State
2. Air Force
3. Utah State
4. Colorado State
5. New Mexico
6. Wyoming
West Division
1. San Diego State
2. Nevada
3. San Jose State
4. Fresno State
5. UNLV
6. Hawaii
PAC-12
North Division
1. Stanford
2. Washington
3. Oregon
4. Washington State
5. California
6. Oregon State
South Division
1. UCLA
2. USC
3. Utah
4. Arizona
5. Arizona State
6. Colorado
Champion
1. Stanford
2. USC
3. Washington
4. UCLA
5. Utah
SEC
East Division
1. Tennessee
2. Florida
3. Georgia
4. Kentucky
5. Vanderbilt
6. Missouri
7. South Carolina
West Division
1. Alabama
2. LSU
3. Ole Miss
4. Texas A&M
5. Arkansas
6. Auburn
7. Mississippi State
Champion
1. Alabama
2. LSU
3. Tennessee
4. Georgia
5. Florida
6. Ole Miss
7. Texas A&M
South Carolina
Vanderbilt
Arkansas
SUN BELT
1. Appalachian State
2. Arkansas State
3. Georgia Southern
4. Georgia State
5. Louisiana-Lafayette
6. Troy
7. South Alabama
8. Idaho
9. New Mexico State
10. Texas State
11. Louisiana-Monroe