Miami's Shannon Dawson makes a great case for no rankings until October

Like a lot of coaches, Shannon Dawson isn't a fan of the preseason poll. 

Doubling down, come to find out he also isn't a fan of the September poll.

At Monday's press conference ahead of No. 4 Miami's trip to Clemson, the Hurricanes offensive coordinator said the college football rankings shouldn't even exist until October - and if you took out the preseason hype machines that fuel college football, it actually makes a lot of sense. 

His reasoning was simple. Nobody knows anything yet.

"First of all, there should be no such thing as preseason rankings. That's the most ridiculous thing on the planet," Dawson shared. "That is the stupidest thing, because people weigh those things way heavier than they should."

"You shouldn't have a ranking until October. How do you know?"

Dawson said a preseason ranking isn't a projection at all, just a look back at last season. "If anything, it isn't predictive for the future, it's the past," he said, pointing out that five of last year's preseason top-10 teams finished outside the top 25.

He then turned to the SEC, which has 10 teams in the current AP Top 25, led by No. 1 Texas and No. 2 Georgia.

"They have all of their teams in the top-25. Guess what. Good for you. At the end of the year, half of them won't be in the top-30," Dawson said. "We can't sit here and say, 'hey, we play X number of top-25 teams'. We don't know that. We'll count those chips up at the end of the year."

"That's why there shouldn't be rankings, because you give people talking points that are idiots."

Of course, it will never happen, but it doesn't make his point any less accurate.

Dawson went on to point out Texas A&M specifically. The Aggies started the season at No. 9 and have since fallen out of the poll at 2-2.

Dawson has seen this firsthand. Miami opened 5-0 last fall, then lost to Louisville and SMU, and only got into the College Football Playoff as the No. 10 seed. From there the Hurricanes beat No. 7 Texas A&M 10-3, beat defending national champion Ohio State 24-14 in the Cotton Bowl as a 9.5-point underdog, and got past No. 6 Ole Miss 31-27 in the Fiesta Bowl. They lost 27-21 to Indiana in the national title game at Hard Rock Stadium, finished 13-3 and ended the year No. 2 in both polls.

Two of those three playoff wins came against SEC teams.

This season Miami opened at No. 7 and is now 4-0, with wins over Stanford, Florida A&M, Wake Forest and Central Michigan. Notre Dame, currently No. 3, is the only ranked opponent left on the schedule, and that's the kind of strength-of-schedule argument Dawson is trying to get out ahead of. The Hurricanes play at Notre Dame on in early November.

Dawson is in his fourth season running the Miami offense after being hired in February 2023. Before that he was offensive coordinator at Houston (2020-22), Southern Miss (2016-18), Kentucky (2015) and West Virginia (2012-14), and earlier at Stephen F. Austin and Millsaps. That's more than 20 years in the business, which account for seeing plenty of polls that didn't hold up.

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