The USA Today Coaches Poll has been released, and across the country fans have commenced with the hand-wringing and teeth-gnashing. All over a meaningless, arbitrary list of teams. It’s as if the preseason poll is Gospel sent down from above, a sure fire projection of the coming season’s glory or failure.
Everyone should relax.
You can count on one thing almost every year in college football. Despite all the attention given to the preseason polls, once the season starts at least one team will come out of “nowhereâ€, splash onto the national scene and finish the season with a Top 10 spot in the final poll. And usually more than one!
Check this out — From 2000-2012, 24 college football teams have started the season unranked only to shock the nation and finish in the Top 10 in the final rankings.
That’s 24 spots out of a total of 130 top ten finishers in the past decade-plus. 18.4% of all top ten finishers started the season unranked.
Since 1989, it’s happened every season but 2 – 2011, and 1992. (thanks to http://preseason.stassen.com for the awesome compiled results). Suck on that, USA Today! Actually AP Poll data was used for this analysis, but USA Today can suck it anyway.
Each year I like to scour the lists of the unranked and try my best to identify the upcoming year’s sleepers. In order to help do so, I’ve recently spent a lot of idle time in airports drinking $10 beers…ahem, I mean, trying to determine if there’s a connection between these 24 teams – in other words, does a secret formula exist that can turn a team into a “Sleeping Giant†– From preseason unranked into a Top 10 power by January?
Theory 1 –Sleeping Giants have NFL talent (High draft picks)
I thought that if I looked at all 24 Sleeping Giants, I’d find that those teams put a lot of studs into the early rounds of the NFL Draft. After all, great teams are made of great players, right? Maybe so, but the 24 Sleeping Giant teams put just 30 total players in the first three rounds of the following year’s draft.
6 of the Sleeping Giants had ZERO players drafted in the first three rounds of the next year’s draft. This surprised me. I really thought I’d find that these teams caught lightning in a bottle when it came to talent. 30 players out of approximately 1248 draft picks during that time period. That’s not a shocking amount of NFL talent.
You could probably take this a step further and look at NFL Drafts for a 3 year window following the Sleeping Giant season, because it’s possible some young talent on these teams led them to greatness. But that’s a lot more work and I don’t get paid to do this full time. Knock yourself out, though; let me know how it works out for ya.           Â
Theory 2 – The superstar impact:
https://www.hornsports.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/andy_dalton_tcu-169×250.jpg Former TCU quarterback Andy Dalton. Photo credit: Dirk Hansen
Perhaps the 24 Sleeping Giants rode the shoulders of a transcendent, superstar player to a great season. This builds a bit off of what I said at the end of Theory 1.
What I found is that it’s experience, not superstardom (but often both) that correlates to success. Let’s start with the starting quarterbacks of the 24 Sleeping Giants, 2000-2012:
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| Year | School | QB | Class | Comment |
| 2012 | Texas A&M | Johnny Manziel | rs-Fr | JOHNNY FOOTBALL! |
| 2010 | Stanford | Andrew Luck | Jr | ANDREW LUCK! |
| 2009 | Cincinnati | Tony Pike | Sr | Declared early, 7th rd pick |
| 2008 | Utah | Brian Johnson | Sr | 3 year starter |
| 2008 | TCU | Andy Dalton | So | ANDY DALTON! |
| 2007 | Missouri | Chase Daniel | Jr | Backup QB in the league! |
| 2007 | Kansas | Todd Reesing | Jr | 3 year starter |
| 2007 | Boston Coll | Matt Ryan | Jr | MATTY ICE! |
| 2006 | Boise State | Jared Zabransky | Sr | 3 year starter |
| 2006 | Wisconsin | John Stocco | Sr | 3 year starter |
| 2005 | West Va | Pat White | Fr | |
| 2005 | Penn St | Michael Robinson | Sr | 5th in Heisman voting |
| 2005 | Notre Dame | Brady Quinn | Jr | 3 year starter, 4th in Heisman |
| 2004 | Louisville | Stefan LeFors | Sr | |
| 2004 | Virginia Tech | Bryan Randall | Sr | 3 year starter |
| 2003 | Miami OH | Ben Roethlisberger | Jr | BIG BEN. 3 year starter. |
| 2003 | Wash St | Matt Kegel | Sr | |
| 2003 | Iowa | Nathan Chandler | Sr | |
| 2002 | Iowa | Brad Banks | Sr | |
| 2002 | Kansas St | Ell Roberson | Jr | |
| 2001 | Wash St | Jason Gesser | Jr | 3 year starter |
| 2001 | Colorado | Craig Ochs / Bobby Pesavento | So / Sr | Platoon |
| 2000 | Oregon St | Jonathan Smith | Jr | 3 year starter |
| 2000 | Oregon | Joey Harrington | Jr | Terrible FOX analyst! |
[/colored_box]
I think we have a pattern here. You know most of those names, don’t you. And if you don’t know the name, you see that they were experienced, maybe a great college player if not a great pro.
20 of the 24 Sleeping Giants were led by an upperclassman QB. 16 of the 24 teams were led by a 3rd year starter and/or Senior under center. The list of underclassmen QB who pulled off the feat are guys you definitely know: 1) Johnny Football, 2) Andy Dalton, 3) Pat White.
This is so great that I won’t even look at other positions. Your mind is already blown apart and I’m not sure you can take any more.
Theory 3 – Superstar coach: The Sleeping Giant was led by a coach that was coming into his own
https://www.hornsports.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/ksumlin_wk-166×250.jpg Kevin Sumlin – Photo Credit: DianeCMcDonald
Kevin Sumlin, Jim Harbaugh, Bryan Kelly, Gary Patterson. Hmmm maybe we’re onto something here. But then we look at the coaches of the 2007 Sleeping Giants.
Gary Pinkel, Mark Mangino, and Jeff Jagodzinski. Yikes.
I almost think you can throw 2007 completely out the window. Missouri and Kansas both avoided Texas and Oklahoma that season and both teams plundered a highly depleted Big 12 North. And Jagodzinski was fired a year later from BC just for interviewing for another position. So we never really got to see what he was all about.
***
So I see your eyes are getting glassy, so let’s wrap this up. Is there a simple sleeper formula? Probably not, and the answer is probably a combination of these three factors – and probably some more I haven’t thought about (strength of schedule comes to mind).
In part 2 of this blog entry, which I’ll release as soon as the AP Poll is announced, we’ll examine some of the unranked teams of the 2013 preseason and see who might has an experienced signal caller, possibly some NFL talent, a rising star coach…and a chance at emerging as a Sleeping Giant in 2013.
