How the hell were they ranked?

Potential

Preseason rankings are a joke. They could just throw darts at a board and they'd be almost as accurate. I get that they drive clicks, engagement, and excitement (a lot more fun to say App St or NIU had upsets over top 5 teams than early season wins without rankings) and I'm fine with that. The issue is that they're just guesses and then create this self-perpetuating cycle.

A team (let's say Notre Dame or LSU) is massively overrated preseason. Then they lose to a team and that team gets overrated because they beat a preseason highly ranked team. Then both those teams lose but it's still too early to look at their broader resume and say they're not very good so the 3rd team gets overrated. This is how the SEC upheld its death grip on college football this last decade. They're good at the top, sure. But other than that they're not really any better than the other power conferences were.

But USC or someone would have an upset over an overrated conference rival like LSU or Florida, then they would shoot yo the rankings before losing to TAMU or someone else who would get their overrated rankings and on and on it goes until the end of the year when we look back and all are hovering around .500. But by that point it doesn't matter because 3 or 4 survivors already got the benefit of beating a highly ranked team that ended up not being any good and they have 3 teams in the top 5 because of "strength of schedule" or "quality of wins". That's why at the end of the year I think they shouldn't factor in Top 10 wins at the time unless that team ended up staying ranked and good or their falloff was because they had something crazy like 5+ key starters go down to injury.

At least the SEC is now playing actual noncon games now instead of a select few 1-3 a year so we can actually see overrated teams losing to BC and the like instead of transferring their rankings within the SEC

They went undefeated last year (in the regular season), that's how they got ranked. No one looks too closely at these things before the season starts.

Will be interesting to see if (assuming Cal wins tonight) a 0-3 team is favored over a 3-0 team.

TilWeWobble said:

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Will be interesting to see if (assuming Cal wins tonight) a 0-3 team is favored over a 3-0 team.

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They will have a new QB next week and that could ignite them. Bears better be ready to play.

Oski87 said:

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TilWeWobble said:

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Will be interesting to see if (assuming Cal wins tonight) a 0-3 team is favored over a 3-0 team.

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They will have a new QB next week and that could ignite them. Bears better be ready to play.

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i really wish they won today. I was hoping they will come into our game and be surprised.

Now they have nothign to lose. It could go either

1. The coach just loses the team completely
2. They circle the wagon.

Seems to be a lot of circling the wagon with a Cal win lately. Notre Dame was 0-2 when they faced Cal and ended up with a very decent seasons 2 years ago (even though game was stolen from us). We will have to watch out for ACC refs

Totally. The pre-season odds of FSU being winless through three games would have been astronomical. Now they are. Not sure it helps Cal.

panoramicknob said:

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Totally. The pre-season odds of FSU being winless through three games would have been astronomical. Now they are. Not sure it helps Cal.

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We need to take the game and not worry about a resurgence.

TedfordTheGreat said:

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Oski87 said:

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TilWeWobble said:

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Will be interesting to see if (assuming Cal wins tonight) a 0-3 team is favored over a 3-0 team.

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They will have a new QB next week and that could ignite them. Bears better be ready to play.

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i really wish they won today. I was hoping they will come into our game and be surprised.

Now they have nothign to lose. It could go either

1. The coach just loses the team completely
2. They circle the wagon.

Seems to be a lot of circling the wagon with a Cal win lately. Notre Dame was 0-2 when they faced Cal and ended up with a very decent seasons 2 years ago (even though game was stolen from us). We will have to watch out for ACC refs

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ACC refs want to teach fsu a lesson. May help us!

oskidunker said:

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How the hell were they ranked?

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Just goes to show you that preseason rankings mean absolutely nothing.

Florida State (and Florida, too!) has been nothing short of abysmal. They're a disappointment.

In my opinion, this is the biggest trap game we have. Going in against an 0-3 team at home is dangerous. We need to start fast and hard and keep the foot on the neck.

I'll be shocked if Cal beats FSU. They have a lot of talent, they are playing at home. It's probably too early for them to have just thrown in the towel for the whole season. I hope Cal wins but don't really expect it.

trap game? we are the underdogs.
https://chopchat.com/posts/fsu-football-bettors-looking-at-california-like-free-money-against-fsu-01j7vhbhsvec

Nofado said:

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In my opinion, this is the biggest trap game we have. Going in against an 0-3 team at home is dangerous. We need to start fast and hard and keep the foot on the neck.

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I don't think we are overlooking our first ACC opponent despite their record especially when we all thought we were going to lose to them just a month ago.

bear2034 said:

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Nofado said:

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In my opinion, this is the biggest trap game we have. Going in against an 0-3 team at home is dangerous. We need to start fast and hard and keep the foot on the neck.

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I don't think we are overlooking our first ACC opponent despite their record especially when we all thought we were going to lose to them just a month ago.

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I would think the entire team has been looking at this game in particular since beating Auburn, they know with the bye week this will be the time unload and will be locked in, much more so than last night.

Vegas has been wrong 3 weeks running. -2.5 isn't much of an underdog. Even with a new QB, that won't fix their Oline, running backs or receivers. Our Defense is better than any they've seen so far.

The danger is that they're not playing up to their talent level, they don't have any injury issues, and they may just be fueled by their anti-hipoie hatred enough to beat Cal.

Hoping their anti-hippie attitude will make them overconfident, however.

New quarterbacks make mistakes.

BarcaBear said:

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Vegas has been wrong 3 weeks running. -2.5 isn't much of an underdog. Even with a new QB, that won't fix their Oline, running backs or receivers. Our Defense is better than any they've seen so far.

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The line is probably based on the idea that the public will more likely bet on FSU than Cal, not so much how good they actually think the teams are. For a lot of casuals, FSU is still the team that went undefeated last year and should have made the playoff, and Cal is . . . Cal.

Last year's team is not this year's team, but, yes, Cal is Cal until they prove otherwise.

BarcaBear said:

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Vegas has been wrong 3 weeks running. -2.5 isn't much of an underdog. <snip>

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It opened at -6.5, so lots of money on Cal has moved it this way. I would have loved getting the Bears +6.5. It will be a low scoring and close game, so definitely take the under.