Very interesting to read and appreciate the effort.
I do think Sun Belt fans will think differently, by season's end, that there are 8 better running back rooms than JMU's.

Yeah it's tough peel to swallow seeing GS "running back U" ranked bottom of the conference in RB. Kinda thought we were in good shape.

It's amazing the sheer volume of text written on these predictions when the transfer portal sends an avalanche through every G5 program and half the P5 every year. The whole industry must be propped up by desperate gamblers because there is no credibility to any prediction with so many unknowns between seasons.

At least Lindy's is giving ULM some respect putting us ahead of Texas St and ODU and only one behind stAte. Of course, I have a feeling that Lynn Scarborough had plenty of input on their ranking and he's an Auburn guy and has a relationship with Bowden.

(07-16-2023 06:40 PM)Oldyeller Wrote:  Yeah it's tough peel to swallow seeing GS "running back U" ranked bottom of the conference in RB. Kinda thought we were in good shape.

I think we'll be fine. But White has been injured a good bit, we lost Green to the portal and the guys behind White are young and have not gotten enough playing time to be known commodities. Plus we won't be running enough to have big numbers for any of them. I think it will be RB by committee for White, Arnold, and Gibbs and maybe one more. We have a big RB room, we just don't have a lot of returning experience.

(07-16-2023 10:32 AM)space orange Wrote:  

(07-16-2023 09:37 AM)Luckyshot Wrote:  

(07-15-2023 09:43 AM)WinstonTheWolf Wrote:  

(07-12-2023 06:19 PM)EigenEagle Wrote:  Here's a summary of preseason national rankings for SP+, FPI, Athlon, Lindy's and Phil Steele.



Here's Steele's national unit rankings. Don't really know exactly the methodology here but I read this magazine every year and at one time you could only find 4 or 5 Sun Belt units total on this list and this year there is 34.

QB:
22. Coastal Carolina
53. Georgia Southern
61. South Alabama
65. Georgia State

RB:
31. Marshall
33. Appalachian State
35. Troy
36. South Alabama
38. Southern Miss
43. Coastal Carolina
62. Georgia Southern

WR:
47. Coastal Carolina
48. Georgia Southern
59. Appalachian State

OL:
31. Appalachian State
39. James Madison
59. Georgia Southern
61. South Alabama
66. Marshall

DL:
20. Troy
24. South Alabama
25. Marshall
26. James Madison
33. Southern Miss

LB:
42. Southern Miss
46. South Alabama
48. James Madison
57. Marshall
59. Georgia State
64. Old Dominion

DB:
33. Marshall
49. Troy
56. South Alabama
59. James Madison

Unit rankings for the conference.

Good data but your color scales are really confusing.

How? Red is your lowest ranking and green is your highest.

Like me they were probably expecting the gradient to be per ranking service but instead it's per team. Now the colors make sense to me lol

Ahh horizontal not vertical . . . wouldn't have done it like that but now it makes sense.

(07-17-2023 08:02 PM)WinstonTheWolf Wrote:  Ahh horizontal not vertical . . . wouldn't have done it like that but now it makes sense.

Thought about that but the teams are already sorted by average rank and it would look like a green-to-red gradient from top to bottom.

The way it's done you can (for example) see that Phil Steele likes a lot of the higher-ranked teams more than the other rankings systems and Lindy's doesn't really like the Belt or much of the G5 honestly.

(07-17-2023 08:24 PM)EigenEagle Wrote:  

(07-17-2023 08:02 PM)WinstonTheWolf Wrote:  Ahh horizontal not vertical . . . wouldn't have done it like that but now it makes sense.

Thought about that but the teams are already sorted by average rank and it would look like a green-to-red gradient from top to bottom.

The way it's done you can (for example) see that Phil Steele likes a lot of the higher-ranked teams more than the other rankings systems and Lindy's doesn't really like the Belt or much of the G5 honestly.

Yeah well I wasn't thinking about grading the graders on a gradient. :)

I think in terms of a heat map for each SBC team. Rock on. Good work.

(07-16-2023 06:40 PM)Oldyeller Wrote:  Yeah it's tough peel to swallow seeing GS "running back U" ranked bottom of the conference in RB. Kinda thought we were in good shape.

We are better than those rankings for sure. Again our defense has to improve or all those nice offensive rankings are not going to matter either way. I get how we got there with the previous two goober coaches that only recruited warm bodies but the lack of improvement by year's end is why we have a new DC. If we can just make it to mid-pack in the FBS that would be a tremendous improvement over being close to dead last in almost every defensive stat.