@WillieTheBrain made the point that guys like me are missing something. Something that is often true.
Namely, we are missing that the gap between the haves and the have nots has never been greater due to a combination of the portal, NIL, facilities, and information about recruits. For this reason he has 59 AA's coming from the top 10 teams. That certainly tracks as something that has never happened before. Last year was the record with 52 AA's from the top 10 teams.
Fair enough. That all makes sense to me. Is it possible that we see 59 AA's from the top 10? Sure, anything is possible. But I tend to deal in probable.
All of the influences Willie mentioned were in place last year as well. So it stands to reason that this year's pre-season rankings would also reflect that fact - minus the effect of incoming freshmen (a very real effect last year). But this is where I struggle with probability. Using Willie's InterMat rankings, as produced by Earl Smith, every single team in his top 8 (sorry, only the top 8 were listed above even though Willie referred to top 10 on his podcast) would need to outperform their current ranks. Every. Single. One.
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Again - all possible. Again - not remotely probable.
And this is not a statement about history. I freely admit that any model built from historical data is meaningless when the present is very different than the past. And I think that is what Willie is arguing. I just don't think the result of that difference will be every single top 8 team doing what no more than one or two have done per year since the advent of the portal, NIL, facilities, and recruiting data have done (2021).
I was happy to be moot on this point, but I felt the need to respond.
That said. Who cares? A prediction is a prediction. A prediction is never provably wrong when it is made. It only becomes known to be right or wrong later. But a prediction also has great value in the present. It gets us all talking about the sport we love when there isn't any sport we love to talk about yet. Keep predicting, Willie.
Also records are fun. That why we track them.
I will shut up now.
