The 2017 Amway Coaches Poll was released on Thursday, but Missouri was not among the top 25. Were the Tigers also “snubbed?”
Pre-season polls don’t mean a lot to me, other than when it makes a direct correlation to whether a team can be considered for the playoffs. How those seedings come into play are directly affected by how the team performs, but first, they have to be voted into position.
Not surprisingly, Missouri didn’t make the top 25 this year. I’m not surprised, and I’m not disappointed. I also don’t think that they deserve to be ranked among the top 25, unless there’s another program with the same record that feels “snubbed.”
Not surprisingly, the SEC is represented fairly well. Surprisingly, Alabama is the only team ranked in the top 10, at No. 1. LSU is next at No. 12, followed by Auburn at 13, Georgia at 15, Florida at No. 16, and the SEC is rounded out by the “Champions of Life,” Tennessee at No. 24.
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So the question remains, was Missouri snubbed from the Amway Coaches’ Poll? In a recent post on Thursday, USA Today’s Erick Smith wrote about five teams who he believes were snubbed. Fair enough; it happens all the time.
Smith’s five snubs included Boise State, NC State, Colorado, Nebraska, and Notre Dame. You may look at this list of programs and think, ‘Wow, those are pretty big name programs; he’s got a point.’
Initially, my thought was, okay, these programs have proven a lot over the last five-or-so years, and even though I can’t stand Notre Dame, their fan base is so large, that it’s kind of surprising they were left out.
I was probably most surprised by the Irish being omitted from the poll, that is, until I read they only won four games in 2016. Four wins, the same amount of wins that Missouri had.
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Now I know that Missouri isn’t the kind of world-renowned as Notre Dame is, and it doesn’t have the pocketbook that Notre Dame has, but if we’re going to go off of record comparison alone, then maybe Mizzou was snubbed, as well. I predict the Tigers to finish 2017 with a better record than the Irish.