Kelvin Kuo-USA TODAY Sports
There’s only one good thing that comes from the preseason polls. It means you’re a little closer to kickoff.
The USA Today Coaches Preseason Poll is out this morning.
UCLA is ranked #24 with 296 points behind #23 Louisville who received 331 points and in front of #25 Florida who received 245 points.
Five Pac-12 teams appear in the top-25. Stanford leads the way at #7, USC is at #17, Washington is #18, Oregon is #22, and, of course, UCLA is #24.
Three more Pac-12 schools also received votes. Utah received 73 votes, Washington State received 47 votes, and Arizona received 2 votes.
This season, four Pac-12 coaches are on the panel. Southern Cal’s Clay Helton, Arizona’s Rich Rodriguez (which probably explains at least one of U of A’s two votes and, maybe, both), Washington’s Chris Petersen and Utah’s Kyle Whittingham are those coaches.
This poll is basically meaningless except for the fact that it means we are another step closer to kickoff.
Despite that, here are the results of the Preseason Coaches Poll:
Well, we’ve seen what happens when the preseason expectations are high. We always seem to fall flat.
At least with our preseason ranking lower than last year, the national expectations appear to be lower. Hopefully, that means we’ll be able to surprise some folks, especially in Week 4 when we face Stanford.
Go Bruins!!!