Guesses or Predictions

I was just looking around at some random stuff about College Football (which I love) and I found this picture. It is SI's pre-season edition, giving a rundown of top teams, bowl predictions, etc. I thought it was very interesting to compare the pre-season rankings to season ending rankings, and I thought I might include that here:

	SI's Prediction		Final Ranking
1	Florida		5
2	Texas		2
3	Oklahoma		NR
4	USC		NR
5	Virgina Tech		12
6	Ole Miss		NR
7	Oklahoma State		21
8	Alabama		1
9	Boise State		6
10	Ohio State		8
11	Oregon		7
12	Georgia Tech		9
13	LSU		13
14	Penn State		11
15	Georgia		NR
16	Florida State		NR
17	TCU		3
18	Oregon State		16
19	Utah		23
20	North Carolina		NR

All of this becomes even more interesting when you compare the opposite direction, what currently ranked teams weren't even on this preseason list (#14 through #25 all weren't included with the exception of Utah and Oklahoma State). And we can see that there was some significant shaking of the BCS, but not by the teams SI predicted (they had 4 covers released regionally for Oregon, Ole Miss, Oklahoma State and Penn State), of which only Oregon ended up in the top 10, but teams like TCU and Cincy.

Of course predictions are often wrong, and they couldn't see some random events like BYU's upset over Oklahoma or their loosing Sam Bradford (twice). From little things like 'Bama's two blocked kicks over LSU, to big ones like Stanford taking over the Pac-10 late in the season and USC falling to dust. Only time can truly tell the future, but I guess it is still fun to make guesses.

Speaking of which I will now offer my predictions on this years biggest bowls (for the BCS and MWC):
Championship:
. Alabama (Texas has been playing worse and getting lucky)
Tostitos Fiesta:
. TCU (Can't get through the D, can't stop the offense)
Rose Bowl:
. Oregon (their team synergy has only grown bigger since beating 6 ranked teams this season)
Allstate Sugar:
. Florida (got off their game, but I believe they can get back on it for Tebow's final hurrah)
FedEx Orange:
. Georgia (I really wanna pick Iowa, but they really lost their umph since QB Stanzi went out
Las Vegas:
. Brigham Young (Oregon State, seriously?)
Pointsettia:
. Utah (Cal's had a serious falling out this year)
Armed Forces:
. Huston (again, I'll be rooting for AFA, but being a non-AQ and being consistently ranked says alot)
New Mexico:
. Wyoming (why not? ;-)