To help make your point, and that pre-season Or even first couple of weeks polls are dumb, here’s an example.
forget next weeks games altogether, if we were rolling into Dallas at 3-1 and unranked while OU is 4-0 and ranked 4rh and we win 35-21 OU likely drops ~8 spots to 12 and we enter polls somewhere around 16-18.
We see this shit every year, turns out it looks like our loss was to a top 10 team in week 2 with a new staff and freshman QB. We made adjustments and. Get on a roll but the polls won’t generally jump or drop a team more than 10 spots, usually less. There’s a chance we never catch up to them if we both win out from there
Polls are a beauty contest and image does indeed matter
Poll position matters, particularly when it’s so difficult to go undefeated and there are a lot of 1 loss teams vying for the same spots. But our image is approaching Michigan where pollsters are more likely to wait and see.
On the flip side, we have certainly earned that wait and see attitude over the past decade, and we likely lose a few more games this year so... But Moving to the SEC will help remedy that.