The Preseason B1G Media Poll Released

Life without college football is cold and lifeless, a veritable tundra of boredom and longing for the days of autumn, but with the coming B1G Media Days and the recently released (unofficial) B1G Preseason Poll, things are warming up.

Doug Lesmerises of Cleveland.com has assembled B1G writers from around the universe to create an unofficial Media Poll. After much consideration, the writers ordered the teams according to their projected finish in 2014.

What you see here is the results of the poll with total points and first place votes in the respective columns to the right.

Two things are important to realize here. First, August can hurry up and get itself over with, because it's time for some college football. Second, the Illini are moving up!

In last season's unofficial Cleveland.com preseason poll, Illinois was picked last in the Leaders Division and last in total points. Now we rise above the ranks of Purdue and Rutgers. However, as I assume any smart person like you can conceptualize, these rankings and polls mean about as much as a Michigan recruiting class: nothing. Just take a look at last year's B1G East prediction. Only one of the six teams landed in the same spot by year's end.

Preseason power polls primarily pull perception from previous positions. Every year you see the teams that finished in the postseason given automatic credibility for the next. College football has more attrition than any other sport -- players leave or graduate, coaches jump from school to school, underclassmen improve as upperclassmen -- it's hardly ever the same thing twice.

However, we should all give these predictions some slack. These are just preconceived generalizations based on what the voter knows about the team. Teams can come out of no where -- especially when they get a new quarterback transfer or some new JUCO D-Linemen or even a new set of uniforms.