Who’s the No. 1 preseason football team is anyone’s guess

And the No. 1 team in the 2021 GameTimeCT Preseason Football Top 10 Poll is … I have no idea.

Well, I do have an idea. If deep conversation, historical metrics and a peek at early returns are correct, Darien, St. Joseph, Hand or Newtown will be atop the first poll to be released on Monday.

“It would be great if you put us in the Top Ten, just don’t vote us No. 1,” firstyear Hand coach Erik Becker said jokingly when I told him this is my first time voting in the poll.

As one of the legacy football programs in Connecticut, Hand has never shied away from the weight of expectations. Yet this year, the year after a year off because of COVID, when today’s key seniors were back-up sophomores in 2019, a year when we’ll see projected talent does not always equal game-tested execution … No. 1 is no more than an educated guess.

This year, being preseason No. 1 could be a needless distraction and an erroneous burden for a program. Preseason No. 1 could be a very bad compass for voters.

“Whelp,” Ned Griffen of The Day of New London

emailed, “this is obviously going to be the greatest crapshoot/YOLO preseason poll all-time of all of our lives.”

“Yep,” Sean Patrick Bowley of Hearst’s GameTimeCT said. “An utter, unprecedented crapshoot. Two years since the last football game, so anybody who thinks they know anything about any team is fooling themselves.”

So for the peace of everyone’s mind — especially mine — can we label the 2021 GameTimeCT preseason poll “for entertainment purposes only” and agree straightening it out over the course of the first month will be an interesting challenge?

“Things get clearer,” assured Mike DiMauro, Day columnist and my spirit animal.

Good. Because right now I’m more overwhelmed than the nice lady inside the concession stand at halftime when everyone’s yelling for two hot dogs and some kid is pulling on his dad’s leg demanding Skittles.

As one of about 400 voters from the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, I have considered the ballot for the Hall of Fame an honor and, especially during the steroid era, a considerable responsibility. I always made my vote public. Transparency is a good thing. Some of the coarse criticism over the years, however, sickened me. Some of the condescending remarks by statistical savants with their neverending new categories made me wonder if there should be rehab for sabermetric overdosing. I do agree with the logic that if writers no longer are actively covering the game, they should relinquish their vote. Turning full-time to high schools for the twilight of my career, I will do exactly that. Curt Schilling doesn’t have to worry about my vote anymore.

I’m also giving up my Heisman Trophy ballot. I’ll be much more focused on Victor Rosa of Bristol Central than Spencer Rattler of Oklahoma this fall. Those who actively cover college football in Connecticut (bless those UConn football writers) deserve the vote much more.

So I call Ned and Sean Patrick for advice. They take it seriously. They are the state high school football poll savants.

“The biggest mistake is taking more than five minutes on this first one,” Griffen said. “You can’t go wrong with brand names. After the first week or so, OK, we have a little more information now. Let’s rip it all up and almost start from scratch again.”

“You have to trust the pedigree this time,” Bowley said. “But be very willing to change even when teams win. The feeling I’m getting is you are going to see some wild results especially in the first month. Everyone is playing catchup.”

Bowley made a good point.

“Football is choreography,” he said. “It’s like trying to get your kids to do Swan Lake. Teams that played in independent leagues (last year) will have some advantage. We’ll see how much of an advantage.”

In other words, this isn’t AAU basketball where you can scurry to get five guys together on a weekend and win a tournament.

Which leads me to a longheld belief that polls aren’t worth anything beyond talk show fodder until a couple weeks into the season. And that goes threefold this year. Teams are anointed No. 1 or No. 2 and it’s nearly impossible to dislodge them unless they lose.

“On one hand, it’s entertainment,” Bowley said. “It’s to drum up interest in the season. Get people’s thinking caps on. Get their opinion’s percolating.

“But voters who won’t change No. 1 unless they lose. I’ve always disagreed with that. It’s a problem.”

Some years mistakes become glaring. Sometimes it’s subtle. In 2019, for instance, two-time state champ Hand was No. 1 with 22 of 24 first-place votes in the preseason poll. St. Joe’s had two. Both went undefeated and Hand had 19 of the 25 firsts heading into the Class L championship. Still, a majority of folks were picking St. Joe’s, which won, and finished with 24 of 25 first-place votes. Newtown got one. Nothing egregious, but somewhere in midseason St. Joe’s seemed to be the best team.

Bowley said GameTimeCT has discussed moving the poll back. Griffen, who also runs the coaches poll for the Day said: “In a perfect world, two weeks. I pushed for no preseason (coaches) poll. Two weeks wasn’t going to fly, so we went with one.”

The other matter — in various high school sports with many voters — is jumping small schools unranked all season to, oh, sixth in the final poll after a Class S or M title. Deep down we know the ranking isn’t merited, but so many voters fall for the romance.

“It’s a reward,” Bowley said. “I want best teams in the poll. I don’t care if they won Class S or not.”

The GameTimeCT poll requires voters to list 15 teams. Griffen remembers one year, when it was six divisions, he couldn’t bring himself to put one of the class titlists among 15.

“One thing I do shake my head at is, say, a Class LL team absolutely ruins a lower-class team, loses early in the state tournament and then gets ranked below the team they crushed,” Griffen said. “I’m pretty much a hard ass in the football poll.

“I stumbled across Calpreps.com a few years back. Ned Freeman was doing rankings with a computer model, strength of schedule and stuff, and had expanded it to all the states. I was stunned and amused that it looked so accurate and was so much closer to my rankings than the consensus here.”

Note to self: Periodically check in on Ned Freeman’s rankings.

The preponderance of the media voters has been in the southern part of the state and that can lead to disproportionate regional knowledge if not bias. When I was at the Hartford Courant and not a poll voter, I had a grand time with this point. In 1999, I spent two hours poking fun of my colleagues who had Ansonia ranked higher and picked the Chargers for the Class S title, only for Bloomfield to win 56-0.

Second note to self: Make sure to pack an extra layer of tough skin.

Bowley is funny talking about how much grief he took from Greenwich in 2007 when he picked Ansonia as No. 1. Ansonia beat Jack Cochran’s New London team with Jordan Reed, 35-0, for the Class S title. A stacked Greenwich team’s only loss was to a Florida championship team.

It’s all peace and love under Mother Hearst’s umbrella now, but Bowley, then with the Connecticut Post, was a hot competitor then of the New Haven Register. He felt the writers poll had too much Register influence and convinced the Connecticut Sports Writers’ Alliance to sponsor another poll for three years. Two writers polls, a coaches poll, the Courant rankings, our little state had more rankings than area codes.

Bowley said he decided to go on the offensive in 2010 when he jumped on the Masuk train. “Xavier had a great defense, not a good offense.” He made it abundantly clear and got heckled at games. Class L champ Masuk finished No. 1 in the Writers’ Alliance (19-12), while Class LL Xavier was first in the coaches (7-6) and Register polls (14-10).

Griffen, who once worked at the Register, recounts all the “rancor” in the mid-1990s with Cheshire and Ansonia.

“As serious as I take it, at the end a poll is a poll is a poll,” said Griffen, who makes his vote public. “It’s a reflection of opinions and we all know what opinions are. They are intended for lively debate, but at some point you got to wonder if it’s worth getting that hot under the collar.”

I’m for transparency, too. In 2017, I wrote a column arguing against Darien as No. 1 for behavioral reasons. It drew the wrath of the town. Well, I have a vote now. I got Darien No. 1 preseason 2021. That’s right. Blue Wave.