Lindy's Preseason Top 25 Poll Hyping Hobart (?!?)

This is the time of year when CFB publications offer (way too early) preseason polls to generate magazine and/or subscription sales at the supermarket and online. At least one of these magazines, Street & Smith, managed to get D3football.com's Keith McMillan to do their preseason preview and poll.

He actually reached out to me to get my two cents on East Region teams, but he ended up leaving at least one team I would have had on my list - Brockport - out his preseason rankings. That could be because the Golden Eagles graduated a lot of the talented defensive players that helped them go 24-2 over the past couple of seasons. There was also the well publicized departure of SR QB Joe Germiniero (which we covered in our off-season "In The D3FB Huddle" show back in April) which could have affected his decision too. In the end, "K-Mac" opted to go with Wesley at 11, Ithaca at 15, Alfred at 17, RPI at 19, DelVal at 20 and Trinity College (of the NESCAC) at 23 in his Top 25.

Lindy's CFB Magazine followed his lead for the top five teams in their preseason Top 25 poll, listing defending National Champions UMHB at 1, Mount Union at 2, St. John's at 3, UW-Whitewater at 4 and Johns Hopkins at 5. After that, there wasn't much similarity between the two.

Interestingly enough, Lindy's put Hobart in at 16 which I found pretty surprising, especially after the Statesmen came off their worst regular season record since 2010 (and most of these preseason polls are based on how things finished up the year prior). While there's a lot to be optimistic about in Geneva, I believe this preseason recognition isn't warranted at this time. By point of comparison, back in 2008 Hobart finished 10-2, losing to Mount Union in the second round of the playoffs and came into the 2009 season as the 15th ranked team in D3. I know HC Kevin DeWall '00 doesn't put much stock in these polls, but I suppose some people could look at this as a positive.

The Statesmen do return a large number of offensive players that led the Liberty League in most key statistical categories. The WR corps is SR-laden with a lot of game experience. The OL is young, but has a year of work under it's belt. The RB group is solid and two QBs who know the offense are coming back also.

The defense improved by leaps and bounds over the second half of the 2018 season and returns a number of players across the board and have some talented players coming off of injuries to go with an impressive recruiting class.

I don't want to downplay these polls too much, but I am more inclined to see where the D3football.com Top 25 preseason poll (which I expect to come out in July) has teams ranked. I think this will be a better guess as to which teams will be expected as front-runners, at least early on, in the 2019 season.

For now I'm fine with Hobart being viewed as "behind" Ithaca and RPI in the the rankings. The Statesmen played both very tough and lost closely contested games to them last season. That said, if Hobart can start off in impressive fashion, the national pollsters will have a legitimate reason to recognize them then.

First things first however. It's 92 days until the 2019 home and season opener vs. Brockport, which is the only game that matters at the moment.

Thanks for reading and go 'Bart!