re: Starting #1 in the polls because of winning the title the year before.

It's stupid as frick. A new year is just that, a new year. It makes no logical sense whatsoever for someone to be ranked arbitrarily simply because of what they did last year. If a team went 8-4 last year and finished unranked, but returns all 22 starters should they automatically be unranked? What if that #1 team lost 20 starters from the year before?

You should rank the teams based on the current season, common sense. And honestly, there shouldn't even be any polls until October but that's another discussion.