re: ESPN's Preseason Football Power Index Rankings Has LSU #1

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I think this index is useful so long as you're saying things like "Alabama is going to be very good" and "Vanderbilt and Kentucky aren't going to be very good." Other than that, seems like a crapshoot.

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It's not designed to predict how each game is going to unfold. It's designed to give a rough estimate of how good each team is in a vacuum.

The reason that people have mentioned that it "looks better as the season goes on", is because the outcomes of all the games over the course of the season average out. The people who come up with these numbers are making their best guess at what those averages are going to look like.