…are out. Well, I've seen the Southeastern one and the ACC one. Haven't seen one with a full-on preview of FAU. However, I was able to glean a couple things from the others. Numbers are approximate. They ranked the Florida teams as:

Florida #1
USF #20
Miami #50
FAU #70
UCF #79
FIU #119

I can't remember where FSU stood. Probably between USF and Miami… not in the Top 25 though.

They have us beating UAB.

They list Rusty both in their Top 25 quarterbacks (#12) and in their overall Top 100 players (I think he was in the top 50 there). Cortez Gent was on their list of top WR, Jason Harmon was on the list of top TE and Warley Leroy was on their list of top Kickers.

All in all, not a bad way to start off the season.

Nice info owlcountry

Would rather be underrrated for certain than overrated…

Which is where they have us…

Keep an eye out for Phil Steele's write up…he IS the man…put's the "notable" publications to shame…

Check out this link:

Phil Steele

His SBC/BigEast book should be out very soon…within a week or so…they will have it at Borders…

sorta sad that we are ranked below UM, afterall i think last year we would have matched up well against them……

All in all, athlon is what it is, just a bunch of publicity for the major conferences and very little for the mid-majors…..


Glad to see Rusty represented well there…..he deserves everything he gets…..

Hey we went from up in the 100's to 70.  Can't ask for much more than than.  At that pace we should be ranked in say 3 yrs

owlcountry said

They list Rusty both in their Top 25 quarterbacks (#12) and in their overall Top 100 players (I think he was in the top 50 there). Cortez Gent was on their list of top WR, Jason Harmon was on the list of top TE and Warley Leroy was on their list of top Kickers.

All in all, not a bad way to start off the season.

Leroy on the list of top kickers?  I hope they know something we don't.  We need a big year out of this kid.

Baller07 said

Leroy on the list of top kickers?  I hope they know something we don't.  We need a big year out of this kid.

Steele has him second as well…

Just saw a new Athlon magazine that has a full-page preview of all 120 teams.

The 2008 prediction is 9-2 (two losses from Michigan State and Texas) with one swing game (Minnesota). 9-3 wouldn't be a bad record at all, obviously.

It talks up Rusty Smith, Tavious Polo, Cortez Gent… mentions our weakness at defense and our questions marks at safety this year. Otherwise a really glowing review.

As an aside, it projects FIU losing all games except for swing games at ULL, ULM and WKU. I believe the projection for ULL is similar. There's some talk that the contest for the title won't be against Troy but against ULM… some people think that ULM may be the sleeper of the Belt next year and rise up like FAU did this year.

I just picked up the Athlon Mag, It's nice to see a picture of Rusty on the Sun Belt Conference page.
Hopefully the predictions could realy happen and I think they could.  We just need to continue using this as motivation because we will have all the tools and weapons to repeat as Champs.  We are finally getting some regonition on Mags which is great, and if we can beat Texas or Michigan has remarkable would that be.  Go OWLS

owlcountry said

… some people think that ULM may be the sleeper of the Belt next year and rise up like FAU did this year.

If there is one team i think we will crush next year, this is the team…we have ALOT of motivation to do it…even though it is at thier place this year…

And i sure hope we do! ;D