The 2011 preseason USA Today coaches poll has been released this morning and while no one was expecting our own Kansas Jayhawks to find themselves in the mix, it is an interesting look at just how difficult this seasons schedule shapes up.
The preseason favorite among college football coaches is a team from the Big 12 and an opponent of the Kansas Jayhawks. That team would be the Oklahoma Sooners. Alabama, Oregon, LSU and Florida State round out the top five.
The Jayhawks will face a total of five ranked teams including the previously mentioned #1 ranked Sooners, Oklahoma State(#8), Texas A&M(#9), Missouri(#21) and Texas(#24). To make matters more difficult two of the Jayhawks non conference opponents, Northern Illinois and Georgia Tech, are sitting on the fringe in the "others" receiving votes category.
What should we make of all this from a Kansas fans perspective? I'd say that even if we see the improvement on the field that we're all looking for and improvement in terms of our competitiveness that we're begging for, the probability is high that those improvements might not show in the win/loss column come December.