Baylor Ranked #4 in 2015 Preseason USA Today/Amway Coaches Poll

Just a few minutes ago, the highly-anticipated, yet ultimately meaningless, Amway Coaches Poll debuted for the 2015 season.  Atop it sat the prohibitive favorites to loft the crystal football Dr. Pepper torch trophy thing, the Ohio State Buckeyes, followed by our Horned friends in Fort Worth, the stalwart Alabama Crimson Tide, and your Baylor Bears. Here's the top 10 in image form.

Three teams-- the Buckeyes, Frogs, and Tide-- received first-place votes, but the latter only got one each.  Ohio State took the other 62 in overwhelming fashion.  Baylor sits at #4 in the poll, as you can see, 87 points behind Alabama at #3 and 105 points ahead of Oregon at #5.  The top 10 is rounded out by the usual suspects for this kind of thing: the Oregon Ducks, Auburn Tigers, Florida State Seminoles, Georgia Bulldogs, and USC Trojans.  Of those 5, the only somewhat surprising inclusion (at least to me) is USC, but I think we do this every single year.

Oh, and I'm fairly sure this is the highest preseason ranking in Baylor history, if you care about that sort of thing.

Here's the rest of the poll, from the mothership:

Notably, TCU, Baylor, and Oklahoma are the only three Big 12 teams in the Poll. Noticeably absent is Texas, who hasn't been left out of the Preseason Coaches Poll since 1998. Also somewhat surprising is the absence of Oklahoma State; that's a team to watch this season. While only having three teams in the Top 25 may seem a bit disappointing, but two teams in the top 5 is not bad at all for the Big 12.