Penn State preseason #1...if the rankings were based on team academic performance.  More after the jump

The other day I came across an article buried in the Op-Ed section of tWWL's website.  I didn't realize they had an opinion section, rather I had assumed it was almost all opinion.  In any case, the article discusses the disparity between on-field success and academic success at the country's top ranked football schools.  The author then presents a new preseason top-25, if you took football teams from this year's preseason top 25 and reordered them according to their Academic Bowl Championship Series rank.

The ESPN commentary piece can be found here.

The Academic Bowl Championship rankings the author refers to can be found here.

The Big Ten as a conference (including Nebraska) is well represented, with 5 of the top 12 spots in last year's rankings, and 5 of the top 9 in the author's modified preseason rankings.

Thought it was interesting, and with all the scandals out there (now in addition to Agentgate, North Carolina football is being implicated for academic wrongdoing...) it is nice to know that the Grand Experiment is still alive and well, and that at least one author gives Joe some credit for it.