Oh the horror... a preseason prognosticator is wrong. I think Stewart was doing his best to be the squeaky wheel this offseason and not follow the herd mentality and just pick the same teams that everyone picks each year. Someone could probably pick a top 10 and Alabama, Auburn, LSU, USC, Ohio State, Oregon, Georgia, Florida State would take up 8 out of those 10 spots in just about any given year.
But what fun is it to read that? I actually enjoy reading predictions that just don't follow the norm. Writers need to generate page views and just predicting what everyone else is predicting or the same old isn't going to do that. If you read his logic I don't actually think any of it is that far off base. How was he supposed to know that Petrino would be an idiot and play a freshman who's clearly not ready yet at qb. I also don't disagree with anything he said about FSU, Clemson or GaTech. I also can't blame him for picking us to win only 2 games... if Terrel Hunt was still QB I would put our ceiling at 3/4 games also. For the record Mandel also picked A&M in the title game and that's not looking too bad right now and he noted publicly that he missed on the SU pick already.
I think Mandel is one of the most refreshing sports writers out there. He doesn't try to be all gimicky with overly done punch lines like the Grantland guys but he has really interesting takes based on facts and analytics. I used to love his mailbag crush that he has since retired.
