LSU will begin this season ranked outside the top 10 in the Associated Press and USA Today Coaches polls for the first time since 2010. 
One could infer that the Tigers have taken a step back heading into 2013 and may even fall from the ranks of the elite Southeastern Conference programs. 
Actually, aside from providing Les Miles and company with bulletin board material, these polls don’t mean a thing. 
Tiger fans should not fret over the team’s No. 12 ranking. LSU has more talent than that, and the low ranking comes from media and coaches across the country that have never seen the Tigers’ crop of new defenders play a down of football. 
Well, since these are preseason polls, no one has seen any of these teams play a down of football. 
These meaningless polls are based on last season’s results combined with assumptions of how new players will translate into 2013. 
The truth is this: There are 120 Division I FBS football programs. It is impossible for any AP voter to see every one of these teams, and aside from a few national reporters, no one gets to see the teams practice in person before the season starts. This effectively means every pollster’s preseason vote is based only on the team’s 2012 record and some speculation. 
The same logic applies to the Coaches Poll. 
It’s hard to imagine any decent coach diverting any attention away from game planning for their opponent to watch enough film for their vote to be significant. In most cases it seems the coaches simply mirror the AP poll and there have even been reports that the coaches don’t even cast their votes themselves. 
These polls are as useless as the mail. They come every year and we all look at them, but we all know nothing important has happened until computers get involved. 
It’s been almost two decades since Seinfeld’s Newman famously said “when you control the mail, you control … information!” Since then, the Internet has made the mail obsolete just like the BCS has made the preseason AP polls insignificant. 
Just look back to last season’s preseason polls. USC began the season surrounded by fanfare and a No. 1 ranking, but six losses left the Trojans unranked and nothing more than a footnote on the 2012 season. At the same time, Notre Dame, who began the season unranked, had an undefeated regular season until walking into the Alabama buzz saw in the BCS National Championship Game. 
The team that began the season No. 1 hasn’t hoisted the crystal ball since Pete Carroll’s Trojans pounded Oklahoma in the 2005 Orange Bowl. 
So don’t worry. If the LSU offense grows and the defense’s talent shows more than its relative inexperience, the Tigers will find themselves much higher than No. 12 when the dust settles in January. 
LSU began last season ranked No. 3 in the AP and No. 1 in the Coaches before finishing outside the top 10 in the BCS. 
The opposite could happen just as easily in 2013.