Here's what they don't do: They don't call me and say, "Hey what do you think, Todd? Whenever you feel comfortable about it, send us a vote."

Because if they did, I wouldn't vote for another two months.

I love voting in the AP Top 25.

But I hate voting in the AP preseason Top 25.

Maybe I take it too seriously, but it's a responsibility that I enjoy having and I try to give it a lot of thought and consideration each time I vote. And to vote in the preseason is... well, just a guessing game.

I'm not surprised, but kind of amused that Florida State did not wind up No. 1 in the preseason poll.

I certainly had them at the top of my preseason vote.

They deserve it... nobody beat 'em last year, and they have a lot of talent coming back, and a very good leader at quarterback, and of course Bobby Bowden's teams always are a threat to win the national championship.

Sure, Nebraska's a very good team, too, but Florida State finished on top, and there's no reason to think they're going to slide. Nebraska has some questions on defense, and I just didn't see any reason for them to leapfrog FSU.

But that's why they play the games.

One thing about preseason polls and magazines and all that -- everybody pays so much attention to starters a team has coming back. It's like a score... everybody wants a number. How many returning starters? How many starters lost? How many on offense? How many on defense?

Ooooh, this team has 18 so they must be good... but that team has only 12 or 13, so they must be rebuilding.

Hey, you might have 10 returning starters on defense, but if your defense was terrible, you might just be a little better than terrible this year. Or maybe no better at all if those guys don't come together and really improve. Or maybe they'll be a lot better -- maybe they were developing a good chemistry last year and now it's ready to make a difference for them.

But you can't gauge chemistry on a number of returning starters, and, to me, chemistry and leadership are such a big part of whether a team gets the most out of its talent. Experience is important, but -- let me say that Jim Donnan had a great line at the SEC media days.

He said "it's kind of like the kamikaze pilot who flew 50 missions... boy, he had a lot of experience, but he never quite got the job done."

Experience, returning starters, trying to quantify those things is never a true indicator in and of itself.

Even if you have 18 or 19 starters back, each year you have a new team, a new identity. And if just one or two of those starters you lost were your key leaders who kept the team loose, or brought the concentration back where it needed to be in practice or in the huddle in a key part of the game -- that's very important too.

There are a lot of things involved, which is why the team needs to play at least a couple of times, including at least one game against a high-quality opponent, for any of the votes to mean much.

I'd prefer not to do any poll until the end of September, but until they call and check with me and set their calendar around my whims, I guess I'll vote when they ask.

There's a reason we call this the pre-season poll... we'll vote again once the games start on Aug. 26, and about 15 times after that. The only one that means much in the long run, of course, is the one we call in close to midnight on Wednesday, Jan. 3, 2001.

Todd Blackledge is CBS Sports' lead game analyst for college football.