Coaches poll out (updated)

The first (meaningful) poll of the 2010 football season is out, and it gives Georgia reason to feel good, but also antsy.

The Bulldogs come in at No. 21 in the USA Today coaches poll, which came out early Friday morning.

Georgia released a statement from coach Mark Richt:

"It's always good to be ranked and it's a starting point for us. Hopefully,
we'll play good enough to merit moving up in the poll as the season moves
along."

It's the ninth straight year Georgia has been ranked in the preseason poll, but it's the lowest it has been since 2001, Richt's first year, when the Bulldogs were unranked.

The Bulldogs' preseason rank through the years:

2009: 13

2008: 1

2007: 13

2006: 14

2005: 13

2004: 4

2003: 9

2002: 11

2001: NR

2000: 11

1999: 13

1998: 13

1997: 25

Florida comes in at No. 3 in the poll, while Alabama, as expected, is first. But to me the next three SEC teams, all from the West, are a bit of surprise: No. 16 LSU, No. 19 Arkansas and No. 23 Auburn. So the coaches are giving LSU a bit more love than the media did down in Hoover.

Interestingly, while South Carolina was one point away from Georgia in that media vote, the Gamecocks did not make the top 25. (They were 35th, behind even Mississippi, picked to finish near the bottom of the West.)