Trust me, there is plenty yet to come. Tons of it. Wads more on the way. Truckloads of it just around the corner.

But the first bit of college football’s useless August trivia has officially hit the streets with — drum roll, please; Twitter, on your mark — the unveiling of the first truly meaningful preseason poll.

Wait.

Check that.

It’s a new age.

None of the polls mean squat anymore.

Silly me.

So the coaches preseason poll is even more useless than ever, which is a pretty tall order.

In other words, it will be as useless for the postseason as it is in the preseason.

That didn’t keep it from picking up (selling out for) a corporate sponsorship. So it’s now the Amway Coaches Poll, though still compiled by USA Today, and perhaps delivered to you by a door-to-door salesman along with all your household cleaning needs.

Maybe it’s just as well that the coaches poll has been rendered obsolete by progress — just as The Associated Press writers poll, in a fit of self-righteousness, took itself out relevancy a few years ago when it refused to let the BCS plug its handiwork into the formula for picking the final two teams that get to play for the national championship.

Perhaps you got the memo. For this season’s bona fide College Football Playoff, a carefully screened committee will handle the heavy lifting to determine the four teams that will tangle.

No polls needed.

None need apply.

Computer rankings have also been shown the door, with the their bark now meaning even less than their bytes.

And nobody seems to know whatever happened to the short-lived Harris poll, the odd creature that was cobbled together to replace the stuffy writers poll. Gone, poof. Didn’t even leave a forwarding address.

But you have to start somewhere and, frankly, here on the first day of August with the national psyche begging for some football, it’s about all we’ve got.

Plus, although the committee is under no legal obligation to even read, let alone heed, these preseason polls, there are rumors — probably psychological studies — suggesting that the polls could in some shape or form influence the very human elements of the selection committee.

Even if it’s only subliminal.

So maybe it would be a snap judgment to completely dismiss this Amway thingamajig.

It does, in fact, almost demand overanalyzing.

But even if it mattered — did I mention that it doesn’t anymore? — it should be studied and analyzed with caution, with skeptical eyes and with malice aforethought and — who knows? — with liberty and justice for all.

The first order of business is to remain calm. Do not panic. Even if it did matter, it’s not written in stone.

There should be no real bragging rights, nor anguish either.

It has almost become a point of almost curious, befuddled pride among SEC writers that they have picked the eventual conference champion correctly only four times in 22 years. The more recognized polls haven’t fared much better on the national scene.

So don’t take this stuff too seriously.

But, OK, LSU starts this poll at No. 13.

That’s probably not high enough for most Tiger fans. But, to my way of thinking, maybe a little high for a team still trying to figure out both who its quarterback will be and to whom, exactly, he will throw.

If you’re looking for hidden meanings, it’s probably that, even with major holes to fill, LSU still commands respect among the coaches, who don’t trust the Tigers to slip too far.

Anyway, that’s the local angle.

In a fit of creativity, the coaching voters made Florida State a near-unanimous No. 1 to defend its national championship.

When it actually did win the title last season, the Seminoles started August in the No. 12 hole and runner-up Auburn was nowhere remotely on anybody’s radar.

Eventual No. 3 Michigan State wasn’t ranked at the start last year either. Florida, on the other hand, started out at No. 10 — and went 4-8.

So things have a way of changing.

The Seminoles got 56 of the 62 first-place votes, but the coaches poll hasn’t picked the correct national champion in August since 2004 (Southern Cal).

Maybe the curiosity this year was that the SEC got exactly one first-place vote — and it wasn’t Alabama.

The Crimson Tide comes in at No. 2 overall, but the league’s lone first-place vote went to South Carolina, which otherwise didn’t get much love and starts at No. 9.

Still, if the various media days over the last two weeks seemed like well-orchestrated SEC smear campaigns, they need to regroup and start over.

The SEC still led all conferences with seven teams in the top 25, also with three in the top 10 (and five in the top 13).

Dig deeper into the Also Receiving Votes netherworld and the SEC actually has 10 of the top 29 — more than a third.

Not that it means anything.

But it’s August — the Talking Season. You take your football where you can get it.

l

Scooter Hobbs covers LSU

athletics. Email him at

shobbs@americanpress.com(MGNonline)