School is back in session and another season of college football is about to begin. While cheating on tests can never be condoned – this means you, North Carolina – here are all the answers to the biggest college football questions of the season.
Can Ohio State become an all-time great team?
Much of the coverage around the 2015 Buckeyes isn’t about whether they can win back-to-back national titles, it’s whether they can stake a claim as one of the greatest teams ever. All 61 Associated Press voters gave their first-place votes to Ohio State, making the Buckeyes the first unanimous preseason No1 in history. That means anything short of another national championship makes this Ohio State team a bunch of no good, choking failures.
Hey, no pressure, unpaid amateurs.
Yet the fact that not a single voter had reservations about the Buckeyes is evidence about how loaded Urban Meyer’s team really is. Realize that some of those votes are from SEC country, not traditionally a stronghold of Big Ten support. If the Buckeyes are good enough to convince the South of their superiority, they must be bordering on superheroes in pads.
Barring an outbreak of some incurable disease that decimates the Buckeyes down to their fourth-string – the third-string is where the program keeps the likes of Cardale Jones, remember – it’s inconceivable that Ohio State won’t at least go through Big Ten play in dominating fashion and arrive undefeated into the College Football Playoff. The team’s toughest non-conference opponent is unranked Virginia Tech. The Buckeyes likely won’t face a single ranked team until 21 November when they face Michigan State at home. Their toughest conference road game is ... umm ... Indiana? Michigan? Ohio State doesn’t have a tough conference road game.
As the regular season progresses, look for the experts to say the biggest red flag for the Buckeyes is that they “haven’t been tested yet,” which is media speak for: “This team blows everyone out and seems pretty much flawless, but we have to pretend they’re beatable to make things interesting.”
Anything can happen in the playoff at the end of the season. Ask Kentucky basketball fans about unbeatable college teams being unbeatable. But until January, the best competition Ohio State will see is in practice.
Is Jim Harbaugh Michigan’s savior?
“[He] understands Michigan and he wanted this job because it has been his dream job,” said Michigan’s athletic director upon announcing the hiring. “We won’t have to teach him the words to ‘The Victors’ and I believe our players will respond to him because I got 100% positive feedback from anybody who played for him ... since he left Michigan.”
Well, there you have it. Sounds like Michigan is convinced they got their man this time! Except that quote was from former Michigan AD Dave Brandon after hiring Brady Hoke in 2011. Today Brandon works for Toys R Us and Hoke is at home enjoying his $3m buyout and/or running for president as the governor of New Jersey. Harbaugh may very well prove to be the coach the Wolverines have been looking for since Bo Schembechler retired in 1989, but remember that only Notre Dame overrates its own hires more than Michigan.
If Harbaugh does return the Wolverines to glory, it’s not going to happen this year. The team is still full of the kind of talent that led Michigan to back-to-back 3-5 seasons in the Big Ten, and no amount of insane faces by Harbaugh will instantly change that. In two or three years, Michigan might be back in the national conversation. But until that happens, the only entertainment they’ll provide is seeing if Harbaugh punches Urban Meyer in a postgame handshake.
Are SEC fans annoyed that the SEC hasn’t been talked about yet?
Yes. Definitely.
Perhaps we need a tougher question: Is the SEC in decline? Yes. Probably. But the decline is marked by failing to win the national title in consecutive years after winning seven in a row. That type of dominance was never going to be maintained. The SEC can still be the best overall conference and have the most depth even if it doesn’t win every national championship ever. Meryl Streep doesn’t become a bad actress in the years she doesn’t win an Oscar.
The conference’s biggest blemish last year wasn’t even failing to win the national title – or even put a team in the title game – it was the SEC West, thought to be the stronghold of college football greatness – going just 2-5 in bowls, with Auburn and Alabama losing to teams from the Big Ten, long the go-to punchline of SEC fans.
But like Nick Saban’s in-game coaching prowess, rumors of the SEC’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. Three SEC teams, Alabama, Auburn and Georgia, are ranked in the preseason Top 10, the most of any conference. Six teams are in the Top 20 and eight in the Top 25. Sure, you can say voters are biased towards the conference ... but then how is Ohio State the unanimous No1?
The SEC is still in fine shape. It’s still the best conference. No one should feel bad for them. Well, maybe you should pity the SEC a little bit. Don’t forget that Saban complained this summer that his team was stocked with so many NFL-quality players, they were distracted by the draft instead of focusing fully on beating Ohio State in the national semifinal. Poor, SEC. Keep the conference in your thoughts and prayers as it struggles through this difficult period in its history.
What is happening in Los Angeles?
College football in Los Angeles hasn’t been entertaining in a while. Outside of laughing at Lane Kiffin, there’s been little reason to watch USC since Pete Carroll escaped to Seattle. UCLA has only been able to just recently scratch back towards relevance under Jim Mora Jr. But now the Trojans and Bruins are both College Football Playoff contenders in the Pac-12 South, with USC the favorite behind senior quarterback Cody Kessler, who threw for 39 touchdowns and just five interceptions last season.
But LA’s teams have been in the news for far more than their on-field potential. They’ve generated some of the best off-the-field headlines, too. UCLA, the preferred football program of the sons of 1990s rappers, began the headline fun back in June when Sean “Diddy” Combs got arrested for an altercation with the Bruins’ strength coach, during which he allegedly brandished a kettle bell as a weapon. Hey, at least he worked his core during the incident. Then in mid-August, freshman receiver Cordell Broadus, son of Snoop Dogg and a legit, big-time recruit, up and quit the team out of seemingly nowhere. But USC couldn’t let their rivals grab all the headlines. A week after Broadus quit, USC head coach Steve Sarkisian was drunkenly yelling and cursing at a team booster event and had to be removed from the microphone by athletic director Pat Haden. The program then announced it would no longer allow beer in the coaches locker room. Breaking: USC previously allowed beer in the coaches locker room.
All this means that the days of boring Los Angeles college football is over. If the the talented USC and UCLA teams flame out this year, expect it to be more memorable reasons. Something involved a rapper, exercise equipment and a controlled substance. And it will be covered on E! just as much as it will be on ESPN.
Who are the Heisman favorites?
Not surprisingly, the early batch of contenders includes five Ohio State players: running back and overall favorite Ezekiel Elliott, defensive end Joey Bosa, wide receiver (and former quarterback) Braxton Miller, and not one, but two Buckeyes (current) QBs, Cardale Jones and JT Barrett.
Yes, as stated earlier: Ohio State is absurdly talented and deep.
But let’s assume all of the Buckeye starts split the vote amongst them. Then Kessler, TCU quarterback Trevone Boykin, and Georgia running back Nick Chubb are the next best guesses. And then there are the dark horse candidates. In short, there’s no way to know who might win the Heisman. What history does tell us is that the winner will likely be a quarterback on a winning team and he will be drafted by a terrible NFL team and it will destroy him.
You are missed, RG III and Johnny Manziel. But not as much as we missed college football. Time for kickoff.
