Welcome back to another year of college football! I neglected to make picks last year, but I'm picking it back up for this season. Up until now I've tried only picking upsets, but this time I'm going to just make picks.
What We Learned (Off-Season)
LSU is happy to get on the football field with everything that's happened this summer of it. They should be a pretty strong contender this season, especially with Alabama taking a step back from what they had last year.
Tennessee is looking like a really good team. In fact, a lot of experts have them winning the SEC. I don't know if I'm going to go that far. I want to see what they look like after week 6 before they play Alabama in what could be an SEC championship week preview.
Notre Dame isn't as good as advertised. They're highly ranked and will probably jump in the rankings if they can get by Texas, which I think they will. But after that, they have a tough schedule: Michigan State, Duke, Stanford, Miami, Virginia Tech, and finishing at USC. The good thing for Notre Dame is they get all but one of these teams at home, but it's still not going to be as easy.
Baylor football will go back to being Baylor football. With the loss of their coach, key players, and continuity, they will continue to fall back to the bottom of the Big 12. This is good news for teams like Texas and Oklahoma, who would have probably kept losing recruits to Art Briles if he was still there.
Staying in the Big 12, they will look to get back to 12 teams in their conference. I think Houston is almost a certainty at this point, despite not being interesting the last time they looked at adding other schools. BYU has a fighting chance, but ultimately I think they'll be passed up for Cincinnati or Memphis. The conference commissioner has interviews 20 schools with only 2 spots up for grabs.
The Big Ten will come down to one of three teams from the east (Ohio State, Michigan, Michigan State) or Iowa from the West. Iowa has a lax schedule, playing basically only Michigan. The Big Ten West is getting worse every year while the Big Ten East has been getting significantly better. If Penn State and just one of the remaining three teams of Indiana, Maryland, and Rutgers can continue rebuilding, the division will rank up there with the SEC West and Pac-12 South.
The Pac-12 is being thought of as the conference who will be left out of the playoff this year. With each year, a preseason big is being as to which conference will be left out. The first season were the controversial Baylor and TCU denials. The Big 12 was the only conference without a championship game (and what I would argue was why they were left out, the only one without ONE conference champion) and last season the Pac-12 was left out. Stanford showed it shouldn't be overlooked as it dismantled Iowa (wasn't hard to do) 45-16 in the Rose Bowl. Unless Stanford can remain undefeated or make it through with one loss, they may be left out looking in on the playoff again.
Oregon continues to get worse. Shocker since that's what they've done since Chip Kelly left.
USC has a lot of talent this year, but they always have a lot of talent and haven't been truly relevant since Pete Carroll. I think they have a good coach, but he's trying to change the culture there which will take some time. Because of this, they won't do very well at the beginning of the year but will start to turn it around towards the end. They start out the year getting crushed by Alabama, losing to Utah and Stanford and possibly Utah State. But then around the Arizona State or Cal game, they'll figure it out and end up beating UCLA (or losing close) and beating Notre Dame. My guess would be that USC beating UCLA at the end of the year won't get them into the Pac-12 title game, but it could allow Utah to slip in.
After blowing out USC and Western Kentucky, Bama will have some tough games the rest of the year. Because Bama has had the sustained success for years in the SEC, a lot of teams are gunning for them. They'll play at Ole Miss their 3rd game who has had a lot of success against them. I'd guess Bama loses that game. The rest of their schedule has some tough games: at Tennessee, Texas A&M, at LSU, Mississippi State, and their rival, Auburn. They'll have a bye week before the LSU game, but I'm going to take LSU in that one. Bama could have 2 or 3 losses this season easy, especially since they're not as good as they usually are.
My Big 5 Picks
- Ohio State over Bowling Green by at least 55.
- Bama rolls USC big time.
- Notre Dame squeeks by Texas on the road.
- Clemson over Auburn on the road.
- LSU over Wisconsin on the road.
- SEC - LSU over Georgia
- Big Ten - Ohio State over Iowa
- Pac-12 - Stanford over Utah
- ACC - Clemson over Pittsburgh
- Big 12 - Oklahoma
Let the games begin, finally!!
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