Let’s make some predictions for the College Football season – How about 5 sort of bold ones?
1) Alabama will be in the playoff
Alabama will represent the SEC in the playoffs for the 4th straight year. Even if Alabama loses to Florida State to open the season, they’ll cruise through a down SEC without much resistance. They’ve turned their SEC schedule in recent years into 9 games of playoff prep. Maybe LSU can push the Tide, but that game is in Tuscaloosa. A game at Auburn could be tricky, but I have to see some real improvement from the Tigers to make me believe they’ll challenge Alabama. The SEC has become the most boring conference in college football.
2) The Big 12 will miss the playoffs again
The Big 12’s reputation has been damaged by their poor OOC results the last few years. A 1 loss Big 12 champion will be behind the other 1 loss Power 5 conference champions, and possibly behind a 2 loss Big 10, SEC, ACC or PAc 12 Champion. The Big 12 can make the playoffs with an undefeated champion. They won’t have an undefeated champion.
3) Lamar Jackson will make it to New York for the Heisman Trophy presentation.
I’m not saying Jackson will repeat as the Heisman Trophy winner, but how a QB that was college football’s most dynamic player though mid-November is a forgotten commodity is strange to me. Do you really think a great offensive mind like Bobby Petrino won’t make some adjustments to a maligned offensive line to free Jackson up or that Jackson’s tendency to take sacks especially late in the year won’t be worked on?
Jackson is still the closet thing college football has to a modern day Michael Vick.
4) A 2 loss team will reach the playoffs
Last year we saw a non-conference champion reach the playoffs, this year I believe we’re going to see a 2 loss team make it. Somebody is going to lose the Alabama vs Florida State. Should that exclude the loser especially in a close game the chance to make the playoffs if they lose 1 conference game, but win their conference title? I don’t think so, because the committee doesn’t want to set the precedent that scheduling light is an easier path to the playoffs.
5) The Pac 12 will end the year as the nation’s best conference.
The days of perennial football conference dominance are over. Last year it was the ACC, the year before it was SEC. The Big 10 at different times the last couple of years has been called the best. It all starts with QB play, and the Pac 12 looks like the country’s deepest at the position. Sam Darnold, Jake Browning, Luke Falk, and Josh Rosen are all upper classmen quality QBs.
I predict over the course of the year 8 different Pac 12 teams will be ranked in the top 25. That’s 75% of the conference. The Pac 12 has been a little bit of a forgotten conference, being neither truly great or awful in recent years. I think we are going to some really good football out of there this year.
