Let the Posturing Begin
/The first Coaches' Poll of the 2015 college football season dropped last week, and there is plenty to talk about and discuss. Most will say the rankings are pretty meaningless, with the path to the College Football Playoff pretty clear: go undefeated or lose once early in the season and then win your conference championship. But here were the top four teams in last year's coaches' poll heading into the 2014 season: Florida State, Alabama, Oklahoma and Oregon.
Most of those sound familiar, right? FSU was the only one of those four to go undefeated, and never had their College Football Playoff ticket in doubt, but the other squads all took a loss at some point in the season. The benefit of being (a name brand school) ranked so highly at the start of the season allowed Alabama and Oregon to bounce back from their losses and gain entry to the playoff.
While Oklahoma fell off the map, Ohio State started the year at No. 6 and claimed the fourth playoff spot. So the rankings shouldn't be taken lightly. Most of the names on this year's rankings are pretty familiar. But here are some that I want to highlight:
The Hunted Turned Hunter- TCU Horned Frogs #2
The TCU Horned Frogs were at the epicenter of the first CFP controversy in 2014. Starting off unranked, they shot through the Big 12 to claim/share the conference title with Baylor. Had they started the season ranked in the Top 20 would they still have been bumped down from No. 3 to No. 6 in the last week despite winning their game?
Well, they don't need to worry about that scenario now. They are sitting pretty at No. 2 in the first poll. All they need to do is win and all will work itself out. Unless, of course, four marquee schools with more marketing appeal have an identical record and an extra game/conference championship in their resume. But hey, fool me once right?
Trevone Boykin now has offseason Heisman-hype and his team has the national championship spotlight squarely on their back. How they react to the pressure will be an interesting scenario. There's a definite grind and weight that comes with a Top 5 ranking. You can no longer avoid the scrutiny and exhaustion of coverage that was awarded to an unranked preseason team. It's far more impressive to go wire-to-wire in the rankings than to come out of nowhere in November.
Fool Me How Many Times- Notre Dame #11
When Notre Dame shows a modicum of talent or momentum they are always rewarded with a high ranking. Save for 2012's undefeated regular season, they rarely live up to the preseason hype. After starting 2014 off strong, with Everett Golson gaining Heisman buzz, the Irish fell apart at the end: ending the season with a 1-5 record and vaporizing Golson's job and legacy in the process. They did win a close Music City Bowl Game against LSU, so take from that whatever you want to.
The good news is we'll know how good the Irish are by mid October. They host Georgia Tech in Week 3, play Clemson in Death Valley in Week 5 and host USC in Week 7.
The Opposite of Notre Dame- Missouri Tigers #23
I'm not stating the case for the Tigers to be a Top 10 team, it just seems odd that after winning back-to-back SEC East titles, Missouri continues to be an afterthought in their conference. Five SEC teams are ranked ahead of them, including division rival Georgia. While the Bulldogs have to battle through tough out of division opponents in Alabama, Auburn, and Georgia Tech, the Tigers have the luxury of starting the season slow, and having one of the easiest SEC schedules. They could easily sneak back to a third SEC championship game.
The Balance of Power Is...Balanced
Most football fans not in the south will point to 2014 as the downfall of the SEC. And while 2014 has to be considered the lowest point in SEC football since 2005, the rankings show it has by no means gone away. The conference boasts seven of their 14 teams in the Top 25 and Mississippi State and Texas A&M received the 26th and 27th most votes in the preseason poll. The conference remains to have the best concentration in talent, especially talent streamlined to eventually play in the NFL. The downside to this, as we learned last year, is once conference play starts, football down south turns into a bloodbath. Winning the SEC is a guaranteed ticket to the CFP, it's just a matter of surviving. Tennessee, sneaking in at No. 25 looks poised to unleash their experienced underclassmen and promising recruiting classes and could very easily ride into a CFP berth.
The landscape as a whole is shifting to quite a dynamic field. USC (10) and UCLA (14) have cleaned up well in recent recruiting hauls, and seem ready to bring historical prestige back to the Pac-12 to compliment Oregon (5), Arizona (22), and Arizona State (16), all programs whose success is much more recent. Stanford (21) rounds this group for six ranked teams in the poll. Depending on how this year turns out, the Pac-12 has a chance to challenge the SEC as the deepest conference in the nation.
Conference dominance used to be a coveted attribute for teams seeking a BCS Championship. And it still remains a hot commodity in talk-radio, message boards, and barbershops across the country. But in the CFP era, where No. 4 is as good as No. 1, it's not so glamorous. If the preseason rankings hold true, and the deepest conferences lie in the SEC and Pac-12, those teams will have to fight tooth and nail to get a CFP invite. And in all the carnage, they might not even send their best candidate to the Show.
Meanwhile, Ohio State (1) and Florida State (8) are the without-a-doubt powerhouses in the Big Ten and ACC. Both groups are so talented and deep that, despite a few big games (notably against Michigan State and Clemson respectively), have only themselves to blame should they not finish in the top-4. Both schedules rise and fall, crescendoing to big games and gliding down to lesser talent in between, like a symphony, while the schedules offered on the west coast and down south are an all night rave.
The Iron Man- Washington Huskies (NR)
Washington boasts the largest strength of schedule in the NCAA. Which means they control the fate of most of the Pac-12 contenders. It was right to leave them unranked, but they definitely have the schedule to move into the rankings midseason. They start off the college football season by playing No. 24 Boise State in Idaho. After that matchup they go through a relatively easy September, which leads into their maelstrom: a six game stretch where they face No. 10 USC, No. 5 Oregon, No. 21 Stanford, No. 22 Arizona, Utah, and No. 16 Arizona State. This is a team that saw three of its defensive alumni get drafted in the first round in 2015, they have talent, and can certainly play upset to a lot of these teams and crash the Pac-12.