Online forums and retrospectives often discuss the 2007 college football season like a mythical beast — so awe-inspiring and crazy that it had to be seen to be believed. Whenever there's a couple major upsets, like Georgia Tech beating preseason ACC favorite Florida State or Northern Illinois stunning Notre Dame, I feel like that season gets brought up.
But the greatness of that season wasn't just the upsets. After all, it ended with LSU beating Ohio State in the championship — not exactly a Cinderella story in January. That season ended up producing several non-traditional championship contenders, which made college football feel like it had shifted off its axis for a season. Additionally, more games and more conferences mattered throughout the season.
(If you're younger than 30, you might not remember 2007 all that well. Getting through everything might take me 5,000 words, so here's a digestible YouTube recap.)
We can't say with any certainty that the 2024 college football season will even approach the chaos that 2007 provided. But, now, with the 12-team playoff era beginning, I think we'll have lots of contenders — and that will give college football fans a bit of a 2007 deja vu.
Let me explain.
We can be reasonably confident after September 7 that the SEC and Big Ten are going to grab at least half of the 12 spots in the new College Football Playoff. But even if those two leagues were to lock out all seven at-large bids — an unlikely but not impossible scenario — there would still be three spots left. Presumably, those would go to the Big 12 champ, the ACC champ, and the best Group of 5 champ.
Two of those champions would then be guaranteed to get a bye as the No. 3 and 4 seed. Even if one of those teams is, say, an 11-2 Kansas State team that ate a couple of conference losses in the Big 12, it will be impossible not to think of them as a real contender for a national championship. The races for those automatic bids will be interesting to watch, as will the "superleague" at-large bids.
I feel like what I'm about to say should be a Surgeon General's warning of sorts for any article or hot takes written about college football in the first three weeks of September: sample sizes are small, we still don't know a lot about these teams, and preseason polls are highly flawed.
For example, Ohio State and Ole Miss have outscored overmatched oppositions by a million points (give or take). We might not have a great idea about what each team is truly made of before October 5, when the Buckeyes host Iowa and Ole Miss travels to South Carolina. And yet, as Notre Dame showed us this past Saturday, pitfalls and a catastrophic loss are just one dud of a performance away.
All those caveats won't stop me from a few, quick-hit general takeaways:
1. Georgia is the most talented team in the country unless proven otherwise.
I didn't even think the Bulldogs were that great against Clemson — and they still dominated the line of scrimmage and won by 31. And yet, with trips to Alabama, Texas, and Ole Miss coming up this season, I'm not sure they can go undefeated — and that probably doesn't matter anymore.
2. Texas' lines are going to be tough nuts to crack.
Michigan has specialized bullying teams up front for the past three seasons. From the first couple drives on against Texas, it was clear that the Wolverines weren't going to have the horses to keep up with the Longhorns. Again, it's early, but Texas' first SEC team could be its best since 2009, or 2005.
3. Oregon has been playing with its food so far this season, and it needs to change quickly to be the second-best in the Big Ten.
Sure, the Ducks are 2-0, but they were favored by 49.5 points and 17.5 points in games that they won by 10 and 3, respectively. This was supposed to be a team without many weaknesses, and I have to question both their focus and defense so far.
4. Tennessee's defense may be up to par with its offense.
When Tennessee climbed back into the national college football conversation two seasons ago, the Vols did it on the back of a high-flying offense — with a defense that could go missing sometimes. This year, they might have a dominant defense.
NC State had high hopes for ACC contention coming into the season with Coastal Carolina transfer Grayson McCall at QB. Tennessee held him to just 105 yards — and NC State as an offense to three points. The Vols play at Oklahoma in the Sooners' SEC debut on Sept. 21. Win that, and we're probably talking about Tennessee in the same breath as Georgia, Texas, and Alabama as SEC contenders.
But my biggest takeaway so far this season is simply that more games are going to matter. Take this Friday's Arizona/Kansas State game, for example. Last season, a game between top-20 teams with neither being in the top 10 probably wouldn't have had playoff implications. This year, the winner might put itself in the driver's seat for a Big 12 Championship appearance.
With more teams in the hunt for a playoff bid, I think it could create more nationwide intrigue across the sport, while still providing ratings bonanzas for the networks with name-brand teams likely to be playing in the playoffs in late December and January.
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