Just go with it. The junior is the favorite to win with Heisman after finishing third a year ago.
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Clemson, Oklahoma, and Ohio State have been receiving significant love to make it to the playoff from prognosticators as well. They’ll take the cream puffs when they can.
There’s a lot to like about the Wildcats, which their opener as an underdog at Utah State.
All the fun starts Thursday night, when three SEC teams open their season: Tennessee hosting Appalachian State (11 wins last year) and Vanderbilt hosting SC in the first league game of 2016.
Why they won’t: as previously mentioned, the team is depleted from losing starters such as Ezekiel Elliott and Mike Thomas.
We have finally reached the time, folks. Past year the Tribe lost 35-29 at Virginia so they won’t be intimidated at all by playing in Raleigh.
As a UNC football fan, you sometimes forget that Wake Forest is even in the ACC.
The Stanford Cardinal have a dominant player in Christian McCaffrey and he should be able to do it all once again this year. The NCAA’s single-season all-purpose yards leader likely won’t be on TV too much before 9 p.m.
Last Season: 10-3 (6-2 ACC Atlantic, lost 38-24 against Houston in the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl). The Sooners have no plan to reign in Mayfield, as his greatest asset on the field is his fire and passion, and Oklahoma doesn’t want him to change at all. The awful thing is that that chance could be over by about 3:30 p.m.
The Longhorns bested two top-15 programs – Oklahoma and Baylor – last season, and get Baylor and TCU, two of its toughest games, at home, where the Longhorns are 77-21 (.786 winning percentage) over the last 15 years.
As far as actual game attendance, the SEC led the nation for the 18th consecutive year in 2015. The Wolverines also have an edge in that they can watch Hawaii on film, but when asked by Hawaii officials for footage of a Wolverines team scrimmage to even the playing field a bit, Jim Harbaugh and Co. reportedly said no. Early on in the season, I like to lean to the more experienced teams and those in highly motivated spots. They’re big name programs with big name coaches and big name traditions. Aranda has been called upon to fix that and (maybe) save Miles’s job once again after he nearly got the axe last season. So will the Georgia Bulldogs and North Carolina Tar Heels. This has been true since the inception of the BCS and the intensity has been ratcheted up with the College Football Playoff.
We’ll close each week with the Tennessee game.
Lost in the nail-biting drama of the national championship game was the fact that Clemson was one possession away from not being there at all.
For SEC fans, this may be one of the most exciting opening weekends ever. That defense will welcome Trojans junior Max Browne to the starting quarterback role. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be a surprise (or two) during the season.
No. 1 Alabama vs. Clemson also gets back wide receiver Mike Williams, who’s perhaps a future first-round National Football League draft pick but who missed almost all of the 2015 season with a neck injury.
The Bama Hammer staff foresees a rematch of the Orange Bowl between Clemson and Oklahoma. Southern Cal (you can nearly hear Keith Jackson warming up his windpipe here); a Monday night meeting between Notre Dame and Texas that possesses many echoes of its own. There is little room for error in college football and that is a great thing.
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Opening weekend concludes on Labor Day when No. 11 Ole Miss faces No. 4 Florida State on ESPN at the Citrus Bowl in Orlando, Fla. Notre Dame, whose only regular-season losses a year ago were by two points apiece to Stanford and Clemson, also could be a playoff contender. Ole Miss is ranked No. 11 in the AP Top 25 and No. 12 in the Coaches Poll. MI will have possibly the best defense in the country now that Don Brown is manning that unit and standouts Jabrill Peppers and Jourdan Lewis will be impact players.
