CLEMSON TO VISIT WHITE HOUSE
AFTER NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP WIN
Now that Clemson has been crowned as national champion, we
have a long eight months before there's real football to talk about.
It’s O.K. if it’s taken you all week to process what you saw
Monday night, when Clemson pulled the rug out from underneath Alabama and Dabo
Swinney could have announced his candidacy for president in 2020 without anyone
batting an eyelash. It was a big night, if not a competitive game, and it
drastically redefined the season it concluded. The year in college football was
supposed to be a slow march toward another Alabama title, four months of filler
games before a delayed inevitability. Instead, Clemson turned the whole thing
on its head, and the world was left blinking, and now it’s over—at least for a
few months.
Spring football is still a ways a way, but in the meantime,
there’s plenty to discuss and debate, from the obvious to the more nuanced
repercussions of this season. With that, let’s take a look at the loudest
storylines you’ll hear this offseason.
WHICH TEAM CAN
CLAIM SUPREMACY IN THE BIG TEN?
Urban Meyer is gone and record-setting passer Dwayne Haskins
is off to the NFL, so Ohio State is supposedly due for a step back. But will
Michigan be able to rise to meet its rival after an uninspiring end to the
year? New Buckeyes Coach Ryan Day hired away two of Michigan’s defensive
coaches this week, spicing up the off-field angled of a rivalry missing one of
its central personalities in Meyer. Ohio State will dominate the offseason
headlines in a good way—an unknown quantity at coach is almost as good as a
legend—and Michigan will be subject to another offseason of Jim
Harbaugh-related angst. The Buckeyes will likely be the preseason favorite, but
Wisconsin and Penn State are wild cards after disappointing years, Northwestern
has a West division title to defend and Iowa will have a top-25 case. There’s a
lot of prognosticating to go between now and Week 1.
THE PAC-12’S NO
GOOD, VERY BAD 2018 COULD CARRY INTO 2019
For the second consecutive year, the Pac-12 was left out of
the College Football Playoff, and it hasn’t won a semifinal since the system’s
inaugural season. Things aren’t looking much better in the near-term. USC tried
to go a different direction with its offense by hiring Kliff Kingsbury, who was
offensive coordinator for only a few weeks before bolting for an NFL head
coaching job. Washington and Washington State—the two teams that had the best
playoff shots this fall—lost their quarterbacks to graduation. Utah always
lurks, but it’s hard to imagine a world in which the Utes, or any of the
aforementioned teams, make the leap over the best teams in the other four
conferences. There’s certainly a world in which the Big Ten misses the playoff
for a third straight year, but it’s been on the cusp every season—which is not
something the Pac-12 can boast. Its best hope in 2019 may be Oregon, which
brings back quarterback Justin Herbert and could be in for a breakthrough year
if its offensive line stays healthy and its top-five recruiting class
contributes. Being this far behind the pack isn’t sustainable in the long-term
for a Power 5 league.
THE IMPLICATIONS
OF THIS YEAR’S BIZARRE (AND NEVER-ENDING) COACHING CAROUSEL
The aforementioned Kingsbury move—fired by Texas Tech, hired
by USC, then hired by the Arizona Cardinals in 44 days—is just the tip of the
iceberg. The NFL has talked to coaches few imagined might make the leap from
the college ranks now, if ever, and Manny Diaz left Miami for Temple only to
head right back to the Hurricanes after Mark Richt’s retirement. It’s been an
unexpectedly volatile offseason, and all the pieces are still falling into
place, so this is not something we’ll stop talking about soon, from the sheer
craziness to the fallout. There’s the wild disparity between the freedom of
movement coaches can exercise and the hoops players have to jump through.
There’s the rapid rise in assistant coach salaries in order to incentivize the
best to stay put. And then there’s the NFL looking to the college game for
trends and forecasts—or maybe just guys who remind GMs of Sean McVay.
ALABAMA’S
TITLE-GAME CHOKE AND THE SPORT’S HIERARCHY
This probably isn’t the end of the Alabama dynasty. Nick
Saban probably hasn’t lost his edge as a coach. But the Crimson Tide need to
reevaluate a few things after being dismantled by Clemson in the title game,
and they might not feel like quite the shoo-in next year as they did in 2018.
If nothing else, no one will be conceding them the top seed just because Tua
Tagovailoa is back, after the Heisman runner-up threw two backbreaking picks
against Clemson.
WE’RE NEVER GOING
TO STOP SPECULATING ABOUT AN EXPANDED PLAYOFF
There’s always a new headline when it comes to playoff
expansion: people want it, people don’t, it makes sense, it’s not happening
during this contract, but what if it does, and what about 16 teams instead of
eight or maybe even 12? It can be a whirlwind debate, and there’s always a new
angle, even if none of them can quite be called unpredictable. And with no
games to play or rankings to debate, at least we have playoff expansion.
TEXAS IS BACK!
We think. Probably. That Sugar Bowl win sure looked good.
This exclamation has been issued and retracted who knows how many times since
2009, the last time before this year that Texas had double-digit wins. That
year, it lost the national championship game, and then it followed up the
performance with a 5–7 finish 2010. It’s been a roller-coaster ever since, and
even this year was not without its uncertainty. Still, 10 wins means something,
no matter if the 10th was against a Georgia team that thought it should have
made the playoff. Texas is back ... until it isn’t, at least.
TREVOR LAWRENCE
Clemson’s rising sophomore quarterback is going to be the
talk of the offseason, and rightfully so after the wizardry he committed in
Santa Clara. A year ago, we had the same conversation around Tua Tagovailoa,
but this time around we have a bigger sample size for Lawrence, and it’s still
great. So of course we’re going to talk about him—his NFL ceiling, the talented
skill players around him, his hair, how much he can achieve in two more college
seasons (or three, as he mentioned after the title game). The Heisman
Trophy ceremony is only 11 months away.
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