Not only did I correctly forecast Ohio State winning the national championship five months before it happened, but I also predicted Travis Hunter would win the Heisman Trophy when the Colorado two-way star was still a to-1 long shot. No, not all of my Oddly Specific Predictions came true. But my season-long record of picking straight-up winners was still pretty good.
But consider this as my first round of darts. The Big 12 — the toughest Power 4 conference to predict — could be won by either of these teams that will likely be in the preseason Top The Cyclones won 11 games for the first time in school history, and Becht still has weapons around him.
Farmageddon kicks off the season in Ireland next year. Will Notre Dame get back to the national title game in ? You will not find a bigger brand-name matchup on the slate than this one in Week 2. Neither of these teams, though, are making the team Playoff. My educated guess is four. But it feels like a much more wide-open SEC race than a year ago when I correctly forecast the Georgia-Texas championship rematch in Atlanta.
Curt Cignetti deserved to win the National Coach of the Year Award in , and I fully expect his Hoosiers will remain in the Playoff discussion for years to come, including this fall when Fernando Mendoza takes over at quarterback. The problem for Indiana is it has road games at Oregon and Penn State in , and both of those programs will always have more talent than what Cignetti can build in Bloomington.
Either way, the Big Ten is getting only three teams in the field this time around. Not four. But Dan Lanning and Phil Knight have been recruiting their butts off. Penn State, meanwhile, is a much more intriguing case study after reaching the semifinals last season. I think Oregon wins this top-five showdown.
