I took a year off after the 2009 season, mainly in order to get divorced. I’m not being so selfish this year. It’s the last day of May, and therefore my last chance to make WAY-TOO-EARLY predictions for the 2011 college football season. Let’s go!
Western Athletic Conference
This year is going to be all about The Pistol. There’s still large amount of – well-deserved – hype surrounding the Boise State Broncos and their chances at a national title. Their opener against Georgia in Atlanta will go a long way towards determining a BCS résumé, and their late-season matchup with perennial BCS-buster rival TCU will probably solidify it. But what about Nevada? Boise State spent much of last year ranked in the top 5, but it was the 11-1 Wolfpack that won the WAC and gave BSU their only loss of the year. How’d they do it? With a modified shotgun offense called The Pistol that college football has yet to figure out. Nevada would have to win the same number of big games – against Oregon, Texas Tech and Boise – as the Broncos to be considered a BCS buster, but to take the conference away from that dominant force in BSU’s last year in the WAC, all they have to do is win on October 1. I don’t know about Nevada’s chances in Eugene or Lubbock, but at Boise, they have the psychological edge of having ended a perfect – and possibly championship – run for Boise State. I’m picking Nevada, though Boise will end up with a better overall record.
Sun Belt
Florida International is coming off of its first conference win, which they solidified in mid-November with a 52-35 thrashing of perennial SBC powerhouse Troy. Who came in second in conference? That’s right: Troy. The two teams had identical conference records, with FIU taking the head-to-head and the title. I don’t pretend to have watched a single SBC game last year save Georgia’s 55-7 victory over UL-Monroe, but I have watched college football for long enough to know that when you can’t pick a winner, the big daddy of the conference usually wins the conference. That big daddy is the Troy Trojans, and I’m picking them this year.
MAC
Much as I hate to say it, much as it pains me, I’m making the following official decree: Northern Illinois will never win the MAC. The Huskies have gone into at least two MAC championship games that I’ve watched as the clear favorite and have messed the bed each time: against Akron in 2005 and against Miami (OH) last year. In that time, they’ve been nationally ranked (as high as #24 in 2005), played in and won bowl games, and had at least two nationally recognized players in Garrett Wolfe and Michael Turner. To put it in perspective, no matter how good NIU’s been, they still haven’t won a conference title since 1983. To put it in further perspective, they locked up the MAC for the last time one year before Doug Flutie threw the Hail Mary to beat Miami (FL). So no. I’m not picking them. Trouble is, I like them, and I don’t know who to pick, and I’m really just hoping that picking against them will cause them to finally fulfill their promise and take the MAC. So I’ll just pick last year’s winner, the Miami Redhawks.
Mountain West
Like a few other conferences in the country, the chain reaction that started with Nebraska leaving the Big 12 – which now has ten teams - for the Big Ten – which now has twelve teams – very strongly affected the Mountain West. Utah left for the Pac-10 (the only conference that has sensibly renamed itself), while BYU has returned to the independent status that won it a national title in 1984. Boise State, the national media’s giant-killer darling, will be coming into the conference from the WAC, while defensive-minded BCS busters TCU have left for – of all places – the Big East. Of course, none of this takes place until next year. Which means we get one more year of awesome Mountain West football, and one more year of TCU taking home the trophy. Um…did I stutter? Horned Frogs. Period.
Conference USA
In 2009 I predicted that the ECU dynasty had begun. Skip Holtz was coming off of his first C-USA championship, and I correctly predicted that he’d repeat in 2009. Then – like many people thought he would – Skip left the Pirates for a BCS program in South Florida. But – unlike many people thought – the ECU dynasty was not destroyed. While there was no championship in 2010, ECU still went 5-3 in conference and narrowly missed a victory over Arkansas in the Liberty Bowl before falling in overtime. Then there’s defending champions UCF, who outshone everyone last year. And let’s not forget wonderboy June Jones, steadily rebuilding defending Western Division champions Southern Methodist into a conference contender. It’ll be interesting this year; I think the next two C-USA championship games could feature the same teams as last year’s championship game did. If that happens, however, I don’t see the Mustangs taking one home until next year. In 2011, I’m giving it to the Knights of Central Florida.
Independents
Ah, crap. The independents are simply irrelevant until BYU enters the league and Notre Dame gets good again. While the Irish are getting better, perennial fake champs Navy are still as strong as they’ve been for the last decade. So I think whoever wins the ND-Navy game will wrap up the best independent title in Division I FBS. What, I have to pick one of them to win the game? Okay…um…let’s go with Notre Dame. What? Brian Kelly’s a good coach!
ACC
Last year the ACC champion was crowned in Charlotte. While Virginia Tech predictably took home its fourth title since joining the conference in 2004, the rest of the league struggled to keep up. Too often it seemed like the Hokies and everybody else, with Miami, Maryland and NC State sputtering away chances at a berth in the title game towards the end of the season. Florida State looked like they were back…until they lost to Tech in the title game, that is. So here’s the not-so-bold prediction: VaTech will repeat, and it doesn’t matter who’s representing the other division. They’re just that much better, new quarterback or not. You’re not going to see fallout from Tyrod Taylor leaving until 2012, when Jimbo Fisher’s first real recruiting class comes in at FSU, Paul Johnson’s comes in at Georgia Tech, and North Carolina finally gets over all of the incredibly obvious cheating that was going on in Chapel Hill.
One last prediction: Florida State’s gonna beat the Gators again this year. Will Muschamp might wanna get an umbrella for all the crap that’s about to rain down on his head.
Big East
After two straight conference championships, Cincinnati fell right back to Earth with a disappointing 4-8 season, going just 2-5 in conference play. That’s why dominant programs like West Virginia and Pitt were able to feast on the remains, come back in 2010, and dominate the Big East conference…wait…what’s that? The Big East’s representative in the BCS last year was UConn? Um…okay. Back to the top.
I don’t know what the hell’s gonna happen here this year. WVU and Pitt are like Jekyll and Hyde, Louisville still hasn’t recovered from Bobby Petrino’s departure and Cincy looks absolutely terrible. Until TCU joins next year, this conference is still going to be difficult to call. Pitt absolutely should have taken the conference outright last year, and so I’m going to pick them this year. They’ll probably let me down anyway, but that’s okay, because I love watching Pitt lose.
Pac-10
Oregon has completely dominated this conference for the past three years. No one’s going to step in and stop that, right? However, if you look southward, from the Pacific Northwest to the desert, Mike Stoops is running a Wildcat program at Arizona that looks awfully damn good. This is the same Mike Stoops who ruined Oregon’s shot at a national championship in 2009. Then the Ducks need to look just south of Eugene to Stanford, CA, where Jim Harbaugh has turned a punching bag into a powerhouse. They lose Toby Gerhardt and don’t miss a step? And they keep Andrew Luck for his senior season? You may not want to hear it, Eugene, but Oregon has no shot this year. It’s the Cardinal all the way. You’re going to see a tree dance in the BCS, and it may not be until January 8th.
Big Ten
It’s gotta be Wisconsin again, doesn’t it? I mean, they return a pretty talented team, Michigan still sucks, and the NCAA has stopped just short of giving OSU the death penalty; given the ongoing investigations, that repeat offender rule’s enforcement isn’t entirely out of the question yet. Purdue showed flashes last year and could seriously contend, as could Northwestern if they put together another good season. And never – never – count out Penn State. It seems that for every subpar year JoePa has, he follows it up with a one-loss campaign and a trip to the Rose Bowl.
Oh, wait. Nebraska’s in the conference now. Yeah, that just made everyone else irrelevant. ‘Huskers run away with the conference and earn themselves a spot in the BCS National Championship game.
Big 12
In 2008 I typed a fart sound to indicate what I thought of the Big 12. In 2009, I called Sam Bradford a “fresh-faced goon” with “no shot in the NFL.” I am almost always wrong when it comes to this conference. Nebraska’s gone and so is Colorado. Texas is down and so is Oklahoma. There will be no conference championship game with less than twelve teams, so the winner will be the team with the best in-conference record at the end of the season. Which means we need to look at the schedules of each team remaining in the Big 12.
Just looking at schedules, I feel pretty assured that the conference championship game will be played in Stillwater, Oklahoma on December 3. The Bedlam Series will determine the conference, and since OSU’s only won 17 times in history…BOOMER SOONER!
Southeastern Conference
The only thing I’m certain of is that the SEC Champion will also play for the national championship. That’s been true five years in a row, and every time an SEC champ has played for the title, the crystal football has come home to Dixie; Auburn’s undefeated 2004 season and USC’s forced vacancy of that season’s national championship notwithstanding. The last SEC Champion who failed to play for a national title was…ah, crap. It was Georgia in 2005.
Look, you’ve got Derek Dooley in his second year at Tennessee, who took a terrible team to a bowl. You’ve got an Auburn team that’s coming off of an undefeated national title season with almost nothing in the tank, and an Alabama team that just lost three of the greatest players in program history. Dan Mullen has made Mississippi State a force to be reckoned with, Steve Spurrier is relevant again – and with the Gamecocks! – and Mark Richt comes off of his first losing season by recruiting Isaiah Crowell, who figures to be the Second Coming. Florida’s got a brand new coaching staff, Arkansas keeps getting better…how do you pick this league?
This year, I think, will be the year of the perennial underdog. And, at least in the case of the West, it’ll be the year of the UnderDawg. I think Mississippi State and South Carolina will meet in Atlanta December 3rd, with Steve Spurrier walking away with his first SEC title in eleven years. Florida will suffer a losing season as they drop games to the now-dominant Gamecocks, Dooley’s Junkyard Vols and a surprisingly 8-5/9-4 Georgia team. Not to mention the absolute thrashing they’re going to take from LSU, nor the embarrassing second consecutive loss to Florida State.
But, shocker of shockers, I’m picking Nebraska over the OBC in the National Championship game.
BCS Bowls
BCS National Championship Game: South Carolina vs. Nebraska
Fiesta Bowl: Oklahoma vs. Arizona
Sugar Bowl: LSU vs. TCU
Rose Bowl: Wisconsin vs. Stanford
Orange Bowl: Virginia Tech vs. Pitt
Red and Black, Win or Lose
