We are going to push forward with college football content as portions of the sport are on track to play games soon, including our own Fighting Irish of Notre Dame. Like many things this year, our pre-season poll is odd and strange. A bunch of teams aren’t playing, no one is starting at the same time, and we have to work under the impression that programs who actually do play will continue to play, until they possibly pull out for good.
It’s been so confusing, so here’s a current refresher course on the events of recent weeks. Here are the conferences and independent teams who are not playing football, or rather have postponed their seasons in some cases:
Pac-12, Big Ten, MAC, Mountain West, UConn, UMass, Old Dominion, and New Mexico State.
This leaves the following conference and independent teams ready for fall pigskin:
ACC, Big 12, SEC, AAC, Conference USA, Sun Belt, Army, BYU, and Liberty.
Due to the historical nature of their rankings, we recently saw the AP Poll include teams who are not playing. Those programs included:
#2 Ohio State, #7 Penn State, #9 Oregon, #12 Wisconsin, #16 Michigan, #17 USC, #19 Minnesota, #22 Utah, and #24 Iowa.
We will not be adding these teams into our 18 Stripes rankings for the pre-season.
18 Stripes Top 20 Poll
| RANK | TEAM | RECORD | NEXT |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Clemson | 0-0 | at Wake Forest (9/12) |
| 2 | Alabama | 0-0 | at Missouri (9/26) |
| 3 | Georgia | 0-0 | at Arkansas (9/26) |
| 4 | Oklahoma | 0-0 | vs Missouri State (9/12) |
| 5 | LSU | 0-0 | vs. Miss State (9/26) |
| 6 | Florida | 0-0 | at Ole Miss (9/26) |
| 7 | Notre Dame | 0-0 | vs Duke (9/12) |
| 8 | Auburn | 0-0 | vs Kentucky (9/26) |
| 9 | Texas A&M | 0-0 | vs Vanderbilt (9/26) |
| 10 | Texas | 0-0 | vs UTEP (9/12) |
| 11 | Oklahoma State | 0-0 | vs Tulsa (9/12) |
| 12 | North Carolina | 0-0 | vs Syracuse (9/12) |
| 13 | Cincinnati | 0-0 | vs Austin Peay (9/19) |
| 14 | UCF | 0-0 | at Georgia Tech (9/19) |
| 15 | Iowa State | 0-0 | vs Louisiana (9/12) |
| 16 | Tennessee | 0-0 | at South Carolina (9/26) |
| 17 | Memphis | 0-0 | vs Arkansas State (9/5) |
| 18 | Baylor | 0-0 | vs Louisiana Tech (9/12) |
| 19 | Louisville | 0-0 | vs Western Michigan (9/12) |
| 20 | SMU | 0-0 | at Texas State (9/5) |
The top 16 in our rankings is essentially the AP ranked teams who are still planning on playing next month. Obviously, the SEC is the big winner claiming 6 teams in the top 10. This off-season has been such a mess that I’m not going to even attempt to swim against the stream and pretend Texas should be ranked a few spots higher or Georgia a few spots lower. Now more than ever, no one cares. Let’s get some data points on the field and then talk.
My last 4 were included based on a couple premises. Memphis (22nd), Baylor (33rd), Louisville (41st), SMU (56th) are outside the Top 20 in the pre-season SP+ rankings but they all have promising quarterback situations. I have a feeling that 2020 is going to shake out as a season where stable quarterback play is an even larger divider than usual between the top programs. Brady White (the AAC’s top passer rating in 2019), Charlie Brewer (4th in Big 12 passer rating), and Shane Buechele (led AAC in passing yardage per game) all bring a lot to the table while Micale Cunningham (11.5 YPA, 22/5 TD:INT ratio) is quietly one of the most promising young quarterbacks.
The Most Overrated Team: LSU
At the time of this writing LSU is experiencing a Covid outbreak among their offensive linemen. They are also going to experience a massive, massive return to earth in the QB change from Joe Burrow to Myles Brennan. This has to be a sell for the 5th ranked team in our poll. I do like their schedule and the relative ease in the beginning but I do wonder if they will go 0-3 when they face Florida, Auburn, and Alabama over a 4-game span.
That Escalated Quickly: North Carolina
The Tar Heels move up from 18th in the AP Poll to 12th and that 6-spot jump just feels so massive for expectations. North Carolina is a fascinating team that is poised to make noise in 2020 but they’re also ripe for the picking when it comes to teams who got too hyped too fast.
Burning Question: Is This the Year for the Group of 5?
What if the SEC is a bloodbath and the conference winner ends up at 8-3? What if something similar happens in the Big 12 where someone like Oklahoma makes it through but with at least a couple losses? Is this the year someone like Cincinnati can make the playoffs with an unbeaten season, or maybe even 1-loss?
Is Notre Dame Properly Rated?
Yes, I think so. Notre Dame has proven to be a step below our top 4 (would be top 5 if Ohio State was included) but when you look at the Irish QB+OL+Clark Lea situation and relatively easy schedule you could make the case anything less than an ACC Championship Game appearance would be pretty damn disappointing.
How Much of a Favorite is Clemson?
If we use my “Quarterbacks are Worth X% More Than Usual” formula it could be overwhelming for Clemson. Here are the Heisman favorite quarterbacks:
Justin Fields, Trevor Lawrence, Jamie Newman, D’Eriq King, Spencer Rattler, Dillon Gabriel, Myles Brennan, Box Nix, Sam Ehlinger, Ian Book, Mac Jones, Adrian Martinez, Kedon Slovis, Sam Howell, Kyle Trask, Tanner Morgan, and Spencer Sanders.
Four of these quarterbacks aren’t playing, a couple haven’t officially won the starting job, and five are considerably inexperienced. The worst-case scenario for Clemson is if King, Book, and Howell take a major leap forward and suddenly the ACC gets a lot more competitive. I doubt those quarterbacks go 3 for 3 in 2020 though, especially King at Miami.
Underdog to Buy: Iowa State
You can forgive Notre Dame fans for dismissing Iowa State following the bowl game beat down to end last year. Still, the Cyclones return a lot of talent including top-notch all-conference types at QB (Brock Purdy), RB (Breece Hall), and TE (Charlie Kolar). If they get some things sorted out at receiver, Iowa State could do a ton of damage.
They’re due to beat Oklahoma again anyway, meeting the Sooners on October 3rd.
Week 1 Games to Watch??
So, here’s the deal. If we end up having college football in whatever form, and it’s safe and ends up working out, we are not going to see anything close to ‘normal’ in terms of weekly viewing for a while. For example, what was supposed to be the opening week for the sport has been reduced to just 8 games, the best likely being BYU-Navy coming up on Labor Day.
No one is really jumping into things with the shortened seasons. Week two really doesn’t offer all that much in terms of primetime matchups and we don’t even get to see the SEC open up play until week 4. As you guessed, the SEC isn’t pitting any of its top teams against each other right out of the gate, either.
Therefore, I’m not sure when we’ll update our 18S poll. I’d say probably not until the week of September 28th when at least every program has played at least one game.
While I am hoping for the best, I have some reservations about the 2020 ND team. As noted, I think they will do well with their fairly easy schedule (besides Clemson). However, I would not be confident with them beating some of the teams that are ranked right below — Auburn, Texas, A&M. Book has not shown that he can rise to the occasion and score a lot of points against an upper tier defense, and the receiving corps consists of players with minimal experience or who seem to be middle of the road talent-wise.
I hope to be pleasantly surprised, but I am a little leery about them being ranked that high.
As soon as I publish this, it’s reported the Big Ten might start a season on Thanksgiving.
All I want for Christmas this year is ND winning the ACC title and taking the belt out of the arena like CM Punk
Last year, UVA was the team everybody was high on that I figured would be way overrated and no problem for ND. This year I’m leaning UNC. They didn’t win a single game against a team that ended with a winning record until their bowl game (against Temple) last year, while only finishing 7-6. Everybody got all whipped up when they played Clemson close (and lost). But none of their other losses were particularly great. The only ranked team in that group was Appalachian State, a Sun Belt Team. I’m not impressed.
I’m with you. It’s like everyone forgot why Mack Brown no longer works at Texas. Lots of recruiting stars don’t do much good if you put them at the wrong positions and hire moron coordinators.
DARKHORSE UNC has been a thing since at least 2008. They’ve finished ranked one time since 1998. I’ll believe it when I see it.
Well looks like we might actually start the season. The question is, how long can we go?
And I just found out we scheduled our 10th game against USF (week 2 for us).
Has there been anything said about what a post-season would look like without pac-12/big-10 playing?
I imagine there would still be a final 4 playoff but after that not sure how it would work.
Who knows!
I did see the CFB Playoff Committee is moving forward with their rankings like usual.
It’d probably be a wet dream for a lot of people to get SEC-SEC-SEC-Clemson as the playoff anyway, so they’d be pretty jazzed at least.
lol. yea I wonder if that would naturally be harder this year to get more SEC teams in because they are playing MORE games against each other. But I haven’t done the math on it exactly.
Curious how the committee would handle an intra team outbreak and subsequent quarantine. For example, let’s hypothesis that the rumored OU OL situation (or some variant where LSU is out a non-insignificant number of starters/key players) occurs to the LSU team right before their 2 game stretch of @ Auburn & vs Alabama. LSU loses those games by a combined 9 points, but in their other 8 games, they continue their serial killer streak of last year and win by an average of 25 points. Also, assume there’s an undefeated Clemson, 1 loss SEC champ and 1 loss BIGXII champ. There’s also a 2 loss ND (both to Clemson), 1 loss SEC runner-up (loss occurred in SECCG), undefeated UCF/any group of 5 team that played a Power 5 team.
Would LSU get looked at for the 4th playoff spot?
Anyways, I’ve got kind of a slow time at work right now, guys.
Austin Peay supposedly had one of their long-snappers get Covid. That would normally be fine, except it appears that all 3 of their long-snappers roomed together. Which means all 3 were ineligible for their game this past Saturday, which means an LB had to be their long-snapper…which did not go well.
I’m interested to see if the big conferences will be this stringent with their covid rules, or if Alabama is undefeated going into the conference championship and 1 QB gets covid, will they let it slide and only hold 1 player out?
Let’s also throw in some cancelled games to make the number of games played even more disparate amongst conferences.
Yes, great questions. There are going to so many crazy variables this year. It’s going to be impossible for the committee.
In Ohio for high school football, they’ve shortened the season to 5 games and then everyone makes the playoffs.
Maybe they should have done something in between for college (shorten the season to 6 games) and have as many teams to play games for another 6 weeks (for the teams that keep winning).