It's no secret that college football is the favored sport around The Alabama Take offices. The fellas over on Taking It Down are watching SEC documentaries on Netflix, our annual College Pick 'Em groups have been fired up, and we wrap up our preview series on Takin' On Sports next Monday when we look into Alabama and the SEC. It's the most glorious time of year, because college football is in the thick, unrelenting August air all around us.
While our predictions are usually more comically cursed than accurate, we didn't do half bad last year. I had Ohio State as my National Champ (bold, I know), and we both aced our SEC predictions. Of course, we also had Utah winning the Big 12 and our Heisman calls for Jalen Milroe and Quinn Ewers didn't quite land.
This year we try our hand again, and as usual we apologize to all of the teams we think will do well, we have now inevitably doomed your season.
Let's begin with our conference winners, where last year I picked four correct champs and Greg got three right.
American
TD: Tulane
Greg: Memphis
ACC
TD: Clemson
Greg: Clemson
Big Ten
TD: Penn State
Greg: Ohio State
Big 12
TD: Arizona State
Greg: Kansas State
Conference USA
TD: Liberty
Greg: Liberty
MAC
TD: Buffalo
Greg: Toledo
Mountain West
TD: Boise State
Greg: UNLV
SEC
TD: Alabama
Greg: Alabama
Sun Belt
TD: James Madison
Greg: James Madison
Next, the power conference teams we think will surprise us in good ways. This could be a team coming out of nowhere to have a great season, a team with little to no hype we think will make a splash, or simply a squad that will exceed modest expectations. Last year we called the rise of Georgia Tech and SMU in the ACC, and correctly saw Florida keeping Billy Napier off of the hot seat (for now, anyway).
ACC
TD: Stanford
Greg: Duke
Big Ten
TD: Wisconsin
Greg: Nebraska
Big 12
TD: Kansas
Greg: TCU
SEC
TD: Texas A&M
Greg: Oklahoma
On the opposite side of surprises are the disappointments -- teams that don't love up to high aspirations, are crushed by preseason hype, or teams that are just due for a slide. While we may not have foresaw how far they fell, we both had Florida State and Michigan taking dips, and Greg was one of the few who saw Oklahoma State falling off.
ACC
TD: Syracuse
Greg: Miami
Big Ten
TD: Indiana
Greg: Illinois
Big 12
TD: BYU
Greg: Texas Tech
SEC
TD: Vanderbilt
Greg: South Carolina
As for the Heisman winner, let's hope this. year we at least get close. Greg has Oklahoma quarterback John Mateer lifting the trophy, while I think Notre Dame's star running back Jeremiyah Love earns the honor.
Lastly, there's the matter of the College Football Playoff. As mentioned above, I correctly said Ohio State would lift the trophy at season's end. We also both had our disappointments right, with Greg picking Ole Miss to fall short and me calling for Michigan to miss out a year after their national title win.
Playoff Disappointment
TD: Georgia
Greg: Penn State
Playoff Surprise
TD: Baylor
Greg: LSU
National Champion
TD: Notre Dame
Greg: Alabama
There you have it. Should you use these predictions as a guide to make some bets and you lose your ass, don't blame us, we're pretty open about how terribly our past predictions have gone. However, should you win big, we'd like some credit, please. Most of all, let's just all enjoy the best time of year because the next thing we know we'll be lamenting how the season flew by so fast.
