Our long-range college football predictions arrive a bit later than usual but, we can only hope, no worse for wear. Probably no better, either. For late tuners-in, this is the place where somebody’s fans get really mad. Some years it’s Georgia fans; other years it’s Tech backers. This time I’m guessing it’ll be both. Let’s get the party-pooping started.
Georgia Tech will win its division, but won't be as good as last season. The Yellow Jackets figure to be ranked in the preseason Top 25 for the first time since 2010, and there's reason. Justin Thomas is a tremendous quarterback. The defense has stabilized under Ted Roof. There's nobody in the Coastal Division rising to challenge. Still, Tech's schedule is much tougher — road games at Notre Dame and Clemson, home dates with Florida State and Georgia. And it's hard to imagine the absence of both B-backs and both starting wide receivers from last season not being felt. (C.J. Leggett's loss to a torn ACL in spring drills only deepens the B-back issue.) Tech will go 9-3 and lose to Clemson in the ACC Championship game.
Auburn will win the SEC West. Even without quarterback Nick Marshall, the Tigers should be better overall. Will Muschamp's arrival as defensive coordinator should balance the scales. (Muschamp: Good coordinator, bad head coach.) This figures to be Alabama's most testing season since 2008, the year Nick Saban got it going in Tuscaloosa. The Crimson Tide will feature a new quarterback for the second consecutive season, and the great receiver Amari Cooper is gone to the NFL. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the aura of Saban infallibility has begun to dim: He was outcoached by Auburn's Gus Malzahn in 2013 and by Ohio State's Urban Meyer on New Year's night. He's still really good, but his teams can be beaten.
The biggest game of Thanksgiving weekend won't be Auburn-Alabama (though that'll be huge). Remember how the Big 12 was undone at the very end in the College Football Playoff rankings because it didn't have a championship game. It still doesn't, although it kind of does. On Nov. 27, Baylor will play TCU in Fort Worth. Both finished the 2014 regular season with one loss — TCU's was to Baylor, which lost at West Virginia — but were omitted from the inaugural College Football Playoff. The winner the day after Thanksgiving will make the CFP this time. That winner will be the Horned Frogs.
The biggest griper this December will be Clemson, and Dabo Swinney can really gripe. The College Football Playoff will include Ohio State, TCU, Auburn and USC. Swinney's Tigers will finish fifth in the voting even though they'll be the one-loss champ of the ACC. (The loss will come Sept. 17 when, in one of those Clemson-being-Clemson games, the Tigers lose at Louisville on a Thursday night.) Let's recall that Florida State was an unbeaten defending national champion and finished third in last year's CFP balloting. The ACC isn't about to get the benefit of many doubts.
Georgia won't win the SEC East, and neither will Missouri. Tennessee will. This is a major leap of … well, I wouldn't call it faith, seeing as how the Volunteers still have everything to prove. Call it a considered guess. I've liked what I've seen of Butch Jones' fixing-upping, and I thought Tennessee did well to bleed a bowl appearance out of a season that saw them face five Top 25 teams (and lose to all five). With South Carolina receding and Florida restarting, there's room to move in this division. And Mizzou can't win the thing every year, can it?
Troy will rise again. USC went 9-4 in Steve Sarkisian's first season as head coach and was unlucky not to go 11-2. (It lost to Arizona State on a Hail Mary and at Utah on a touchdown pass with eight seconds remaining.) Oregon won't be quite the same without Marcus Mariota, and UCLA saw Brett Hundley leave early for the NFL. Which should leave the Trojans' Cody Kessler the best quarterback in a quarterback-driven league.
Ohio State will win a second consecutive national championship. If the fate of the world depended on one football game, who would you want coaching it? If you don't say Urban Meyer, you're lying.
Georgia will go 8-4. I'm always accused of overrating the Bulldogs, and sometimes the accusation holds water. But I have real doubts about this season. Over Mark Richt's 14 seasons in Athens, teams working with a new quarterback have averaged 3.8 regular-season losses. (Richt's teams with an incumbent have averaged 2.1.) Most of those new quarterbacks — David Greene, D.J. Shockley, Matthew Stafford and Aaron Murray — were a cut above any on this roster, and coordinator Mike Bobo isn't around to smooth the kinks. I see Georgia losing to Tennessee, Alabama and Auburn — and to someone else simply because Georgia under Richt always loses a game it shouldn't. But I do think Georgia will beat Tech.
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