Media day and, hopefully, most of the arrests, are over and the rumors of realignments have been put away for the time being. All that is left to do now is anticipate opening kickoff. The four-letter network opens the doors on this college football season on Aug. 29 and the gauntlet runs until Jan. 6, 2014. This is the final season that the polls will actually matter. I imagine that is a fact that sickens Vince Russo. In his honor, let’s take a gander at who the preseason top ten’s wrestling counterparts are.
Your time is up, the Tide is now. There is no argument about whose time it truly is in the college football world. Alabama has won three of the last four National Championships and it shows little sign of stopping. With a game plan that is basically run left, run right, play-action pass, extra point, kneel down; the Tide’s five moves have spelled doom for most everyone in the college football landscape. Traditional power Notre Dame and its Samoan bulldozer linebacker were strangled with a turnbuckle in last year’s national championship game and Alabama has only reloaded. The Tide is loved by its devotees (who generally act like screaming fan girls in high times and petulant children in the down years) and hated by everybody else. There is generally no middle ground when it comes how people feel about Nick Saban’s football factory. Whatever they do won’t be pretty, but it is effective. Hustle, loyalty, and respect are all just part of the process. The Crimson Tide is John Cena.
The Buckeyes seem to have it all: excellent mechanics, a rabid fanbase and one of the better pedigrees in the game. They have all the tools to succeed, but they also love getting into monkeyshine. The Pontiff Urban Meyer took over the reins of Buckeye nation after some health issues and family withdrawal (actually he had his attitude adjusted by Nick Saban, and his savior Tim Tebow graduated) forced him to resign from the University of Florida. He inherited a program that was on probation and ineligible to win a championship because a slew of players were trading trinkets and gear for tattoos. While playing with house money, Meyer guided The Ohio State University to an utterly boring undefeated season that only raised the already high expectations for the program. The Buckeyes’ mechanics garner praise from football purists but their often slow and creeping pace can lull most onlookers to sleep. Most expect Meyer to return the Buckeyes to their past glory and inject some much needed speed into the depth chart, but the off season has been marred with disciplinary problems that have haunted most of Meyer’s teams. Urban won championships early in his career but the recent past has not been very highlight worthy. The Big Ten may once again have an Apex Predator, but it comes in the form of a program with a lot of baggage. Ohio State is Randy Orton.
3. Oregon Ducks
Their hot shot defensive end took his talents to South Beach very early in the NFL draft. Perennial Heisman dark horse Lamichael James has been plying his trade on Sunday’s for a year already. Mastermind of the Kliq Chip Kelly flirted with a return to Eugene, but he now calls Philadelphia home. The rest of the Ducks are now left to carve out their own path and build upon a strong foundation. That foundation is not without its weak points though. The Ducks are stocked with natural talent and seemingly endless Nike resources (their new football facility rivals the newly opened WWE training cathedral), but they cannot win the big one, or even the one to get to the big one, at times. When Johnny Manziel slapped the Tide in the mouth in Tuscaloosa, last year looked like the Duck’s year. But Oregon found itself locked in the hog pen with Stanford and could not win the low scoring brawl. Chip Kelly’s high-octane offense has buried conference foes consistently but has not been able to topple more physical and more established foes. Kelly is gone now and the task of maintaining his success is downright Terra Ryzing. Can the Ducks overcome the great migration and go from players to The Game? Maybe, but for now they are Hunter Hearst Helmsley.
Georgia Bulldogs
Loaded with talent and athleticism another (this is the) year has arrived for the Athens faithful. The Bulldogs had a show-off year in 2012. They decimated most of their opponents and captured the attention of the nation as a dark horse National Championship contender. Aaron Murray and company looked like real world beaters in most of their games save for two. Unfortunately, these were the two that mattered most. Against South Carolina, the Dawgs were absolutely squashed. Carolina’s defense kicked them right in the head and the offense put up 21 in the first quarter in a 35-7 thumping. As luck and strange booking would have it, Georgia still had a title shot in December as the team made it back to the SEC Championship game to face eventual champion Alabama. The Dawgs bumped their asses in an absolute classic, but a signature win still eluded them. In the NFL draft, Georgia lost a great deal of their defensive muscle. But hopes are still high that veteran quarterback Murray, a strong recruiting class and an unusually low suspension rate can overcome the personnel loses. Bulldog fans believe in this team, though historical evidence suggests that they shouldn’t. Georgia always looks good, shows off and is often the more skilled team on the field, but they have yet to win the signature game that cements them as a true contender. This may be the year that they finally steal the show, thus making the Bulldogs Dolph Ziggler.
South Carolina has been playing football since 1892. The team has one the best field entrances in the game. Carolina has next year’s consensus number one draft pick returning to campus, and the team is led by bona fide fire-breathing legend named Steve Spurrier who has the best mic skills of anyone who has ever worn a headset (or visor for that matter). The Gamecocks have also never won a major championship. Their lone conference title happened the same year as Woodstock. The Gamecocks just have not been booked with the big one. There has always been a giant standing at the top of the mountain to douse the Cocks’ hopes. The end of their ACC tenure came as Florida State’s Bobby Bowden was on his way to being the winningest Division 1 coach ever. They entered the SEC Eastern Division a year before it became the toughest single division ever. They reached the SEC Championship Game just in time to be the next victim of a robot monster named Cam Newton. It has not been a charmed life for the men of Columbia. Even an 11-2 record couldn’t get them to Atlanta last year, and they had to watch as a team they dismantled got just four yards from capturing the SEC crown. Jadeveon Clowney cracked a coconut over the head of a Michigan running back in last year’s final game, and the sports world took notice. Anything short of an SEC Championship will be a letdown for South Carolina this year. The Gamecocks may have the answers this year and Mama Bailey certainly hopes nobody changes the questions. South Carolina is “Rowdy” Roddy Piper.
Stanford just does what it does, and lately that is winning. Only two loses and 13 total points separated the Cardinals from a spot in the National Championship Game. This after one of the best players and best coaches in the program’s history both left for the NFL. Stanford is probably your football coach’s favorite team to watch. The Cardinals enforce their will on opponents and quietly get things done. The flashy Oregon Ducks garner the attention, but it is the hard-nosed, get-it-done Cardinals that give the Pac-12 credibility. There really isn’t much to say about the Cardinals aside from the fact that they would much rather punch you in the mouth than beat you with style. The Cardinals would be the first man in the War Games and still standing in the match beyond. They may never win it all, but you certainly wouldn’t want them to be the ones you have to go through in order to win it yourself. The Stanford Cardinals are Arn Anderson.
The eyes of the ranger and the sports world are clearly focused on tiny College Station, Texas, which has become a steep-pitched roof that rests underneath college football’s newest rooster-adorned lightning rod. Last year the Aggies became the western outpost of the SEC and proved that they belonged in the spotlight and out of the shadow of their big city nemesis UT. All this was credited (perhaps too much) to an undersized, electric quarterback named Johnny. TAMU’s 2012 ticked along exactly as it was supposed to in the early going.
The Aggies beat the teams they were supposed to beat and lost close to traditional SEC powerhouses. Then came Nov. 10. The Aggies strolled into Tuscaloosa and slapped around the champion Crimson Tide, robbing Alabama of its machismo with a quick 1, 2, 3. Johnny Manziel ran off with much more than a sack filled with $25,000 that day. He left with the nation’s heart, and the Heisman Trophy became his to lose. He was christened the first freshman to win the award a month later, and if the story had ended there it would have won an Oscar. Unfortunately, the following off season featured no realignment, no major coaching searches and no real controversy. This left the Twittersphere, the media and everybody with a camera constant watchers of the Johnny Football show. And the show did not disappoint. It could have been Jersey Shore South as 20-year-old Manziel didn’t meet a drink he didn’t like or a tweet he wouldn’t send. His whirlwind tour took him to every high-profile event from LeBron to Drake and garnered him the attention of a vengeful Internet and the NCAA. Apparently taking several thousand dolla dolla bills y’all (allegedly) to sign autographs is frowned upon by the powers that be in Indianapolis. While it is not likely that any real evidence will be found to actually keep Manziel from playing, the heat that the summer of J. Football has garnered has made everything for the Aggies that much more difficult. The best defense for a mobile quarterback is videotape and there is plenty of Johnny, both on and off the field. The Aggies’ roster is still strong but the NFL draft didn’t do them any favors. The slightest bump in the road may send the whole cart to the ditch this year, and that is what most of the onlookers are hoping for. There is a collective groan whenever the maroon and white number 2 jersey appears on screen. Is it possible that so much potential can go unfulfilled? This season will tell. Texas A&M is X-Pac.
Who is Clemson? A casual observer probably thinks the Tigers are an upstart program from an indeterminate location that sometimes beats Florida State. A South Carolina fan would say they are the scum-of-the-Earth team that they have beaten for the last four years. The truth of the matter is Clemson has been playing ball at a fairly high level for a long time. The team was once coached by some dude named Heisman, and the Tigers won a National Championship in 1981. The Tigers have gone about their business and racked up a total of 18 conference titles in their history. This goes less noticed than it should because it happened in the ACC, which is much more known for hardwood glory than gridiron. In wrestling parlance, the ACC is the top indie promotion in the country. Very few football programs have been able to pull the spotlight away from the other conferences long enough to show how good their teams are. Florida State has been the most consistent exception. Virginia Tech made a bit of a name for itself. Miami has been in the conference for some time, but its real glory days occurred as a member of the now defunct Big East. Clemson is the latest challenger to attempt the leap from the Armory to the Omni. They have the athletic talent. Tajh Boyd is on the short list for the Heisman and the IPTAY crew is still riding high from its bowl victory over LSU, and as importantly the SEC, in last year’s final game. The victory gave the Tigers their second 11-win season in school history. Clemson is in the middle of the biggest push in three decades. The Tigers’ path to the main event goes through the Seminoles and constant foe South Carolina. Can they trade in their ACC title on a bigger belt? The Clemson Tigers are Dean Ambrose.
If the ACC is the top indie promotion of college football, the American Athletic Conference is a parody of a football conference. The conference is the cobbled wreckage of what was the Big East. The lone football power, West Virginia, now calls the Big 12 home. Wins there simply don’t matter. This is the hay that the Cardinals feasted on last year. That being said, Louisville is incredibly talented. Quarterback Teddy Bridgewater can be described as phenomenal. He is also the only player on the team that anyone can name without a media guide in hand. Bridgewater’s talent and coach Charlie Strong’s savvy should be enough to get the Cardinals through their absolutely threatless schedule. This should get them a nice BCS game, a fat paycheck and pretty much nothing else. There would have to be major collapses at the top of the food chain to get Louisville a shot at the big prize. To a school that regards football as a pastime until basketball starts, that should be just fine. In a dangerous move, Louisville picked up troubled SEC cast-off Michael Dyer to add some depth to its staff. The Cardinals are a prize pony in a field that is bound for the glue factory. The Louisville Cardinals are AJ Styles.
10. Florida Gators
There was a time when it was truly great to be a Florida Gator. Steve Spurrier’s fun-and-gun offense, Urban Meyer and Tim Tebow’s Batman and Robin act, and championships at every turn made for a ton of opportunities for those with the benefit of flash photography. Those days are gone. We have only the pictures now. The Gators are now headed up by the fuming Will Muschamp and the flash-and-brash of recent decades has been replaced with a toned-down offense that is often unwatchable but somehow victorious. Once the arbiters of cool, the Gators are now just a bunch of strap-hangers with lunch pails in hand, quietly going to work. This strategy earned them 11 wins last year, just missing an appearance in the SEC Championship Game due to a loss to bitter rival Georgia where they could only muster nine points. If this same roster wore different uniforms, no one would pay much attention. But they still wear the orange and blue and call The Swamp home. The university’s blazing roster was one of the main reasons that Florida as a whole was known as the Speed State. But wide-open style has certainly been unprettied of late. Muschamp has thrown the kill switch on flash and is more concerned with a fundamentally and balanced attack. He has had time to recruit his own players for this style, and with Urban Meyer and Tebow’s ghost finally exorcised, Muschamp is at last on his own. The Florida Gators are Christian.