Ahh, the first game week of the college football season is here, and every team undefeated, every team is going to win the National Championship. Yes, even yours. It seems we come to this crossroads at the start of every season — high expectations are everywhere and your team is likely to fall victim to them in some respect.
One team that seems to have these each and every year is Notre Dame. In fact, Fox Sports college football analyst Colin Cowherd recently took to Twitter to express some high expectations for this year's Notre Dame team.
For starters, this Texas-Notre Dame game won't be close to begin with. The line is currently at -10.5 in Notre Dame's favor, and that should go up as we get later in the week. Texas, who went 6-7 last year and lost its last six games by a combined 144 points, was not a good football team last year, and they'll continue to struggle in 2015. Yes, I trust Charlie Strong in Austin but give him a couple more years along with some of his own recruiting classes before he gets thing settled.
Let me get this straight: I'm not bashing Cowherd here. In fact, Notre Dame's roster is full of talent this year, and this game against Texas should be a blowout.
Back to Notre Dame specifically — the school that constantly seems to be a national title "contender" simply because of who they are. The Fighting Irish aren't the only ones that fall victim to this brand name recognition game in college football. Traditional powerhouses like Oklahoma, Alabama (a bit of a stretch, I know — let's chalk this up to the Nick Saban effect), Ohio State, and even Florida State (with the exception of the last two years with Jameis Winston) seem to always be in the conversation for competing for titles before the seasons start.
This isn't a brand new opinion I'm offering. In fact, Baylor head coach Art Briles suggested a similar sentiment in July about how much brands of traditional powerhouses affect the sport. Briles was asked about Baylor — who was considered by many to be snubbed by the College Football Playoff last year — being left out, and Briles stated that if Baylor or TCU had "older brand names" they probably would have been put into the Top 4.
Oklahoma last season for example had 10/1 odds to win the national championship right before week one, and they were considered by many to be playoff material. Fast forward five months and they finished 2014 with a 5-4 record in the Big 12 and a 40-6 thrashing by Clemson in the Russell Athletic Bowl.
The Fighting Irish last season were considered a CFP team even after they got beat in the final seconds by Florida State in week eight. Just three weeks later, and Notre Dame gets beat by Arizona State 55-31, loses to Northwestern inexplicably in overtime at home the following week, and then proceeded to lose its last two games against Louisville and USC.
Does Notre Dame have a talented roster this year? Yes — they have a talented quarterback in Malik Zaire, almost all their leading wideouts back, along with ten returning starters on defense. But should they be thrown into the CFP debate? Maybe not — a schedule featuring the likes of Georgia Tech and the triple option, and road games to both Clemson and Stanford causes me to pump the brakes on that conversation.
So let's ease up a little bit on penciling teams into the national title conversation simply because of who they are. We all do it, even I do — but with the new College Football Playoff system, aren't brands supposed to have nothing to do with who the best teams in the country are?
