Why Alabama is my preseason No. 1
John Adams
College football supposedly is all about parity. You have been hearing that for years now.
And you can point to almost any Saturday of any football season during the past 10 years for confirmation. Upsets do wonders for the sport, unless, of course, your team is the one being upset.
There’s no better example of that than the 2007 season. Seven times in the last nine weeks of the season, the No. 2 team was defeated. Three times, both the No. 1 and No. 2 teams lost on the same weekend.
Twice, No. 1 LSU was upset in three overtimes. And it still ended up winning the national championship.
In the same wacky season, coach Jim Harbaugh’s Stanford team knocked off 41-point favorite Southern California.
Another upset was almost as unlikely. Pittsburgh already was assured of a losing season when it defeated No. 2 West Virginia, a 28 1/2-point favorite, on the final Saturday of the regular season.
On the 10th anniversary of perhaps the most unpredictable season, I thought about those improbable outcomes as I ranked teams for my preseason vote in The Associated Press Top 25 poll.
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What’s so intriguing about college football is that in a sport fraught with upsets, the team that actually wins the national championship is seldom an underdog. In fact, most national champions were ranked in the top 10 in preseason.
The 1983 and 1984 seasons provided back-to-back exceptions. Miami, which was unranked in the AP preseason top 20, beat preseason No. 1 Nebraska in the Orange Bowl for the national championship. In 1984, BYU went unbeaten to win the national title. The Cougars, who upset No. 3 Pittsburgh in the season opener, were unranked in either the AP or coaches preseason top 20.
But when you rank teams in preseason, it makes more sense to rely on recent history than to anoint a team from the masses as a possible national champion. Most Top 25s this preseason look much like the final rankings of 2016 when Clemson and Alabama finished one-two. They’re both in virtually every preseason top 10 for 2017. So are Ohio State, Washington, Southern California, Penn State, Florida State and Oklahoma – all of which finished in the top 10.
Alabama, which has won four national championships in the past eight seasons, is No. 1 on my ballot. And it’s probably No. 1 on most other ballots, too.
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The closest I could come to a dark-horse national championship candidate is Auburn, which won the 2010 national championship with junior-college transfer Cam Newton at quarterback and almost won the 2013 national title with junior-college transfer Nick Marshall at quarterback.
So who’s to say Baylor transfer quarterback Jarrett Stidham can’t lead Auburn into the College Football Playoff?
My preseason top 10: 1. Alabama, 2. Ohio State, 3. Auburn, 4. Southern California, 5. Penn State, 6. Florida State, 7. Oklahoma, 8. Oklahoma State, 9. Clemson, 10. Washington.
I put Tennessee right where the coaches poll left it in 2016: No. 24.
Reach John Adams at 865-342-6284 or john.adams@knoxnews.com and on Twitter @johnadamskns.
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