5 Rules for Enjoying the New Fooball Season

For any college football fan, each season seems to go by way too fast. It seems that August lasts for 6 months, and before you know it, it is New Year’s Day. However, there are a few things that every fan should remember when heading into a new college football season. All you need to know are these five rules:

1. Preseason Polls are crap.

There is nothing less scientific than preseason polls. The preseason poll is almost always based on last year’s team, which obviously has nothing to do with this year’s team, even if there are a lot of returning starters. The other factors that go into making a preseason poll is media hype. ESPN creates some teams to be better than they are because they need good stories. They want to hype every team to boost ratings. If there was any justice in the world, there would be no official preseason polls.
Think about this, in 2004, the Auburn Tigers went undefeated in the toughest conference in America. However, they were shut out of the National Championship game because all season long they had been ranked behind both USC and Oklahoma. Why were they ranked there? Because in the preseason poll they were ranked #17, while USC and Oklahoma were ranked #1 and #2 respectively. Auburn was ranked 7 spots lower than the Florida Gators who ended up going 7-5 in 2004. Obviously Oklahoma and USC were good teams, but Auburn was too, and the preseason poll was the only reason they never got a shot at playing USC for the national championship.

2. Have reasonable expectations for your team, you’ll live longer.

Here is a news flash: only one team can win a National Championship each year. So programs like USC, Ohio St., Florida, Alabama, Texas, LSU, Georgia, Miami, Virginia Tech, Oklahoma, and Notre Dame who expect their team to be playing for a title each and every year are bound to be disappointed more times than not. Winning a national championship is very difficult, and most of the time, talent is not enough to get a ring (more on that in a bit).
You have to be aware of who your team is, in order to accurately judge the season as it plays out. Georgia fans should not expect to win a National Championship in 2010. This doesn’t mean that there is no way Georgia could win, but to expect a red-shirt freshman to lead you to a title is simply ridiculous. A great season in Athens this year would be 10-2. That means that 2 times during the season, Georgia is going to lose. That means, after Georgia loses a game, there is no reason for any fan to talk about Mark Richt being fired, Mike Bobo being fired, or benching Aaron Murray. Write it down on a piece of paper and stick it to your refrigerator: 10-2. Look at it after Georgia loses its first game, and don’t be one of those fans who end up looking stupid at the end of the year.

3. One loss is ok for a National Title Contender.

For those teams who come into a season with a reasonable expectation to contend for a title, one loss will most likely not mean the end of your January dreams. Sure, there have been a few exceptions, most heartbreakingly Georgia in 2002, but for the most part, a one loss team will still be in the picture come November, especially a one loss SEC team.
Now, as with any rule, there are a couple of exceptions. If you are a non-BCS team, you have no chance if you aren’t undefeated, if you lose your last game of the season, you will not play for the title, and if you are Ohio State you better win all of your games because you have given us enough bad games in January.

4. Two losses is not ok for a National Title Contender.

Just as one loss doesn’t eliminate you from contention, two losses does. Of course there are exceptions, LSU in 2007 being the only exception thus far. However, I can see another exception perhaps happening this year. Let’s say Alabama loses to Florida in the regular season loses another game before the beginning of November. Then they get hot and beat Auburn to finish the year. They roll over the Gators in the SEC championship and finish the season 11-2. They could get in ahead of a one loss Ohio State team, and perhaps ahead of an undefeated Boise State, TCU, or Utah team. However, their #1 preseason ranking is the only reason they might be able to pull this off.

5. Injuries, luck, and upsets will usually decide the championship.

For all of these categories, we will focus only on Georgia.

Injuries. In 2005, Georgia was playing about as good as any team in the country. Until DJ Shockley got hurt against Arkansas on Homecoming and ended up missing the Florida game. Georgia loses to Florida and then loses to Auburn 2 weeks later by a single point when Shockley returns. Without the injury, maybe those two wins get Georgia into the title conversation. The win over #3 LSU in the SEC title game would have given Georgia a very convincing argument.

Luck. Let’s look back at 2002. Many fans remember this as the rebirth of Georgia football. SEC Champs and Sugar Bowl Champs. But remember the season. Georgia is a heroic play by David Pollack away from losing to South Carolina, and there was that tiny little miracle on the Plains in Auburn where Michael Johnson wrote his name in Georgia’s history books. In more recent years, both Florida and Alabama have benefited from blocked field goals at the end of games to keep their title hopes alive, and both eventually took home the hardware. Ohio State got a bad call against Miami in 2002 in the title game to keep their hopes alive. While Colorado got 5 downs against Michigan in 1990 to share a title with the bumble bees from Atlanta. As is true in all walks of life, sometimes it is better to be lucky than good.

Upsets. Each year we look down the schedule and find the game we think our team can win, and the ones our team might lose. More often than not, you will select a win that will become a loss when the season is played out. Upsets are a huge part of College Football each and every year. Georgia was upset twice in 2007 (South Carolina and Tennessee). LSU was upset twice that very same year (Kentucky and Arkansas). Ole Miss clipped Florida in 2008. Florida broke Bulldog hearts in 2002. Georgia shocked LSU in 2005 in the Dome. Don’t get too far ahead of yourself on the schedule because nothing is a guarantee.

All of these rules lead us to the biggest rule about College Football. Enjoy the ride. It will be January very soon.