All offseason, websites and bloggers and television pundits make projections and assessments about the college football schedule.
Plenty of perfectly valid points are raised. It’s not as though these analyses are incorrect or misguided. They work with the information they have available.
Team X gets a midseason bye week before its biggest road game.
Team Y has to face its toughest conference opponents in late September, when its new quarterback might not be fully settled into the new coordinator’s offense.
Team Z has to play its two toughest games back to back and on the road.
You know the drill.
What you can’t account for in the offseason, of course, are injuries and spectacular flameouts by important players (Jeremy Johnson, cough, cough). We’ve seen boatloads of both scenarios so far this season, with more injury hits coming Wednesday morning, as it was announced that UCLA linebacker Myles Jack will be out for the rest of the season with an injured suffered in a Tuesday practice. That College GameDay visit to Tucson for UCLA-Arizona just got overshadowed a bit.
Timing really is everything.
*
Is anything being said that you don’t already know? Well, the answer is no. However, the thing about college football which makes it so exasperating at times is that people either forget things in the heat of the moment — this sport stirs the passions like no other — or conveniently cast aside a long-known principle when it serves their team’s BCS (or now College Football Playoff / New Year’s Six) pursuits to do so.
We all need reminders, so while your favorite team can only play the teams on the schedule, when they’re scheduled to play them, it’s still worth noting that timing matters. It matters in terms of shaping your team’s win-loss record, but it matters even more in terms of judging the quality of your team and its resume by season’s end.
Debates between or among college football fans and writers get very contentious very quickly, as a matter of course. However, they get especially heated not when touting the positive dimensions of a team, but the warts on its resume. Mention any flaw in a team’s body of accomplishment — no matter how necessary it might be to do so — and you’ll catch a river of venom from that fan base. (This is also very true for Heisman Trophy debates, probably just as true as it is for playoff debates.)
Yet, week four of the season provides a lot of scenarios in which teams are going to win (or lose) in the face of limitations or adjusted conditions… or both. You can deny these realities all you want, but they have certainly changed the texture of the 2015 schedule, when measured against offseason evaluations and expectations.
*
UCLA-Arizona has been altered by injuries. There is simply no doubt about that, with Myles Jack now absent. Scooby Wright has not been ruled out for Arizona, but we have to see him play reasonably well for the Wildcats to truly gain an injury-based benefit against the Bruins.
Gunner Kiel, as mentioned by TSS writer Scott King in his preview of Thursday night’s big Cincinnati-Memphis game, is not entirely healthy. He’ll probably play, but if he’s far below 100 percent, that really hurts the Bearcats in a game they desperately need. Moreover, let’s say Kiel doesn’t play the whole game; Memphis wins easily; and finishes 10-2. If there’s a year-end debate between 11-2 Memphis and 11-2 Boise State for the Group of Five New Year’s Six bowl slot, one would have to bring such a scenario into the discussion.
Elsewhere across the country in week four, Missouri is likely to win at Kentucky, but more because of how the Wildcats struggled against Florida, not so much because of the virtues the Tigers bring to Commonwealth Stadium. Most people probably felt that if Missouri was going to win in Kentucky, it would be due to the Tigers’ excellence, not the Wildcats’ woes, but Missouri does not come to Lexington as a highly-touted team… not after a 9-6 slopfest against Connecticut in week three.
Staying in the SEC, Arkansas probably figured to be a good choice against Texas A&M, mindful of how the two programs performed in November of last year and closed their seasons. Yet, A&M now seems to be getting the Razorbacks at just the right time. The same is true for Mississippi State as it goes to Auburn. The Bulldogs didn’t figure to have this good a chance to win in Jordan-Hare Stadium before the season began, but come kickoff time, it’s entirely realistic to pick Dan Mullen’s team over Gus Malzahn’s group.
Timing.
Utah and Oregon both meet with questions about the health of their number one quarterbacks, Travis Wilson and Vernon Adams. The character of that massive matchup could be completely different from what months of offseason speculation might have suggested.
Did anyone think that Arizona State’s offense and USC’s defense would be such question marks heading into this Saturday’s hugely important clash between the two sides? That game was always going to be significant, but it now seems significant in a much darker and more alarming way, compared to a month ago.
TCU-Texas Tech was always going to set up as a shootout, but with the tsunami of injuries to the Horned Frogs’ defense, the Red Raiders are clearly getting Gary Patterson’s pupils in a favorable spot.
If Kansas is going to win a road non-conference game against a Power 5 team, getting Rutgers now — in the midst of everything that’s happening to the Scarlet Knights — represents the kind of opportunity which did not seem to exist three weeks ago.
Timing.
Indiana could go to 4-0 because Wake Forest’s starting quarterback, John Wolford, doubtful for Saturday’s tilt.
With all the twists and turns at Texas — particularly the switches at quarterback and lead offensive play caller — this Saturday’s game versus Oklahoma State looks dramatically different from how it did just 14 days earlier.
Georgia Tech-Duke has so much less sizzle after week three’s very disappointing performances for both offenses.
BYU and Michigan have had to endure rollercoaster rides of varying degrees, heading into a week-four battle which is loaded with mystery.
Timing.
*
The ebb and flow of a college football season cannot be easily contained or placed into a neat categorical box. There are too many teams, too many forces, too many very fragile and volatile variables in the equation. Week four had a very specific appearance on paper when we broke down the schedule over the summer.
Now that late September and the season of autumn have officially arrived, the character of week four — and the rest of the season — are dramatically different.
Be ready to acknowledge how the course of human events has changed the way you evaluate your favorite team… and its rivals… this Saturday and beyond.
