My National Thoughts on the 2013 Season - Weeks 1/2

This offseason, to feed my college football addiction, I did what any reasonable football fan would do: I decided to watch every single college football game from this past season before the start of next season. It quickly occurred to me that this would be mathematically extremely difficult bordering on impossible so I decided to limit it mostly to BCS-level teams and exclude FCS matchups. I'm a week and a half in so far, and I decided to share some of my thoughts with you all here at TKP. I've noticed that as a fanbase, we're well above-average in our knowledge of Virginia Tech football and the game of college football as a whole (a tip of the cap to French and Joe, among others). However, I think we could stand to improve from a national perspective. Over the course of the offseason, I'll continue to post my thoughts on different aspects of college football: teams, players, units, coaches, general thoughts, etc. These will just be little tidbits/snapshots of select games, but my goal is that we all (myself included) would enter this next season with an increased knowledge of the landscape of college football. Besides, what's more impressive than busting out some knowledge about a few Pac-12 schools at a tailgate? Ok, maybe I'm the only one who finds that cool, but still. If it's well-received, I'll continue to share my thoughts throughout the upcoming season (I usually watch about 8-12 games per weekend anyways). Even if it's not well-received, I may post it anyways. Because this is the internet and this is America.

Murica.

Without further ado, here are some of my thoughts from the first week and a half of the 2013 college football season.

Penn State
Watching Penn State's first game against Syracuse, I was struck by how much even highly-touted Christian Hackenberg looked like a freshman. It's clearly unreasonable to expect too much from a true freshman, regardless of how talented/college-ready he appears to be in high school. The game is just too fast. I saw some late throws, throwing into coverage, things that would've worked for him the year before, but just don't fly on this level. He improved as the season went on, and I have no doubt he'll be a great QB for PSU before all is said and done, but he had some rough spots for sure. Life lesson: unless you have no other viable options, do not start a true freshman at QB in college.

Vanderbilt
If not for the loss of head coach James Franklin, I'd be tempted to tout Vanderbilt as a top-25 team heading into the season. They struggled like crazy against spread teams - Texas A&M and Missouri - but held their own the rest of the way. Their showing against Ole Miss (themselves a very solid team) was more than respectable. Off the top of my head I'm not sure about where they are talent-wise in terms of who's leaving/coming back (along with an unspectacular top-50 recruiting class), but I can say that the loss of Franklin could very well be a devastating blow for a very promising program.

Florida State
Jameis Winston is good, but his supporting cast is really, really, really good. Jimbo is a good coach and a heck of a recruiter (not to mention being at one of the easiest schools to recruit to), and he got his money's worth out of his team this year. That said, he has a tendency (even saw it in the NC game) to rely too much on his QB. Against Pitt and Auburn, if he had relied on his dominance up front and run the ball a bit more, Winston wouldn't have won the Heisman and I don't think anyone would've gotten close to touching FSU this year.

LOLUVA
Anyone who thought Lambert was a viable option at QB for UVA this past season was probably smoking something they shouldn't have been. He has a strong arm, but has shown similar accuracy issues to David Watford, and is much less mobile. We saw that particular limitation on display during the Commonwealth Cup game this year (pretty sure Bud was visibly drooling on the sideline in the 4th quarter), but that was not remotely an isolated incident. Mike London can say "QB competition" and the media can say "QB controversy" all they want, but unless that line suddenly turned into FSU's or Stanford's, London had better stick with Watford if he wants to win football games. Also, Kevin Parks is a really good back, 3rd-best in the conference, IMHO, behind Williams and Duke Johnson.

Michigan State
Michigan State's defense is really, really good. If their offense had kicked into gear a few games earlier, we could've had a very interesting tussle at the top of the BCS rankings this year. Through their second game, the defense had scored more touchdowns than the offense. Shoot, against South Florida, one MSU player had more TDs than their entire offense. If they can hit the ground running offensively and patch a couple big holes at LB and CB in the offseason, the Spartans could very well be in the picture for the first CFP.

Florida
Can we just sit and laugh for a minute at how ridiculously over-rated Florida was this year? Its not even that they're an untalented team, they just get in their own way far too much. Penalties, turnovers (FIVE of them against Miami in a one-possession game), and missed assignments burned them all year. They're reminiscent of the 2009 Miami team I saw play in Lane Stadium and get manhandled by a team that sent all of one player to the NFL that year: talented, undisciplined and thoroughly uninterested in winning. Will Muschamp is back, but he's got some work to do. If his team can just stay out of their own way, hold onto the football and do at least most of the little things right, the gators might actually be somebody again.

Georgia
I've heard through the grapevine (fancy term for "I don't remember where") that UGA has a less-than-outstanding strength and conditioning program, which explains their alarmingly high, VT-basketball-like, injury rate. However, when healthy they're a lot of fun to watch. I think I could watch that UGA-Clemson game just about every week and not get bored of it. Aaron Murray is a good QB and Todd Gurley (lets face it, you've got to be a stud with that name) is an outstanding RB. Its too bad they both had promising seasons cut short by injuries, with Murray's being a bit more problematic since his eligibility has expired and hes not going to the NFL with only one working knee. The defense looked like a unit that lost a bunch of guys to the NFL, but they get a bunch of guys back next year. If they can lean on the defense and a great running back (sound familiar?), they could have themselves a solid little year.

Texas
I know it's the Longhorn Network and these guys are pretty much paid to hype up Texas, but I think this commentator had the most wrongety-wrong prediction of any talking head in the business this year: Texas would have a special season and it would be all because of their outstanding defense. A shellacking of 2-win powerhouse New Mexico State aside, I couldn't help but laugh at the poor guy.

Cal
As a Stanford fan, it pains me to say this, but I think Cal is going to be a contender in the Pac-12 North sooner rather than later. They won 1 game this year and often looked completely disinterested in playing defense. However, as a team that started a true freshman QB (what did I say earlier about that particular no-no?), I saw some signs of life out of them. In week 1, they definitely did not look like a team that would win all of 0 games against FBS competition. I look for them to be a bit of a surprise next year, possibly catching a couple of the top teams in the conference sleeping, and earning a bowl bid.

Well, that's what I've got so far, I hope you guys enjoyed it and came away just a little more well-informed about the greatest game in the world. As a final note, if anyone (French, Mason, Billdozer, etc) knows a good place I can find recordings of games, specifically Pac-12 or B1G games, please let me know. I'm currently just using YouTube and ESPN3, because those are easy to stream on my TV.

As of March 19th, there are 164 days remaining until the 2014 Hokie Football season.