It’s Week 1 of the college football season and with that comes everyone’s (and I mean everyone’s) predictions for how the season will shake out.
No one has taken more heat than College Gameday analyst Desmond Howard after he gave a CFP final four prediction of Texas A&M, Michigan, Baylor and Pittsburgh
In an interview with Mackenzie Salmon on Sports Seriously, Howard wasn’t shy defending his selections.
“Isn’t it boring to just pick the same old teams every year, especially if you believe that there are other teams out there that could possibly get into the College Football Playoff,” said Howard to Salmon. “A year ago today, Michigan was picked to finish fourth in their division, not their conference, we’re talking about their division.
So had I said Michigan last year, many people would be like, ‘oh, he’s a homer, blah, blah, blah. yeah, that’s crazy.’ yet Michigan made it.”
Howard has Michigan losing to Texas A&M in the national title game. He went on to explain to Salmon why this could be the Aggies year:
“Texas A&M’s Jimbo Fisher, he’s been stacking top recruiting classes… They understand that to beat Alabama, you’re going to have to match strength in the trenches and they believe that they can do that. And then the perimeter takes care of itself. But you first got to match strength in the trenches at the line of scrimmage with Alabama. And I believe that Texas A&M returned a bunch of players on both sides of the ball in the trenches. They believe they can beat Alabama.
Plus adding fuel to the fire, what Nick Saban said during the offseason. That’s when you circle the wagons and you really want to protect your coach and you go out there and you take your game to another level. I’m expecting that game to be a dog fight when they play.”
I know we are all excited for this weekend but October 8 can’t come soon enough.
You can watch the full Sports Seriously interview here: