Tag: 2021 college football

Where Oklahoma and the Big 12 rank in FBS 10-tier rankings

Recently ESPN broke down all 130 FBS football programs into a 10 tier list. Are the Oklahoma Sooners worthy of tier 1 of college football?

There will be a fair amount of chatter surrounding Oklahoma football in the coming weeks and months. The Sooners are just days away from wrapping up the 2021 recruiting cycle with the Feb. 3 National Signing Day almost upon us. As important as the recruiting class is the number of players who are also transferring in. Most recently, they have landed three transfers from the University of Tennessee alone.

It would be fair to say that Lincoln Riley isn’t likely done just yet. The losses of Creed Humphrey, Ronnie Perkins, Rhamondre Stevenson, Tre Brown, and Adrian Ealy aren’t small ones. The Sooners staff might need to get creative in how they replace them. All of that will be worked out in due time.

One of the annual traditions of the offseason is power rankings, preseason rankings, and even breaking college football into tiers. ESPN recently broke down the FBS schools into a 10-tier ranking. Sooners Wire breaks down where the Big 12 schools are ranked and where is Oklahoma?

5 Biggest Off-Field Things That Matter: College Football Cavalcade

If you thought the 2020 offseason was wild, welcome to 2021. Here are five key things happening that will shape your college football life.

If you thought the 2020 offseason was wild, wait until you get a load of your 2021. Here are five key off-field things happening that will shape your college football life.

College Football Cavalcade: 5 Biggest Off-Field Things That Matter

– Contact/Follow @ColFootballNews & @PeteFiutak

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Sorry if this take sucks, it’s not my fault …

This is the one column that doesn’t return just about everyone on both sides of the ball.

If you thought the 2020 offseason was weird, just you wait for what you’re about to get in 2021.

Will we get spring ball again? Will we be able to plan on fans being in the stands? How will the protocols continue to work?

And – oh yeah – sorry to have to go here, but when it comes to mass gatherings, no one wants to spend the next seven months having to care about the words “soft target” unless it’s referencing some mediocre receiver.

This will likely be done again later on this offseason – yeah, that whole Name Image and Likeness thing just got conveniently blown off – but for now, here are 5 big off-field things this offseason that matter.

5. Oh you COVID, you …

You best believe that we’re getting a 2021 college football season that’s going to be much better than the 2020 version.

The offseason, though …

If college football was able to play last year when everyone was guessing about the right and wrong ways to do this, there’s no chance we’re not getting at least what we had last season …

But with fans.

It was ugly at times, it was unscrupulous, it was occasionally unseemly, and it was all totally hypocritical considering the bullmess that college administrator types and athletic directors pushed, but we got our college football.

Now all these colleges want to start making money again, and that means they’re going to want fans giving them their money. Oh yeah, and they’re also going to want regular schedules and contracted games they can rely on so they can start collecting that ticket revenue as soon as humanly possible.

The desperation for some semblance of normalcy is everything for college football programs, especially for coaches who live on routine, predictability, and … The Process. Unfortunately, it’s doubtful that everything snaps back right away.

Coaches want their spring ball back, they want to know what and who they’re dealing with, and they want to worry about football and not testing, protocols, and distancing. However, they might still have to still live with all of that and more for a little while longer.

Outside of a new sheriff in town up at the very top, it’s not like anything has changed or improved COVID-wise over the last few months. Maybe the vaccinations will trickle down to the fittest people in our country – 18-to-23-year-old athletes – at some point this summer, but will it happen by March?

Nah, but that doesn’t mean teams aren’t going to be practicing. It just might not be like normal again quite yet.

On the plus side, the predictions for a season aren’t dire, unlike they were last season. However, expect spring football to be weird to non-existent depending on the school.

And with that …

NEXT: Schedules are likely going to return to near-normal

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ESPN bearish on Notre Dame’s way-too-early 2021 ranking

The sports media giant projects what the top 25 will look like entering the 2021 season, and it is not that high on Notre Dame’s ranking.

While we haven’t even had much time to process the finalization of the 2020 college football season, ESPN is already looking ahead to the 2021 campaign. Although ESPN has Notre Dame ranked inside its top 25, unlike many other outlets, it is not giving Brian Kelly’s squad much love at all, ranking the Irish 15th.

As Mark Schlabach ranked the top teams heading into next year, the Irish are behind 2021 foes North Carolina (Oct. 30 in South Bend), USC (Oct. 23 in South Bend) and Cincinnati (Oct. 2 in South Bend). Another opponent on next year’s schedule, Wisconsin (Sept. 25 in Chicago), checks in two spots below the Irish.

Schlabach’s rationale behind Notre Dame’s ranking revolves around a quarterback battle after quarterback Ian Book will move on. “Notre Dame has good pieces on offense to build around, including tailbacks Kyren Williams and Chris Tyree and wide receivers Braden Lenzy and Jordan Johnson.”

ESPN notes four of the five starting offensive lineman will be gone; center Jarrett Patterson appears to be the lone holdover. Giving almost no love to the defense, Schlabach says new defensive coordinator Marcus Freeman “will have to rebuild the defensive line and find more depth in the secondary.”

To me, this ranking is a bit low. Yes, the Irish lose plenty of talent, including Book and linebacker Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah, but the talent is certain there waiting in the wings. Having a more regular spring schedule, along with a spring game, will surely help the younger players get more comfortable, especially on defense.

Notre Dame at worst, is still a top-10 team entering the 2021 season. Schlabach got this one wrong.

College Football Key Questions: Can A Spring Football Season Happen?

In this unprecedented time for college sports, we’ll work on some of the key questions. Can a spring football season really work?

In this unprecedented time for college sports, we’ll work on some of the key questions. Can a spring football season really happen?

– Contact/Follow @ColFootballNews & @PeteFiutak

Can a spring football season in 2021 happen?

My first reaction was, “absolutely not.”

The logistics are a nightmare, there’s no real point, and the idea of playing in the spring seemed like nothing more than blather by the Big Ten and other leagues to cushion the blow of – let’s call it what it is – cancelling the 2020 fall football season.

But semantics do matter here. Instead of using the word cancel, postpone is more to the point, considering the idea will be for the spring of 2021 to serve as the 2020 fall campaign.

If there’s money to be recouped from a spring session, college football will find a way to play.

Can it really happen?

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Jeff Brohm seems to think so

The Purdue head coach – along with all but killing the exact column I was doing – came up with a very detailed, very interesting idea on how to structurally play in the spring. He’s not alone, with Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz, among others, claiming that it’s possible.

At the very least, it’s a jumping off point for a sport that wasn’t exactly proactive in its planning for what could happen if the virus didn’t go away in time to have a fall season.

The coaches are going to want this. A football coach without a football season is about as useful as a remote control without batteries. If there’s a shot to play football, coaches will sell it.

Oh yeah, that virus thing

If this all starts up in late January or early February, that means teams will need to be ready to start practicing for real in mid-December – that’s four months away from right now.

There’s not going to be a working vaccine available, but the real hope is for better, faster, and more reliable testing – which was the hope back in mid-March, too.

It’s essentially what the Pac-12 said in its guide as part of the rationale for halting fall sports, specifically football.

“Testing capacity needs to increase to allow for more frequent testing, performed closer to game time, and with more rapid turn-around time to prevent spread of infection and enhance the safety of all student-athletes, coaches, and staff involved, particularly in situations where physical distancing and mask wearing cannot be maintained. This will require access to significant capacity of point-of-care testing and rapid turn-around time, which is currently very limited.”

This is it. This is everything.

For all the planning, all the bickering, and all the different opinions across the various social media platforms, a spring football season in 2021 – and, not to get into this yet, but a 2021 fall campaign, too – isn’t going to happen at anything close to normal, if at all, without a way to be almost certain that everyone on the field is fine.

So let’s say that around December 10ish we have a solid set of national protocols that all the colleges and conferences are cool with.

NEXT: Eligibility, NFL Draft, recruiting

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Intriguing defensive end prospect lists Texas in top five schools

Texas remains in the hunt for three-star defensive end Jonathan Jones out of McKinney, Texas.

Head coach Tom Herman has had great success recently with recruiting prospects out of Dallas,Texas. Continue reading “Intriguing defensive end prospect lists Texas in top five schools”