We have spent eight months talking about transfer classes, recruiting rankings and which quarterback looked fantastic while wearing a red practice jersey.
Enough of that. College football is back Saturday.
Before kickoff, here are five questions hanging over the season.
1. Why is Indiana ranked sixth?
This is strange. Indiana did not sneak into the playoff and steal one game. The Hoosiers went undefeated, beat Ohio State for the Big Ten title and won the national championship.
Now Ohio State is ranked No. 1, while Indiana sits behind five teams that watched the championship game from home.
The Hoosiers lost talent. Every champion does. Maybe they will slip. Until somebody beats them, though, sixth feels like voters still cannot quite accept what happened last season.
2. Can Ohio State handle being the favorite?
Nobody will argue with the roster. Ohio State has talent everywhere, including two legitimate Heisman candidates in Julian Sayin and Jeremiah Smith.
The Buckeyes are still being asked to finish a job they did not finish last year.
Oregon is close behind them. Georgia will be there because Georgia is always there. Indiana has already beaten Ohio State on the biggest conference stage.
The Buckeyes can win it all. They can also go 11-1, lose one enormous game and leave everyone furious. That is life in Columbus.
We did this last summer. Manning was treated like the Heisman winner before he had done anything to earn it.
He was not awful. He also was not the weekly attraction people promised.
Now his name is near the top of the odds again. Notre Dame quarterback CJ Carr begins as the favorite, while Dante Moore and Sayin are right behind him.
Manning has the arm, the team and the famous last name. Only the first two should count once Texas starts playing.
4. Who is this year’s Indiana?
Indiana ruined the argument that only the usual programs can win a championship. That does not mean another Indiana is easy to find.
Texas Tech is the obvious candidate after winning the Big 12. Boise State will get mentioned. Louisville has a path in the ACC.
The real answer could be a team nobody is discussing yet. Last August, very few people were planning an Indiana championship parade either.
5. Who gets fired first?
Mike Norvell has the early lead.
Florida State opens against New Mexico State on Saturday. Win comfortably and nobody cares. Struggle for three quarters, and fans will begin arguing. Lose, and the season will be in crisis before most ranked teams have played.
Wisconsin’s Luke Fickell and Baylor’s Dave Aranda are not far behind him.
That is the deal. Every team begins the season undefeated and convinced something special is possible.
Somebody will lose Saturday and ruin that feeling before dinner.
College football finally gets to provide the answers
Predictions are fun because nobody has been proven wrong yet. That changes Saturday. One player will appear from nowhere, one favorite will look vulnerable and at least one fan base will begin panicking before the opening weekend is finished.
The five questions above will take months to settle, but college football can start wrecking our best guesses immediately.
