Just a dog’s breakfast of a college football season we are looking at

I was going to put a picture of dog vomit here, or just plain vomit, and decided against it.  I don’t want to gross myself out as well.

Alright I get that COVID-19 has really put a kibosh on any type of traditional schedule.  I can appreciate that.  I can also appreciate the effort put forth by schedule makers and athletic directors trying to put something resembling a season together.  What I cannot, and will not, appreciate is how much of a shitshow this has been.  If there has ever been a time where a unifying force for all college football (or at least all FBS football) this was it.  Instead, we got the NCAA saying “Hey, we weren’t technically in charge before so we don’t plan on doing it now”, some conferences going “I don’t care what other conferences are doing, we are either playing football or not and that’s the final decision”, and finally, other conferences going “DURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.”

As of right now, six FBS conferences are planning to play, for the most part.  But now the Big Ten may be starting their schedule on Halloween and not in early January.  So where would that leave the other three conferences?  I am positive the MAC and Mountain West are not starting up before January.  The Pac-12 is in a tough spot though.  If the Big Ten, for some reason, decides to reverse course and play in 2020, that would leave the far left conference as the only Power Five conference not playing this calendar year.  That could be bad for the Pac-12 and its member teams because I have this feeling that spring football, at least at the FBS level, will not happen.  Just call it a hunch.

Welp, we know that we have college football coming tomorrow.  Yes, it’s just FCS, but it’s still college football.  The FCS Kickoff happens in Montgomery, Alabama tomorrow night at 9 Eastern.  Central Arkansas and Austin Peay will kick the season off.  This game is appearing on TSN3.  UPDATE:  Because of the NBA moving their schedule around due to the protests earlier this week, TSN is now showing basketball on most of their channels tonight.  The program pushed off?  You guessed it: the FCS Kickoff.  Fingers crossed it ends up on the specialty packs but no guarantees thanks to how late this happened.  We have no other Week Zero games this year.  I wonder if Week Zero will be a thing of the past now.

UPDATE #2: Looks like it will appear on TSN Direct for anyone who doesn’t have the specialty pack.  Thanks to reader Matt Snyds who let me know on Twitter about this.

Anyway, this will be not be a long post.  I will be starting prediction posts next week as I move through the six conferences that will be playing this season.  I will not include the three conferences not playing in the Fall, nor the Big Ten who can’t seem to figure out what to do.  I will try and piece together season-end predictions but who knows what that will look like.  College football itself has no idea either so I feel good there.  Have a great weekend everyone, and keep your eye out for new posts coming soon.

“We are having a season come hell or high water!” – Roger Goodell, probably (also the NFL Preview)

I know, Roger takes his directives from the 32 buffoons running the NFL franchises.  Saying that, I am pretty sure this is how he feels as well.  They will do almost anything to have a season because money, right?  Hell, the NBA and NHL are working relatively well but they have their issues.  But they are in bubbles.  Not flying all over the fucking place like Major League Baseball and look how that’s going?  I would not be surprised if MLB decided to shut things down, even if its temporarily, by the weekend.  So I don’t get how the NFL thinks they can make this work, especially with concerns over Coronavirus and now players starting to opt out of the season for those very same concerns.  But they are going to try, dammit!

Alright normally I wouldn’t do an NFL preview post this early in August.  But yeah everything has been put in a blender so figured with the college football schedule and season a bit of a mess, I would start with this and see how things go.  To begin, I will do what I did last year and look at my previous preview and see how well I did with those predictions.  I am sure this went well (I’m rolling my eyes):

• I had the Saints beating the Chargers for the Super Bowl.  Good fucking God already with a horrible start.  This isn’t good.
• The Chargers beating the Chiefs on the way to the title game.  If it wasn’t so sad, it would be hilarious.
• Patriots losing the AFC Championship.  They didn’t even get that far but I don’t think that’s a bad prediction.  So I am giving myself a checkmark for that one.
• I had Cleveland making the playoffs.  Oof.  I definitely drank the Kool-Aid on that one.
• I was quite wrong about Buffalo which makes me happy.  I was also kind of wrong about the Rams but they barely missed the playoffs despite the Todd Gurley mess.
• All the teams I thought would be bad, were bad.  So at least I got something right.

End on a high note I say.  Even the worst prognosticator has to get things right, yes?  It’s basically in line with my previous predictions with some good and some bad (like really bad).  So now let’s focus on this year’s predictions for a season that may or may not happen.  Standings time…with records this time around! (* means I predict them to be a Wild Card team and the number in the brackets will be their playoff seed):

AFC East	NFC East
(3) Buffalo 12-4	(4) Dallas 11-5
(5) New England* 10-6	(7) Philadelphia* 8-8
NY Jets 7-9	NY Giants 5-11
Miami 5-11	Washington 4-12
AFC North	NFC North
(2) Baltimore 12-4	(3) Minnesota 12-4
(6) Pittsburgh* 9-7	Green Bay 8-8
Cleveland 7-9	Chicago 7-9
Cincinnati 3-13	Detroit 4-12
AFC South	NFC South
(4) Indianapolis 10-6	(1) New Orleans 14-2
(7) Houston 9-7	(6) Tampa Bay* 9-7
Tennessee 7-9	Atlanta 7-9
Jacksonville 2-14	Carolina 5-11
AFC West	NFC West
(1) Kansas City 13-3	(2) San Francisco 12-4
LA Chargers* 9-7	(5) Seattle* 10-6
Las Vegas 7-9	Arizona 6-10
Denver 6-10	LA Rams 6-10

Notes

• The biggest change this year is there is an extra Wild Card team for each conference.  So it’s almost a guarantee there will be a .500 team getting into the playoffs every season.  This year I have the Eagles getting in at the 8-win mark.  Also, you won’t see many teams with winning records now miss the playoffs.  Houston I have at 9-7 will miss the second season.
• Where will the good division races be?  The AFC South, AFC East and NFC West should be fairly close races with the top two teams being very close in terms of talent.  The Saints will blow everyone away to win the NFC South and I can’t see the Chiefs having any trouble this season winning their division.
• The NFC Wild Card race should be exciting down to the end.  The Seahawks should get in rather easily.  The Buccaneers, now with Brady and Gronk, should do enough to be one game clear of the field for the second Wild Card spot.  The Eagles, Packers, Falcons and, yes, the Bears will be in the race for the final spot in the final weekend of the season.  I think the Eagles will beat the Packers in their Week 13 matchup to clinch the tiebreaker for the seventh playoff spot in the NFC.
• In the AFC, not as much of a race but still a few teams in the mix.  The Patriots (or the Bills if they finish second in the AFC East) will get the first Wild Card spot easily.  The Steelers, Texans and Chargers I all have at 9-7 for that final spot with Pittsburgh and Los Angeles going through (as I mentioned above).  I doubt anyone else would even be close.
• There won’t be much of a race to the bottom this season.  The Jaguars are awful and will be awful and if they don’t even get Gardner Minshew back for the season, they could be even worse than the 2-14 record I have them at.  That franchise is a gongshow and that one year making the AFC title game we can definitely say was now an aberration and not the norm.
• Patrick Mahomes and Lamar Jackson are the two MVP favourites.  But let met throw another dark horse contender into the mix: Dak Prescott.  Despite the fact this means the Cowboys will be good it will make for some VERY uncomfortable times in the Metroplex and for Jerry Jones.
• As for the Rookie of the Year choices, I will go with Clyde Edwards-Helaire and Chase Young.  As always it is a crapshoot as to who could win this but these two seemed to be set up for success right out of the gate.

Playoffs?  PLAYOFFS?  God I love that Jim Mora promo.

Wild Card Round

(2) Baltimore def. (7) LA Chargers

(3) Buffalo def. (6) Pittsburgh

(4) Indianapolis def. (5) New England

(2) San Francisco def. (7) Philadelphia

(6) Tampa Bay def. (3) Minnesota

(5) Seattle def. (4) Dallas

Divisional Playoffs

(1) Kansas City def. (4) Indianapolis

(2) Baltimore def. (3) Buffalo

(1) New Orleans def. (6) Tampa Bay

(2) San Francisco def. (5) Seattle

Conference Championships

(2) Baltimore def. (1) Kansas City

(1) New Orleans def. (2) San Francisco

Super Bowl

(2) Baltimore def. (1) New Orleans

Lamar Jackson is going to get his chance to erase the memory of last year’s playoff run, as short as it was.  Last year I had the Saints winning the whole thing and Drew Brees riding off into the sunset.  This time I have the Saints losing…and then Drew Brees riding off into the sunset.  I don’t think the top Wild Card teams are better than the worst division winners this year though which is different than my normal stance.  Even though I say that this season, I still believe that the division winner should not automatically get a top four seed.  If a division winner has a worse record than a Wild Card team, they should get the #5 seed and not the #4.  I will continue to hammer this idea home until hopefully Roger Goodell does it because it makes the NFL more money somehow.

As for what the next post will be and when it will happen, I have no idea.  I am still awaiting more information on new college football schedules.  The Pac-12 did the nice thing and have the whole schedule out already.  Most of the rest of the conferences should be doing similar over the next few days depending on the amount of changes that have to be made.  For the most part, it looks like there will not be nearly as much football until late September as most of the Power Five schools won’t be starting until then.  It’s all a shitshow at this point so until I see something that I can honestly piece together and work with, I won’t be doing anything.  Anyway, have a great week and let’s hope that football is truly on its way back.