It’s here. Finally. No, not the actual first game of the FBS season. That doesn’t happen until Thursday evening. I am speaking of the best several days of the entire 2015 college football season: the time between now and the kickoff of each team’s first game (sorry, North Dakota State, but I have a feeling that you will still be just fine. Despair not, Bison faithful).
CFB 2015: A Season of Faith’s Perfection
Why is now the best time of the year, you ask? It’s simple. For the next few days, almost every FBS program still has a shot at winning the second College Football Playoff, and being crowned the best in all of the land. Hope is a magical thing, and at no time will it be in more abundant supply this season than right now.
Before I go further, let’s deconstruct this piece’s title. I want not to be accused of plagiarism like Jamal Wallace was, so let’s properly attribute the source. “Finding Forrester” is a fantastic movie, with a terrific storyline. The title itself refers to an essay supposedly written by the titular William Forrester, describing the 1960 season had by the New York Yankees as one of the best in baseball history. So too will be 2015 for one of the aspirants to summit the mountain which is this season’s College Football Playoff. The only mystery is which program that will be.
Will the still-loaded Buckeyes repeat? I am the father of a certain Ohio State 3rd year student who hopes and believes that they will. Will the thisclose in 2014 Baylor Bears make the playoff this year, and then run the table? How about the Bears’ barely-vanquished conference rivals from Fort Worth and their Heisman-trophy front-runner Trevone Boykin? Is there out-of-nowhere hope for the Tar Heels, the Longhorns, the Golden Eagles, the Green Wave, or the Boise State Broncos? Will the Georgia Bulldogs break through in the SEC East and make a run to the title? How about Bucky the Badger out of the B1G West? Can Big Game Bob and the Sooners return to their former glory? Will Vernon Adams, Jr. channel his inner Tee Martin and lead the Quack Attack to the promised land, when even the legend who preceded him failed to get the job done in last year’s title game?
All of this is, of course, merely window dressing for the question that I want most to ask: is this the year that my Stanford Cardinal finally get over the hump? Can Captain Kevin Hogan command his Heroes to the ultimate victory? Is the Card’s brutal regular season schedule too tough, or does it allow margin for error to still make the Final Four should #NerdNation somehow manage to win the PAC-12? We will soon see if Desmond Howard is as strong a prognosticator as he was a college and pro football kick-returner.
Desmond Howard picks Stanford to win Pac-12 and national championship http://t.co/QXY0RbQ6Xq http://t.co/NORCv77ihQ
— Pacific Takes (@PacificTakes) August 31, 2015
The beauty of it is that we will all know soon enough. Here’s hoping that your favorite team has a terrific 2015 CFB season. Here’s hoping that my favorite team has an even better one.
