King Kaufman's Sports Daily

College football predictions: Usual suspects will do really well, but USC won't win it all. Plus: Death to placekicking. And: Send in your NFL predictions.

Sep 7, 2004 | Now, where were we? Oh, yeah: The Olympics knocked me out of my usual preseason college football routine. I wasn't able to do a season preview because I was so busy with the basketball and the badminton and the shooting and the swimming.

Usually, I don't do one because I don't feel like it.

First of all, I'm just never ready for it. College football starts so early now that on opening day some of the players who'll be starring in the bowl games haven't even been born yet.

But mostly, as I grow older and more crotchety, I have less and less patience for college football and its predictability, its same small cast of usual suspects dominating their leagues and the bowl picture. Sure, there's some switching in and out at the margins every few years, a West Virginia here, a Kansas State there, an Oregon over yonder.

But for the most part, if you were to wake up from several years of suspended animation in July -- any July -- and someone were to ask you what that season's top 10 was going to look like, you'd go, "Let's see, Ohio State, Miami, Florida State, Michigan ..."

With the opening weekend in the books, the top 25 teams have gone 19-0. That's pretty exciting. You may have thought Bowling Green had a pretty good shot against Oklahoma, but I guess not.

Now, I know, I'm not being fair. That running of the table was an anomaly. It rarely happens, even in the first weeks, when our nation's grid powerhouses are testing their mettle against various flag-football outfits. And in fact there's even some talk that this weekend represented a positive sign because there weren't the usual insane blowouts. Smaller-conference teams like Bowling Green and Miami-Ohio and Georgia Southern actually hung in there a little, losing by scores like 48-28 rather than 63-6.

And No. 4 LSU only escaped with a win over Oregon State because the Beavers forgot to bring a kicker to Baton Rouge. Their man, a redshirt freshman, missed three extra points in the 22-21 overtime loss. Not to put too fine a point on this, but his predecessor at Oregon State missed two extra points in his career, in 98 tries.

So normally there'd have been an upset or two. Big deal. College football fans will argue that when there is an upset in the top 25, it really is a big deal, rush-the-field time, excitement city. That's true, but it's not enough. For a sport to really cook, the underdog has to have more than a snowball's chance. Otherwise you're putting up with too much non-competitiveness just to get that once-in-a-blue-moon upset rush.

Next Page: There must be a minimum standard of competitiveness. Plus: Ban placekickers. And: Your NFL picks, please

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