Only one group gets to knock the defending national champion in big school college football.
Alabama stays down after the Ohio State Buckeyes rolled them in last year’s semi-final at the New Orleans Super Dome. Florida State, the defending champ in 2014, got run out of the Rose Bowl. No word from them.
That leaves Oregon as the only team authorized to trash talk, and since the Ducks are too busy getting ready for Michigan State, I’ll help out.
Ohio State finished last year at #1. This year? #1, but a special #1. The AP Top 25 gave them 61 out of 61 first place votes for a total of 1,525. Alabama got blanked at #2.
The Coaches Poll gave Ohio State 63 out of 64 first place votes for 1,599 points. Alabama got the stray at #2. Does this mean Ohio State is far and away that much better than everyone?
More important, are they that much better than Oregon? The Ducks come in 7th on the AP and 5th on the Coaches. They finished last year as the second best team in college football. Does Marcus Mariota leaving for the NFL mean that much in the polls?
It happens when someone called a football savant wins the Heisman Trophy and skips his last year of eligibility. Quarterbacks and Heismans can carry teams. Call it the Johnny Football effect. If Vernon Adams, Jr. hauls the Ducks to a rematch in the last game of the 2015 season, you can call it the Vernon Effect.
Ohio State has two or three Heisman caliber quarterbacks. Cardale Jones was all you could ask for at the end of last season when he went from Cardale Who to running through everything in front of him on one play and showing his delicate passing touch on the next.
What made Cardale rise to the top of Buckeye Nation’s dreams? He played behind Braxton Miller, a two time Big Ten offensive player of the year, and J.T. Barrett. Both guys came in fifth in Heisman voting, Miller in 2012, Barrett in 2014. Both guys are bruisers at better than 6’2″ and 220 lbs.
Cardale shapes up at 6’5″, 250 with the sort of arm NFL scouts want.
Now ask yourself if the Ohio State Buckeyes are that much better? They are. They could go back to back, maybe run a string of titles out to finish the decade. Alabama will challenge year in, year out. Flavor of the year teams will show strong early and fade. Notre Dame’s $400 million stadium project will keep recruits playing in front of Touchdown Jesus.
Who knows, Texas might even show up again. But every season one team climbs the rankings and lights it up. Oregon brings the sort of surprises you wait all year for. You know what to expect from Ohio State and every team in the SEC. Schools in the ACC catch fire now and then, but no one does it like the Ducks.
When the right mix of players and coaches hit the field, Oregon is the team of reckoning. They are the team you remember beating. Unlike the traditional powers who eschew names on jerseys, just numbers, Oregon leads the fashion parade. It’s not the uniform that makes the team, but the players who wear the uniforms.
No one comes to Eugene to take their place in a long and storied football program. It’s not there. Instead they come to build the road to football’s future. Through conditioning and diet, stress and rest, the people running football at Oregon created a high tech laboratory for human performance.
Come to Oregon, they say, and you’ll find out how good you can be, then how much better you’ll get.
Call it the Oregon Football Effect, then look around at who is following that game plan.
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