15 Biggest College Football Questions Entering 2015 Season
Ever since the confetti was done falling at AT&T Stadium in January following Ohio State's dominant win over Oregon in the national title game, college football fans have been anxiously awaiting the start of the next season. And part of that anticipation involves wondering what will happen next.
A very long offseason lends itself to creating plenty of questions and what-if scenarios, some of which get answered over the course of spring and summer. But as we pull within four weeks of the start of the 2015 season, there are still plenty of queries that remain unanswered.
Some won't get settled until the season is over, but others could have a resolution far sooner depending on certain results and outcomes. Either way, the uncertainty of what may happen causes both anticipation and frustration.
Here's a look at the 15 biggest questions heading into the college football season. Think you've got the answers? Put them in the comments section for all to read.
Can Jim Harbaugh Win at Michigan?
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To this point, the Jim Harbaugh era at Michigan can best be described as a series of teaser trailers for a big-budget superhero movie. We've seen and heard plenty about it, but whether it's going to be any good depends on how much you believe the editing that was done to put those clips together.
Harbaugh has been incredibly visible and vocal since taking the job at his alma mater in January, but nearly all of his appearances have served more as public relations stunts than actual opportunities to see what kind of product he could put on the field. At Big Ten media days last month in Chicago, Harbaugh's time at the podium involved showing off a Mike Ditka jersey and raving about Bo Schembechler but not much talk about X's and O's.
"He was short on details about his plans to reinvigorate one of the most famous brands in college football but long on the influences that guided him to this juncture of his career," Jim Litke of the Associated Press wrote (via Fox Sports).
The Wolverines have been made to look pretty enticing in the menu picture, thanks to Harbaugh's publicity, but we still have no idea if we're going to enjoy the meal once it's served.
Who Starts at Quarterback for Ohio State?
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Braxton Miller's move from quarterback to wide receiver took a lot of the spark out of what until then had been the most intriguing offseason question, but even with only two candidates left, there's still plenty of interest in who will end up starting for Ohio State when it opens its defense of its national title Sept. 7 at Virginia Tech.
Will it be junior Cardale Jones, whose first career start came in the Big Ten title game, piloting the Buckeyes to a championship win over Oregon a month later? Or will sophomore J.T. Barrett, who was creeping into the Heisman Trophy conversation before breaking his ankle in November, win back the job he landed after Miller hurt his shoulder in the preseason?
OSU coach Urban Meyer doesn't plan to announce a starter prior to kickoff of that opener, per Sports Illustrated's Brian Hamilton (h/t Eleven Warriors' Tim Shoemaker), but the day-to-day speculation that will come from training camp updates and observations is liable to drive fans mad.
Can the Air Raid Fix Oklahoma?
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TCU used an offensive overhaul to go from a Big 12 also-ran to a national title contender last season. The turnaround wouldn't be nearly as sizable at Oklahoma, but can the switch back to an offensive scheme that was so successful in the past be what the Sooners need to become a power again?
Following an inconsistent season in which his team went 8-5 and struggled to throw the ball, Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops cleaned house on his coaching staff and brought in East Carolina's Lincoln Riley to be offensive coordinator. A student of the Air Raid system that Oklahoma used for most of Stoops' tenure (until the last few years), Riley is being tasked with restoring the Sooners to their old level of offensive dominance.
First, though, they have to figure out which quarterback will be leading that attack. Trevor Knight was last year's starter before getting hurt, and backup Cody Thomas struggled but figures to be more invested in football now that he's skipped baseball season. And then there's Baker Mayfield, the Texas Tech transfer who sat out 2014 but started eight games in an Air Raid system the season before.
Oklahoma has one of the best running backs in the country in Samaje Perine, who as a freshman in 2014 set the FBS single-game rushing record with 427 yards against Kansas. Will he remain a major part of a more pass-oriented offense, or will the Sooners stick to the air?
.jpg?w=256 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
When Will Dalvin Cook Learn His Fate?
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Florida State's camp-opening press conference came and went Thursday without much mention of its leading rusher from a year ago. Sophomore Dalvin Cook remains suspended indefinitely pending the resolution of a battery charge against him from a June incident outside a Tallahassee bar.
That was the same day LSU announced it had reinstated offensive lineman Jevonte Domond despite pending battery and domestic abuse charges.
Cook was one of two FSU players implicated in altercations this summer, with freshman quarterback De'Andre Johnson dismissed from the team after video surfaced of him punching a woman in a bar. After Cook's arrest and suspension, coach Jimbo Fisher issued a statement (h/t USA Today) that "we will do better" to prevent such incidents from happening in the future, but that's pretty much been the extent of FSU's involvement in the case.
Assuming a resolution comes about in Cook's case sometime soon, what effect will that have on his ability to play this year? He was expected to be a key contributor for this season, coming off a 2014 campaign when he set a freshman school record with 1,008 yards and eight touchdowns.
Is This USC's Year to Shine?
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For the second year in a row, a Los Angeles-based college team has a front-row seat on the preseason hype train.
Last season it was UCLA, which thanks to quarterback Brett Hundley was getting pegged as a sexy playoff pick but ended up losing three home games and failing to even win its half of the Pac-12 Conference. The Bruins don't have Hundley anymore but do have almost everyone else back for 2015, yet the same sizzle about conference and national titles isn't there.
Instead it's moved a little further down one of those gridlocked L.A. freeways to USC, where an immensely talented team that's been out of the national championship picture for almost a decade seems ready to break through again.
Is this the year USC returns to the level of elite, backed by a fifth-year senior quarterback in Cody Kessler and a treasure trove of superstars spread over the field? Or will the reputation of coach Steve Sarkisian, a former Trojans assistant who earned the nickname "Seven-Win Sark" during his tenure at Washington, once again lead to unmet expectations?
USC was just as talented in 2014, but awkward losses at Boston College and at home to Arizona State derailed any chance of a title run.
Which Team Will Be This Year's Breakout Surprise?
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The four teams that played in the inaugural College Football Playoff were all traditional powers, programs that have had plenty of success lately and also began the season among the top contenders. But lurking just on the outside of that four-team field was TCU, which was 4-8 the year before but ended up winning 12 games and earning plenty of consideration for a shot at the title.
In 2013 it was Auburn that suddenly went from 3-9 under Gene Chizik (who three seasons earlier won the Tigers a championship) to the BCS title game under first-year coach Gus Malzahn, who the year before was coaching Arkansas State in the Sun Belt Conference.
Texas A&M could be called the biggest surprise of 2012, its first year in the SEC and coming off a 7-6 campaign the year before. The Aggies had a new coach in Kevin Sumlin and a redshirt freshman quarterback named Johnny Manziel, and though they didn't play for either a conference or national title, they did win 11 games, shock defending champion Alabama in Tuscaloosa and produce a Heisman winner in Manziel.
Who will be that breakout team this season? Could a team like California, which two years ago was 1-11, battle for the Pac-12 North and knock off the likes of Oregon and Stanford along the way? Will Jim Harbaugh's return to Michigan suddenly put the Wolverines back in contention for a Big Ten crown? Can David Beaty pull together something out of the wreckage that Charlie Weis left behind at Kansas and shock the Big 12?
That last one might be a bit of a stretch, but you see where we're going. The last few seasons have seen at least one team make a major leap forward and do so without preseason predictions indicating that was possible, so it stands to reason this will happen again in 2015.
Which Coach Gets Fired First?
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There are a good number of coaches in the power conferences who will begin the 2015 season with a warmer-than-average seat. Tim Beckman at Illinois, Al Golden at Miami (Florida) and Mike London at Virginia are just a few of the coaches who could be facing make-or-break years, and if things go bad quickly, it might not be a matter of if they come back next season but if they'll even survive this one.
Our first coaching casualty in 2014 wasn't from a power league, but it was a big name and happened pretty early. June Jones resigned from SMU after just two games, walking away from a program he'd turned around but couldn't maintain success at.
Jones was the first of three FBS coaches who either stepped down or were fired during the regular season, while others were let go or quit prior to or after a bowl game. That's not counting the additional openings that came from coaches opting to leave one job for another, thus powering the offseason coaching carousel that results in 15 first-year coaches for the 2015 season.
It's almost a given that someone will be shown the door at some point this fall or winter, but who will get that pink slip first?
Which 1st-Year Coach Will Have the Most Success?
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A coach is setting the bar far too high if he hopes to do what Gus Malzahn accomplished at Auburn in his first season in 2013, going 12-2 and getting within seconds of winning a national title. But it's also a good idea to have lofty expectations rather than publicly declare that his situation is a work in progress.
There are 15 first-year coaches in FBS, including seven in the power conferences. Three of them went from one power program to another during the kooky offseason coaching carousel that saw Nebraska fire Bo Pelini and replace him with Oregon State's Mike Riley, who was then succeeded by Wisconsin's Gary Andersen, who saw Paul Chryst come from Pittsburgh to take his job.
Only one of those power openings was filled by a coach moving up from the lower end of FBS, with Jim McElwain going from Colorado State to Florida, while Kansas and Pittsburgh tapped first-time coaches in David Beaty and Pat Narduzzi, respectively.
The last of the openings was the most notable, both in terms of the program (Michigan) and the hiring (Jim Harbaugh).
In 2014 there were also seven first-year coaches in the power conferences, and that group went a collective 45-45. Louisville's Bobby Petrino and USC's Steve Sarkisian each went 9-4, while on the other end of the spectrum, we saw Vanderbilt's Derek Mason and Wake Forest's Dave Clawson each post 3-9 records.
Can someone from this new crop of coaches have a big year in 2015, possibly winning a conference title and getting into the playoffs?
Can Injured Stars Return to Old Form?
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One of the many unfortunate ramifications of college football is the high rate of injuries that occur. It's a violent game, and players will get hurt, though certain injuries tend to stand out more than others when they happen to the top players.
Some of the game's biggest stars suffered major season-ending injuries in 2014, such as Clemson quarterback Deshaun Watson and Ole Miss wide receiver Laquon Treadwell. Watson, who also missed time because of a broken hand, tore his ACL in November and missed the Tigers' bowl game and most of offseason workouts because of surgery, while Treadwell broke his leg in the final minutes of a Nov. 1 home loss to Auburn and hasn't played since.
Their returns in 2015 are essential to their respective teams' success. The ACC media voted Watson as the conference's Preseason Player of the Year, and it picked Clemson to win the league. Treadwell, who despite missing five games was still Ole Miss' leading receiver, is the top offensive weapon on a Rebels team that doesn't have much of a run game and is breaking in a new quarterback.
If one or both struggle or get re-injured, it could have devastating consequences for their teams.
Will College Football Have a Polarizing Star This Year?
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Tim Tebow, Cam Newton, Johnny Manziel and Jameis Winston all have something in common despite the fact they'll all be appearing in those Heisman House commercials during college football season. They were also all stars who, during their careers, were the kind you either loved or hated.
No middle ground, you were either all-in and on their bandwagon or couldn't stand them. The common term is polarizing, and having such a player (or players) even at the college level usually tends to be a good thing because it sparks discussion and raises interest.
Winston held that role in 2014, countering his play on the field with antics away from it that had people questioning whether he was mature enough to be a leader and whether he'd be able to make it at the NFL level. The latter part of that is still to be determined, but he did end up going No. 1 in the 2015 NFL draft.
Who could fit this description in 2015? Might it be someone such as Ohio State defensive end Joey Bosa, whose famous post-play "shrug" is loved by many but has the potential to rankle others as making him seem aloof?
The fact he will be sitting out the Buckeyes season opener (along with three other players) for violating an athletic department policy—which ESPN's Joe Schad reported could be either academics or marijuana-related—might be just the thing to push Bosa toward villain status.
Fellow OSU star Cardale Jones is another potential candidate, since he came out of nowhere to dominate in last year's postseason, and he's spent much of the offseason adding to his reputation via Twitter exchanges.
Can the Pac-12 Surpass the SEC?
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There was little argument that the SEC West and the Pac-12 South were the two best divisions in college football last season. Twelve of the 13 teams made it to bowl games—sorry, Colorado—and eight won at least nine games.
The debate over which division was better raged into the offseason, especially after the SEC West struggled in its postseason matchups by going 2-5 (with the wins coming from sixth- and seventh-place Texas A&M and Arkansas) while the Pac-12 South was 4-1 with its only loss coming by Arizona in the Fiesta Bowl.
Both divisions are expected to be just as good this season, and combined they have nine teams ranked in the preseason Amway Coaches Poll. Three more earned enough votes to rank between 26th and 30th overall. Meanwhile, the Pac-12 also had two ranked teams from its North Division, and the SEC had two ranked from the East.
So much of the Pac-12 vs. SEC debate is just that, since the leagues rarely play each other and have no common bowl pairings outside of what happens in the CFP-related games. That will change this season, as Arizona State and Texas A&M open against each other on Sept. 5 in Houston, and in future years there are several matchups between the conferences during the regular season.
The SEC remains in front, but might this be the year the Pac-12 overtakes it for league superiority? Or could the Big Ten, thanks to Ohio State and other rising teams, throw itself into the conversation?
Will Large Guys Continue Their Takeover of College Football?
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It used to be that all we'd want from the largest of players on the football field was to block for the smaller guys on offense and swallow them whole on defense. But somewhere along the way, these big guys wanted to get more involved in the game plan, and coaches eventually bent to their will.
Now the biggest players are making some of the biggest plays in games, not just by luck or happenstance but as a result of plays being drawn up specifically for them. As a result, college football is undergoing a sea change where the standard dimensions of playmakers are getting massively skewed.
Last year saw a huge bump in big plays by big men, such as 400-pound Baylor lineman LaQuan McGowan's touchdown catch in the Cotton Bowl and 334-pound Arkansas lineman Sebastian Tretola's TD pass to long snapper Alan D'Appollonio on a fake field goal.
And now that there's an award being given out for such feats, will this make big-guy touchdowns more and more prevalent?
In July, SB Nation unveiled its Piesman Trophy, an award that will be handed out to "college linemen who do awesome, rare, un-lineman things." A 24-person committee, which includes writers from CBS, ESPN, Sports Illustrated and USA Today, will pick a winner in December.
Who Wins the Heisman Trophy?
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The national championship trophy is the award that every team strives for, but there's a slew of hardware that gets handed out to players for their amazing individual performances. None is bigger than the Heisman Trophy, which can define a winner's career and also boost the reputation of that player's school.
Think about where Baylor's program would be had Robert Griffin III not won the 2011 Heisman. That has had a direct correlation on the Bears' recruiting, which in turn has enabled them to win at least a share of the past two Big 12 titles. The school was also able to coax donors around that time into footing much of the bill for the $266 million McLane Stadium that opened last season.
Would a Heisman for Trevone Boykin, who, according to Odds Shark, is the current preseason favorite, do the same for TCU? Or will one of Ohio State's many viable candidates bring that school its eighth Heisman?
Or do we get another out-of-nowhere winner, such as in 2012 with Texas A&M's Johnny Manziel or in 2013 with Florida State's Jameis Winston—first-time starters and redshirt freshmen who took the country by storm? If that's the case, we might be watching Auburn quarterback Jeremy Johnson—who has two career starts but at 12-1 is tied for the fourth-best odds to win—hold up that trophy.
Which Conference Gets Shut Out of the Playoffs?
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We have our playoff, but we still have plenty of controversy to go with it. That was a given seeing as there are five power conferences that feed into a four-team tournament, but we didn't know just how everything would play out until the first edition of the College Football Playoff occurred.
All told it was a runaway success, with amazing ratings for all three games and a heck of a story in Ohio State barreling through the field as the No. 4 seed to win the championship. But the system wasn't without its critics, many of which came from the Big 12 Conference since that was the league that didn't earn a bid to battle for the title.
Baylor and TCU tied for first place at 11-1, despite Baylor winning the head-to-head battle (and the league proudly boasting its "One True Champion" slogan throughout the year), but the lack of a conference title game appeared to have negatively impacted the Big 12's shot at a playoff bid.
This has led to discussions about either deregulating conference championship games or having the Big 12 expand to 12 teams in order to get one, as well as nationwide debates over schedule strength and schedule conformity.
Even Notre Dame has been unwittingly roped into the conversation, as coaches from various leagues have spoken out and said the independent Fighting Irish should have to join a conference to be eligible for the playoffs.
No changes are in store for 2015, so that makes the most pressing playoff question the same as last year: Which league won't be participating?
Can Ohio State Repeat?
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There has been only one repeat national champion this century, when Alabama won back-to-back titles in 2011 and 2012. The Crimson Tide won that second title with a team that returned some key players from the year before but was otherwise a new unit.
Ohio State isn't in that same boat, as it brings back almost the exact same group of contributors who won 14 consecutive games after a 1-1 start and steamrolled through the postseason. There are Heisman candidates at running back and quarterback (multiple at that spot, actually), and the defense is stacked with studs and playmakers.
It seems like the Buckeyes are as close to a sure bet to repeat as any team in recent memory, and oddsmakers feel the same way. According to Odds Shark, OSU is a 3-1 favorite to again be hoisting a trophy on the second Monday in January, this time in Glendale, Arizona, instead of Arlington, Texas.
Will it really be that easy, or will the Buckeyes go through what 2013 champ Florida State did last year with a series of narrow victories (as well as plenty of off-field distractions) and then come up short along the way? The announcement that star defensive end Joey Bosa and three offensive skill players will miss the season opener because of a one-game suspension could be just the start of a topsy-turvy season.
Follow Brian J. Pedersen on Twitter at @realBJP.
.jpg?w=480 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
