Welcome to the Most Mysterious College Football Season in Recent Memory

One of the top Heisman Trophy candidates is a guy who might be standing on the sidelines. Another is a quarterback who was a receiver not long ago. It seems that half of the top teams are still trying to figure out who their quarterback is.        

Coaches are behaving badly and one of them was already fired. And the dominant SEC? Maybe not so much anymore. Or maybe it still will be.

Welcome to the start of the strangest, most mysterious college football season anyone can remember. It starts Thursday night in full, though a small-college offensive innovator, Montana's Bob Stitt, already beat the back-to-back-to-back-to-back FCS national champ, North Dakota State, in his first game as a head coach, making him a cult figure behind the hashtag #stitthappens.

Maybe that's the motto for this entire season.

It isn't like college football to have this many unknowns. This isn't a sport bent on parity. The worst team doesn't get the first pick in the draft—instead, the best teams get the best recruits. Things don't change.

But things are changing now.

In the South, college football fans feel that the sport is their birthright. But after watching the SEC gets its, well, rear end handed to it in the bowl season last year, who even knows what the best conference is anymore? The Pac-12? The Big 12, with TCU and Baylor flying around and above everyone? Or even the Big Ten, the sport's joke the past several years, which produced national champ Ohio State and now has the most mysterious man in football: Jim Harbaugh.

Carlos Osorio/Associated Press

Most people figure Harbaugh will turn Michigan around and that it won't take long. Going 6-6 or 7-5 this year would be a first-step improvement in line with most expectations, but look at the Wolverines' lenient schedule. Based on it and Harbaugh's past success rate, couldn't Michigan have just one loss—and the entire nation's attention—when it faces Ohio State in the final game of the regular season?

The face of college football isn't just the person who gets on the cover of magazines and onto SportsCenter highlights. He's the person who defines the identity of the sport. Usually, we have a pretty good idea going into the season who that is.

This year? There is no more Jameis Winston or Marcus Mariota, who were the faces of last season. One brought focus to off-field troubles (and great play) while the other brought focus to humility (and greater play). They became the identity of the entire sport, as the player, or person, with all the attention always does.

Johnny Manziel's speed and flamboyance defined a season. Nick Saban's bullying, methodical genius identified a year or two before that. Not too far in the past, it was Tim Tebow.

But now? Maybe Ohio State quarterback Cardale Jones? That's who I'd pick—a new-age guy who is big, powerful and fast all at the same time, at the quarterback position of all places.

David J. Phillip/Associated Press

One problem:

He might not play.

J.T. Barrett, already named one of Ohio State's team captains, might be the starter. Coach Urban Meyer isn't telling reporters. But if Barrett doesn't play, then the national champions will have a captain sitting on the bench.

It could be TCU quarterback Trevone Boykin, who used to be a receiver but now might be the prototype for the Heisman, a running/passing QB. Unless Jones changes the prototype.

If he plays.

Some people like USC quarterback Cody Kessler to define the season. He has the Heisman skills and the Hollywood spotlight. But his team starts the year under controversy after coach Steve Sarkisian's alcohol-fueled, f-bomb-laced speech. Sark is getting treatment, and the players got to pick a coach's punishment, which amounted to burpees.

It was better than Illinois coach Tim Beckman, already fired for his alleged mistreatment of player injuries.

Can anyone catch Ohio State? Well, it could be Oregon now that Vernon Adams Jr. passed his math test.

Seriously. Mariota is gone and Davis was able to transfer to Oregon and play immediately only after he officially graduated from Eastern Washington.

The Ducks aren't a sure thing either, though. Coach Mark Helfrich was able to keep program from regressing after Chip Kelly left, but he still had Kelly's QB. Now that Mariota has joined Kelly in the NFL, too, Helfrich needs to prove it's his program and a winning one. (Hint: He will.)

As everyone knows, the quarterback is almost always the team leader, the face of the team, the identity. Well, it took until Monday for Florida State to name Notre Dame transfer Everett Golson as the face of its team:

Also on Monday, Georgia named Greyson Lambert starting QB, and Ole Miss named Chad Kelly. LSU coach Les Miles rushed to the hospital—he told reporters he had a bad reaction to having too much coffee—and then came back and named Brandon Harris.

Last we saw, UCLA coach Jim Mora was tearing into his freshman quarterback, Josh Rosen, in practice. And Meyer isn't the only power-program coach who has yet to name a starting QB: Michigan still hasn't, and Saban has three quarterbacks listed as the starter for Alabama's game Saturday against Wisconsin.

There's a word for all of this—a word we try to avoid, a swear word in sports: parity. Though that's better than what the Big Ten had heard for years: laughingstock.

Not anymore. It might be hard to figure out from the start who to cheer for—other than your own team—and who against. It might be exciting or just confusing. But more than ever, almost everyone gets a fair shake this time.

Greg Couch covers college football for Bleacher Report.