Biggest College Football Locks of the Year for 2016
There are few certainties in life. Good thing the same isn't the case for college football.
We're still a few months away from the start of the 2016 season, but thankfully we can get a jump on handicapping the game thanks to early lines that have been released. A quick scan of what's out there shows there are some sure things during the opening week of action, often referred to as “locks,” that can be had if you know what to look for.
If not, we've got your back. Based on what we know at this point, we've picked out a few “locks” for Week 1, as well as some sure-to-happen predictions for the entire 2016 season.
Feel free to add your “locks” in the comments section.
NOTE: All odds are courtesy of OddsShark.com unless otherwise noted.
Week 1 Game Locks
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Temple (-16.5) vs. Army
Temple is coming off a breakout season in which it won a school-record 10 games and claimed the American Athletic Conference's East Division title. Along the way, the Owls thumped Penn State and nearly beat Notre Dame.
Army went 2-10, its fifth consecutive season with at least eight losses, falling to an FCS school and two other teams that had at least nine losses in 2015.
This is the kind of season-opening game that used as a confidence builder for Temple when it was a losing program, but now it is one where it can romp and build momentum for the rest of the year.
Penn State (-18.5) vs. Kent State
Christian Hackenberg is gone, taking his propensity for dump-off passes and getting sacked to the NFL, and Penn State is implementing a more uptempo offense that should spread things out. Will that mean more points than in 2015, when the Nittany Lions averaged 23.2 per game and were held to 17 or less in their final three contests?
Kent State's a good opponent to test things out against. The Golden Flashes were 3-9 last season thanks to one of the worst offenses in FBS, averaging 13.1 points per game with three shutout losses and six games with seven or fewer points.
Penn State has won its last three home openers, all against Mid-American Conference teams, by an average of 23 points.
Georgia (-3) vs. North Carolina (in Atlanta)
This is technically a neutral-site game, being played in the Georgia Dome, but don't let that fool you: Georgia will have an overwhelming crowd advantage thanks to being in its home state and only about an hour away from campus. That alone should be enough to go with the Bulldogs, especially with such a small spread.
It's also the debut of new coach Kirby Smart, taking over for Mark Richt fresh off his role as Alabama's defensive coordinator during another national championship season. It will also be the start of freshman quarterback Jacob Eason's career.
North Carolina won 11 games in 2015 and returns 14 starters but should be a much bigger underdog than the line indicates.
Florida State Goes Bowling
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Death, taxes and the Seminoles playing in a bowl game. It's just that simple.
Florida State holds the longest active streak of seasons in which it's earned a bowl bid, at 34 years. With another one this winter it will tie Nebraska's all-time mark set from 1969-2003. FSU's streak began in 1982 and has rarely been in doubt.
In fact, during the streak the 'Noles have never been in need of a win in their regular-season finale to become bowl-eligible.
FSU has a challenging schedule in 2016 with plenty of losable games, starting with Ole Miss in Orlando on Labor Day as well as visits to Louisville, South Florida and Miami (FL) and the big clash with Clemson at home in late October. But there are also more than enough certain wins on the slate to ensure FSU will be bowling again.
Christian McCaffrey Will Be a Heisman Finalist
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Two of the three players who earned an invitation to New York City last December for the Heisman Trophy ceremony are back for the 2016 season. That marks the first time since 2011 that multiple Heisman finalists have returned for the following year.
Among that group was Andrew Luck, one of only two repeat Heisman finalists in the past six seasons along with Johnny Manziel.
Christian McCaffrey will be the third to do so, and the Stanford running back is a bigger lock to be a finalist again than Clemson quarterback Deshaun Watson. This is despite McCaffrey currently sitting with the third-best odds (5-to-1) compared to front-runner Watson's 7-to-2 odds.
This isn't based on expected performance as much as it is on how the Heisman is voted on and where voters are located. There are six regions—Mid-Atlantic, Midwest, Northeast, South, Southwest and West—and recent history has shown that the top Western candidate tends to get an invite thanks to strong voting from that region.
Derrick Henry was the top vote-getter in five of six regions in 2015; the only one he didn't claim was the West. The same was the case in 2011, when Luck overwhelmingly won the West while trophy recipient Robert Griffin III took every other region.
McCaffrey also has the advantage of not much Heisman competition from his region. UCLA quarterback Josh Rosen (16-to-1) and Oregon running back Royce Freeman (20-to-1) are the only other players from west of Texas among Odds Shark's early contenders, while Watson is one of eight from the South or Southeast along with LSU running back Leonard Fournette (4-to-1).
Hawaii Over 2.5 Wins
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It's been a while since Hawaii has been respectable in college football, having posted five consecutive losing seasons since a 10-4 campaign in 2010. The Rainbow Warriors also went through a coaching change in the offseason, hiring first-time head coach Nick Rolovich to replace Norm Chow.
Not much is expected of Hawaii again this year, based on the wins projection provided by VegasInsider.com. But this number doesn't seem to factor in the Warriors' one advantage they have each season: the travel factor.
Of the 17 wins Hawaii has recorded in the past five seasons, 14 have come in Honolulu including 10 nonconference victories. And the 2016 schedule features at least five winnable home games: Sept. 10 vs. Tennessee-Martin, Oct. 1 vs. Nevada, Oct. 15 vs. UNLV, Oct. 29 vs. New Mexico and Nov. 26 vs. Massachusetts.
All the Warriors need to do is pick off three of those teams and they'll have exceeded expectations, at least by Vegas standards.
A Preseason Top 10 Team Will Finish Unranked
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The Associated Press will release its annual preseason media poll some time in August, at which time we'll get a strong sense of which teams are garnering the most national respect as championship contenders. And by the end of the 2016 season at least one of those highly rated teams will have ended up being a major disappointment.
You have to go back to 2006 for the last time every preseason AP Top 10 team finished the season in the rankings. From 2007-15 there have 19 top-10 teams that fell into this category, including three (Auburn, USC, Georgia) in 2015.
USC also holds the distinction of being the last preseason No. 1 team to end up unranked, that occurring in 2012, while Oklahoma was No. 3 to start 2009 and dropped out of the polls for good in early November.
A composite of preseason rankings from 10 different media outlets, including Bleacher Report, has Alabama, Clemson, Florida State, LSU, Michigan, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Stanford and Tennessee as the most likely teams to begin 2016 in the top 10. And, based on recent history, that means at least one of those won't be ranked when the calendar turns to 2017.
A Power-Conference Coach Will Get Fired Before November
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Every college football season begins with a handful of head coaches occupying the proverbial “hot seat,” but for the most part they're able to make it through the year before any decisions are made about their futures.
Most of the time. But not always.
There have been 21 regular-season firings, resignations or retirements since 2012, including a whopping nine last year. Nine of these have involved power-conference teams, and at least once almost each year someone from a big-name school got the ax within the first two months of the season.
Last season USC fired Steve Sarkisian after five games, Randy Edsall was let go after Maryland's sixth contest and Al Golden's tenure with Miami (FL) came to an end following a 58-0 home loss in the Hurricanes' seventh game. Charlie Weis only lasted four games in 2014, Lane Kiffin wasn't let on the USC bus after the fifth game of 2013 and Arizona booted Mike Stoops following the sixth game of 2011.
Expect another ax to fall on a power-conference coach before we get to November. The most likely candidates: Boston College's Steve Addazio, Colorado's Mike MacIntyre, Kentucky's Mark Stoops, Purdue's Darrell Hazell and West Virginia's Dana Holgorsen, each of whom could fall victim to his employer wanting to get a head start on the search process if any gets off to a slow start.
All recruiting information courtesy of 247Sports, unless otherwise noted. All statistics provided by CFBStats, unless otherwise noted.
Follow Brian J. Pedersen on Twitter at @realBJP.
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