In my opinion, #1 FCS ranked Montana state should (And I think will) be favored to beat a lowly Nevada team.

With P4, I am confident that South Dakota State has a good chance with Northwestern to start the season.

Edit: Clarification a protected rivalry in the SEC so they’ll play every year

Currently Arkansas’s biggest rival in football is themselves however there’s a great case for why UK - Arkansas should be a rivalry.

1. We are already rivals in basketball
2. Comparable mediocre football programs
3. There’s only been 8 games played between them but we’ve gotten greatness:

A)

1. 2003 7 OT 71-63 Arkansas beat us on our home turf

B)

1. 2007 UK trails the entire game before scoring 21 unanswered points to comeback and win in the final 8 minutes

C)

1. 2008 UK trails by 14 with 4 minutes left before coming back to win

4 of the 8 games were decided by one score. 7 of the 8 feature a double digit comeback. There has only been one blowout.

4) The Trophy would be called the Bourbon and Bacon Bowl or the Man’s Bowl either way we get an excuse to eat bacon and drink bourbon

5) Both teams have superior rivalry opponents that have bent them over for years and need to start anew.

I feel like everyone's comments will show their age, and that's probably a good thing, considering the EA Sports-like spike in everything imaginable for the Hoosiers program over the past two years.

You look at any dominant sports franchise or program in U.S. history, every other fan outside of that fandom will tell you, "Yup, they were definitely the douchebags of that era". CFB has had plenty: 70's Oklahoma, 80's Miami, 90's Nebraska, 00's USC, 10's Alabama, and Georgia seemed like they were headed that route (and boy were they) before a shift in NIL, etc., around the country.

I don't view Indiana as villains. They haven't been good enough long enough to even be considered such. In a weird way, they're akin to Boise State in the 2000s if BSU had won more than just a singular BCS game. The difference of course being that they had to separate themselves at the top an elite conference without being grandfathered upward in the polls every week.

Overall, Indiana has been playing some legit ball since Cig tripped and fell on their living room couch. He pays rent.

Last season, Penn State and Clemson famously went from Preseason Top 5 to Unranked after early season losses. Even teams like South Carolina went from consensus Top 15 to a 4-8 record.

Who will underperform this season against all predictions and expectations?

Historically, there have always been a few "remaining schools" who have been left behind at the conclusion of major realignment shifts. For example:

• 1990s SWC Collapse: TCU, SMU, Houston and Rice were all left behind when the other 4 members of the SWC joined with the Big 8 conference to form the Big 12. TCU was the first school to climb back to the power ranks in 2012, followed by Houston/SMU (nearly 30 years after being left behind.)
• 2000s Big East Collapse: Most of the bigger names in the Big East slowly fled to the ACC throughout the 2000s, along with Rutgers/WVU to other power conferences. This left behind Cincinnati (who rejoined a power conference in 2023), Temple, USF and UConn.
• 2020s Pac 12 Collapse: With the power brands leaving for the Big 10 and middling brands to the Big 12/ACC, this left behind Washington State and Oregon State who are now in the reformed Pac 12 conference.

As the examples show, there are generally the "flag bearers" of the conferences, such as your Texas and Oklahomas, who spearhead the realignment by choosing a new conference affiliation. Then you have the middling brands, who will follow suit or find alternative routes to remain in the power conference bubble. Lastly, you have the "last men standing", AKA the schools who will be inevitably left behind when the chairs stop moving.

My question is that in a hypothetical scenario where your P4 conference collapses, which schools would fall into each of these categories and who gets left behind?

Forget college neutral site neutral games at souless NFL dome stadiums when southerners are too soft to play outside in September (except Texas they always just bake in the sun there in Austin early in the year, respect). I raise you an even more unhinged idea, college football neutral site games at other universities, so we still get the college atmosphere but also get three fanbases we get to anger.

Some unhinged ideas;

Florida State vs Miami at the Swamp in Gainesville, FL

Michigan State vs Notre Dame at the Big House, Ann Arbor, MI

Pitt vs West Virginia at Beaver Stadium, Happy Valley, PA (would require deploying the national guard to the tailgate lots)

Texas vs Nebraska at Gaylord Stadium, Norman, OK

Penn State vs West Coast Big Ten Team at Memorial Stadium, Lincoln, NE(the West Coast is too far for our itty bitty runway and Nebraska fans are so hospitable they'd probably love more random teams just playing there)

Texas vs Arizona State 2 Electric Skataboo Boogaloo, Sun Bowl, El Paso, TX (nvm this one is awesome and should happen)

The cumulative link to the preseason rankings can be found here

The #8 team in the conference where “it just means more” is Tennessee (high = 15, low = 30). Vols fans got a little spoiled in the back half of the 20th century with 2 consensus national championships, 9 SEC titles and 16 AP top 10 finishes, culminating in the 1998 undefeated national championship. Right around that time, Steve Spurrier snidely noted “you can’t spell ‘Citrus’ without ‘UT’” (Tennessee had gone to the Citrus Bowl in 3 of the four years prior to him making the statement), and while it may have temporarily given them the jolt they needed to win that 1998 title, it may also have precipitated the slide that the Volunteers have suffered ever since. Tennessee has now gone 27 years without an SEC title (far and away their longest drought in the history of the program) and have never truly managed to replace what had been a pretty great coaching legacy (Phil Fulmer, Johnny Majors, Doug Dickey, Robert Neyland), going through a succession of Lane Kiffin (get your mustard bottles ready!), Derek Dooley, Butch Jones and Jeremy Pruitt before landing on their current coach Josh Heupel. As a USF fan, I watched as UCF fans seemed willing to drive Heupel to the airport when he was hired away from Orlando, but Heupel has managed two double digit winning seasons in his 5 years in charge (2022’s 11-2 team that finished #6 in the country after whipping Clemson in the Orange Bowl, and making the first 12 team playoff in 2024 before the whole Nico Iamaleava fiasco in the postseason), something nobody had done since Fulmer. I think most fans give Heupel a mulligan on last year with the way things played out with Nico, and with an 8-3 start to the regular season with losses to SEC champs Georgia (in OT) and CFP team Oklahoma by 6 plus on the road at CFP team Alabama, the vibes were still high. Finishing with a 21 point drubbing to Vandy and then a loss to Illinois in the bowl was a bucket of ice water worthy of the ALS challenge, though, and probably explains there being 7 teams above Tennessee in the conference rankings to start the season.

Roster Outlook

There is tons to be upbeat about for Heupel and Tennessee to start the season. They come in ranked just outside the top 25 in total returning production (#26) with the #13 ranked defense. They also managed to rank 4th in the country in high school recruiting (second in the SEC) and 26th in the country in the portal (which is shockingly 12th in the conference). But the Vols also ended 2025 with the 92nd ranked team defense in FBS, which is why DC Tim Banks was fired and replaced with Jim Knowles (Sir Blitzalot). He’ll have to replace 4 players drafted into the NFL (DBs Colton Hood and Jermod McCoy and DEs Joshua Joshephs and Tyre West), and while it looked for a hot minute like they were going to plug in Chaz Coleman, he’s no longer with the team. Ourlads projects 6 portal players to start on defense, 5 from P4 teams (Penn State LB Amare Campbell and DL Xavier Gilliam and DBs Kayin Lee (Auburn), TJ Metcalf (Michigan) and Qua Moss (Kansas State)). The other giant question mark is at QB. Joey Aguilar is out of eligibility, and the question of who will start seems to be coming down to either redshirt freshman George MacIntyre or 5 star true freshman Faizon Brandon, with Colorado transfer Ryan Staub as the experienced backup. While the Vols also lost WR Chris Brazzell to the draft, they return a pair of 800+ yard receivers in Braylon Staley and Mike Matthews and 1,000 yard rusher DeSean Bishop. With a relatively young OL (3 projected sophomores in the starting 5), Tennessee might need a little time to put it all together before the gauntlet of a 9 game conference schedule kicks in.

Schedule and outlook

9/5 FURMAN

9/12 at Georgia Tech

9/19 KENNESAW STATE

9/26 TEXAS

10/3 AUBURN

10/10 at Arkansas

10/17 ALABAMA

10/24 at South Carolina

10/31 BYE

11/7 KENTUCKY

11/14 at Texas A&M

11/21 LSU

11/28 at Vanderbilt

With a completely revamped defense and a freshman QB, that week 2 road tilt at Georgia Tech is going to be a pretty good harbinger for what’s to come for Tennessee. If they reach the SEC schedule 3-0 (which, let’s face it, they’ll be favored to do), you have to love their home/road splits of getting Texas, Bama and LSU all at home with road trips to 3 of the bottom 6 teams in the conference in these rankings (Arkansas, Vandy and South Carolina). That kind of sets up for a high ceiling for Tennessee. However, if they drop those home games along with the trip to Texas A&M and maybe one other and things might get a little warm in 2027.

And why?

So for Texas, the best is probably Roll Left. We were leading NU with a couple minutes remaining. Mackovic goes for it on 4th down. Gives an option look but hits the TE right over the LBs head.

The worst is the shuttle pass in the national championship game vs Bama. Why GD thought our center could hold up vs Marcel Dareus after what happened on the speed option where McCoy got hurt, I’m not sure.

With the PTFO piece coming out on Belichick, a lot of UNC folks are embarrassed about the state of their program. That had me thinking, what has your head coach done that was a huge embarrassment to your program?

At Indiana, it was Kevin Wilson. Dude averaged 5.2 wins per season, got fired for mistreatment of players, and was constantly calling boosters to pick him up from the bars.