Seven key games en route to College Football Playoff

College football is back with perhaps the greatest opening-weekend slate ever, now that schools realize ESPN will shell out obscene amounts of money for good neutral-site matchups.

The Eagles had the best defense in the country previous year and finished 3-9.

Defensively, if they can make up for the loss of defensive ends Shaq Lawson and Kevin Dodd, and cornerback Mackensie Alexander, the Tigers will likely find themselves in national title contention at the end of the season. On the other sideline is the undisputed master, Nick Saban and his offensive coordinator, a man with whom USC fans are very familiar, the controversial Lane Kiffin.

This year’s Week 1 provides the single greatest opening week of games in the history of the sport.

Synopsis: On paper, it looks like a transition season for the Crimson Tide, but in reality, Alabama always has standout players ready to step in, so it’s going to be another good showing.

You know what? Let’s not call them predictions.

College football is our subject here, but in truth, Tampa’s best-known game is baseball.

The second factor is what happens if there are fewer than four Power 5 conference champions with no more than one loss. Get your “body clocks” ready Even former CFP committee chair Jeff Long can joke about this phrase, which became associated with Stanford’s shocking 16-6 loss to Northwestern past year in a game which kicked off at 11 a.m. local time. Those folks are the guy who attends the Rose Parade but spends his whole time checking Twitter so people at home can tell him how attractive it is. Another disappointing year, and he’ll start hearing about it from a large Texas fan-base used to winning and winning often. The key difference being that we’ve seen both of Notre Dame’s guys have success, and yeah not so much for Texas.

Notre Dame have gone through an off-season of change. Is this the year Big Game Bob can actually live up to his name? Texas A&M has a thing for upsets, and are fully capable of pulling off an upset with the returning starters they have, and Garrett coming off the edge. I also hope to come back to this article after the season and see how wrong I was about everything you’re about to read.

Stanford’s toughest game comes October 15 at Notre Dame.

Two storied programs playing at Lambeau Field?

Badgers best bet to stop RB Leonard Fournette was defensive coordinator Dave Aranda, but he is with the Tigers now. The Orange will have to improve on the road this season after going winless away from the Carrier Dome in 2015. When he’s having a spell, keep an eye out for Derrius Guice and Darrell Williams, too. If LSU can’t do it this year, when can they do it? If he’s successful, so are the Badgers. It’s J.T. Barrett, who was a fantastic performer before getting hurt in 2014. It could be a long afternoon for Starr. The writers at Bama Hammer have put together our prediction of who will make it to the 3rd rendition of College Football’s final four.

I love the Oklahoma backfield, with it’s double punch of Samaje Perine and Joe Mixon.

This will be the second significant non-league game for the Sooners after facing Houston in the opener.

And because there is no copout that allows me to leave with that, we’ll go Michigan, Ole Miss, Oklahoma, and Clemson.

This game will be a high scoring, high flying matchup.

The handsome thing about the opening week of the season is that every team is undefeated…unless you’re Hawaii of course.

No. 11 Ole Miss vs.

The difference here is that Francois has the lethal Dalvin Cook in the backfield to take some off the pressure off the aerial game and Hugh Freeze’s team can’t lay claim to a similar superstar lining up behind Kelly.

Deshaun Watson, QB, Clemson: The ACC preseason player of the year was simply spectacular last fall, throwing for 4,104 yards and 35 touchdowns while leading the Tigers to the ACC title and a spot in the College Football Playoff finals.