1. The Fighting Irish of Notre Dame
2. West Virginia
3. tosu
4. Cal
5. LSU
6-10 FSU, Michigan, USC, Oklahoma, Texas in no order
Our Lady will win her 12th title and Brady Quinn will bring her an 8th Heisman Trophy. I can only imagine what sort of genius must be passing through Charlie's head at this moment. He now has a season of HC experience, I'm sure in this off-season he has re-invented the game like The Rock did with the forward pass. I know it will be exciting to watch, get ready for the 10 WR offense. I don't know, but expect AFL-like scores.
West Virginia will make it to the top of the polls the old fashioned way: cup cake scheduling. They can't help but go undefeated through the season. Today's Big East couldn't compete with the Mountain West. I'm serious, TCU would win this conference and we would no longer hear them crying how unfair it is for the Horned Frogs not to be in a BCS game. But I'll still be crying about the Big East having an automatic BCS bid.
I was tempted to put the Buckeyes at #2 to make the compelling BCS title game a rematch in Tempe, but the odds of Ohio State making it through the Big Ten undefeated and keeping enough players out of prison to field a team is just too unlikely. They open conference play with PSU and finish with scUM, I have to think they'll drop one of those two. But if they beat Texas, lose to PSU, then run the table the rest of the way, it will be a rematch in the title game against the Irish, even if WV is unbeaten.
Cal will be a top five team because they will win the Pac-10, and for some reason every writer and coach west of the Mississippi wants to convince me that the Pac-10 is a tough conference. It used to be, but other than USC the past four seasons, there hasn't been much else there. And by the way, USuCk is done for a while.
LSU will be strong if Russell comes back and stays healthy. I would love to see them playing in the National Championship game against Notre Dame. I would love even more seeing them cream the phony Urban Meyer's Gators for the SEC Championship.
The rest can fall anywhere to finish the ten. Florida State I'm iffy on. They were weak last season, but looked good against PSU in the Orange. But, I don't have PSU in here, instead I think Michigan will be a top ten team. I have the feeling PSU's success last season was as much a fluke as scUM's lack of success. Go figure, things will align correctly this year. USC will reload, but not enough to not notice two Heisman winnners missing. Texas as well. And Adrian Peterson will carry Oklahoma, and he'll be back in New York as the Heisman runner-up.
Pass Right,
Matt