Re: Tomorrow's Top 25 Today: Clemson jumps Michigan as Tennessee

quozzel

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Re: Those rankings are not ridiculous. Once you get past 5, you

Oct 9, 2022, 8:51 AM

I'm iffy on that.

We'll see if I'm right, but I think what the transfer portal has done is take the talent in college football and spread it out, like spreading peanut butter across the entire full piece of bread. I see rosters that look a lot more complete players 1-22 because if there's a hole and an opportunity, coaches now have a lot more opportunity to crunch some film, hit the portal, and go fill that hole, and if a guy isn't playing at one school he's going to find greener grass elsewhere where he thinks he can. So while I think we've got better and more-complete starting rosters I also think we've got overall thinner ones from players 23-85 as well because it's a lot harder to stockpile now.

So I think we've got some teams that are going to blaze bright and gloriously early...and then fall off as injuries and the wear and tear and grind of a season hit, and blaze out, like Louisville always used to do. (I dunno if you remember Louisville when they first got into the ACC, but they had some exemptions on transfers and academic progress reports that had gotten grandfathered into their ACC transition, and so they'd always show up with a roster full of shiny new transfers their first few years in the league, look like world-beaters early...and then fizzle as injuries piled up. The year Lamar Jackson stole the Heisman from Deshaun in particular stands out.)

I wonder if the Portal now means we have a couple dozen Louisvilles out there that are going to fade bigly as the season wears on, and if we're probably going to be the Usual Suspects - us, Bama, Georgia, Ohio State - standing in the end.

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