The best time of the year, college football is almost upon us

My favorite edition of Sports Illustrated dropped in my mailbox a few days ago, which is the college football preview. This means we are only a few weeks away from the best time of the year in the sports world.

In this edition of the weekly magazine, they spell out everything you need to know about the upcoming football season. A lot of things happen between the last snap of the championship game and the start of the season, so there is usually much to catch up on.

But I naturally flipped to the part where they predict the top 25 and I was slightly offended that Tennessee didn’t even make it, but I will try to get over it. This year they predict that Alabama will be No. 1 – way to be original SI. Right behind the Tide is Florida State, Ohio State, Oklahoma State and USC closing out the top five.

With these rankings, this means the first week of college football will start off with a spark as No. 1 Alabama and No. 2 Florida State are set to play against each other.

Some Washington schools even made the top 25 including the Washington Huskies at number nine. Washington State sits at No. 22, even though they will most likely lose to another Big Sky team in week one.

Another notable in the top 25 are the Clemson Tigers, who made it to the championship last year and won, but dropped down to number seven overall. How did that happen? Well I think it is mainly because of their star quarterback Deshaun Watson moving on to the NFL and not knowing how well his replacement competes. Six starters on the offensive side of the ball will also be gone, making the outcome of the former champions a little questionable.

Now it is interesting to look back at last year’s rankings that included Alabama at No. 1 again and Clemson right behind them. So Sports Illustrated’s predictions obviously were not too far off in that aspect as the championship game included both of those teams, even though Clemson ended up on top of the Tide.

They also had Florida State at No. 3 and Michigan at No. 4 last year. This means that the staff of Sports Illustrated was a little off when going down the list as USC and Washington were in the top four in the final college football rankings.

I know preseason rankings do not have a lot of weight to them as we never truly know how a football season will go. But it is a little fun to look back at previous predictions and see if they were close at all.

So no matter what team you cheer for this season, good luck to your teams and may the odds be ever in your favor. Hopefully this year will be just as exciting and fun as it was last season.

I know that I am looking forward to at least Tennessee proving Sports Illustrated wrong this year as they will make the top 25 at some point.

Grace Pohl can be reached at [email protected].