If someone were to say ten years ago, during the dominance of Alabama and Clemson, that college football is as fair as it has ever been, most would not bat an eye. And yet, here we are. This divide between expectation and reality in college football right now is second to none in mind-blowing things. For starters, almost half of the teams ranked in the top 25 in the preseason are not ranked at all now. By this standard, everyone is correct in calling this era of college football the era of parity—and chaos! As this is the era of parity, expectations have been blown completely out of the water. Texas, the number one team in the preseason poll, has barely survived against the two worst teams in the conference, taking each team to overtime. But this result is much, much better than some other teams in the preseason top ten. Penn State, the number two team in the preseason, which was to be a surefire national championship contender after going to the semifinals last year, had a horrific three-game skid and fired their coach. They did not just fire him but paid him $49 million to not coach there. The situation of LSU, the preseason number 9 team, is just as bad if not worse. They just fired their head coach as well, paying him $53 million to also not coach there. And Clemson, the number four team in the preseason after bringing back numerous starters under famous coach Dabo Swinney, has performed mostly terribly.
While it is always true that no one knows what is going to happen in this life, this season of college football has absolutely reinforced that idea to the extreme. The reality of college football does not ideally resemble what we as fans thought it would look like. Though blue blood programs like Alabama and Georgia are still at the top of their game, who would have thought Indiana would be ranked in the top 3 for the first time ever? Or that Georgia Tech and Vanderbilt would be having the seasons they are having right now? This season has made little to no sense, flipping reality on its own head for most fans. But as chaotic as this season has been so far, it is glorious as a fan to see all this unpredictability and chaos unfold. The best way to summarize this season up is how Ralph Russo wrote it for The Athletic: “Everyone’s a Contender—Except for Everyone We Expected.”