25 takeaways from an exciting, silly and frustrating 2016 college football season
It was often thrilling, sometimes disappointing, but at the end, 2016 was a season to be remembered
By
Dennis Dodd
•
7 min read
College football broadened its scope in 2016. It didn't become less of a game. It did become more of a social statement.
The meat-and-potatoes of the game still ruled. Look at how the season ended: A former walk-on wide receiver caught the winning pass to beat Alabama, doing so for a team in Clemson coached by a former walk-on receiver who played for Alabama.
Yeah, 2016 was like that. Here are 25 takeaways from the season.
1. If you have a quarterback, you have a chance: No surprise there. But where would the likes of Southern California, Alabama and Florida State be without freshman quarterbacks directing those top-10 teams? Sam Darnold threw 31 touchdowns despite not starting until Game 4 for the Trojans. Jalen Hurts was All-SEC with the Crimson Tide. The Noles' Deondre Francois looks like the heir to Deshaun Watson in the ACC. That's not including Jacob Eason (Georgia), Shane Buechele (Texas) and Justin Herbert (Oregon). In fact, 14 of the nation's top 50 passers last season (28 percent) were freshmen.
2. Not just for basketball anymore: By any logical measure, the ACC finished as the top football-playing conference. Clemson won the national championship. The conference tied the SEC's single-season bowl win record (nine). It ended with five ranked teams and produced the Heisman Trophy winner. What in the name of Dean Smith is going on?
3. To settle the championship debate once for all: The College Football Playoff National Championship on Monday between Clemson and Alabama wasn't the greatest title game. Not even close.
2006 Rose Bowl -- Texas vs. USC: Vince Young's winning touchdown run with 19 seconds left not only ended the Trojans' 34-game winning streak, in the long run it marked the end of the USC dynasty.
2003 Fiesta Bowl -- Ohio State vs. Miami: The last great Miami team was a prohibitive favorite, having won 34 in a row. The diligent Buckeyes took the game to overtime, where Big 12 field judge Terry Porter may or may not have ripped off the Canes.
2016 CFP National Championship -- Alabama vs. Clemson: The highest-scoring championship game in history went back-and-forth, pitting Watson's talent against Nick Saban's defensive genius.
4. Alabama isn't going anywhere: So the Tide lost with a second to go? It hurts, for now, but they've still got (Jalen) Hurts back. Translation: Alabama should be a consensus No. 1 pick in 2017. At least five top draft choices on defense are departing. Bedrock left tackle Cam Robinson is leaving early. But there is plenty of talent left for Saban, who will turn 66 in the season he chases his fifth national title in the past nine years.
5. In the Year of the Running Back ... Florida State's Dalvin Cook had the best legs. After rushing for more than 1,600 yards, Cook became FSU's 37th consensus All-American and could be the first back taken in the draft.
6. In the Year of Scandal ... Brenda Tracy had the strongest, loudest voice. Her reaction after the Joe Mixon tape was released was important because it continued to hold every single coach and player accountable for their actions.
7. Plenty Of Room For Improvement Dept.: The state of Texas had no teams ranked in the final AP Top 25 for the first time since 1967. Of the state's 12 FBS teams, only Houston received votes in the final poll. There's plenty of room for improvement with new coaches at Baylor, Houston and Texas.
8. Rose Bowl showcase: Congrats Penn State and USC, you're both "back" after one of the best Rose Bowls ever. Both schools should start 2017 in or near the top 10. Amazing, considering that since 2010 the NCAA docked the schools a combined 70 scholarships and took away six years of postseason. Penn State was also fined a combined $73 million. (The NCAA eventually removed several of the Penn State sanctions.) James Franklin (Woody Hayes national coach of the year) and Clay Helton (FWAA co-first year coach of the year) have validated their careers.
9. A word of warning to Lamar Jackson: As the 10th consecutive underclassman to be awarded the Heisman Trophy, it can almost be guaranteed his output will decline in 2017. Four of the previous nine underclassmen came back for at least one more full season (Jameis Winston, Johnny Manziel, Mark Ingram, Tim Tebow). Not counting Manziel's slight increase in passing yards from 2012 to 2013, the average combined decline in passing/rushing yards along with touchdowns thrown/scored has been 27.5 percent.
10. Not quite there in Ann Arbor: Michigan's team speed and quarterback play have to get better before Jim Harbaugh takes the next step. Just so you know, Harbs has never won a college conference title in his career. (He did win the NFC in 2012.) Harbaugh enters Year 3 at Michigan coming off back-to-back third-place finishes in the Big Ten East.
11. A game of inches: On the bright side, Michigan finished No. 1 in total defense by 0.031 of a yard over No. 2 Alabama. That's the equivalent of 1.12 inches per game. After giving up 511 yards to Clemson, Bama missed a chance to finish No. 1 in that category for the third time since 2011.
12. A blizzard of points: To no one's surprise, college football set another scoring record -- 30.04 points per team. Fifty-seven teams averaged at least that many points. Western Kentucky led the country in touchdowns (82) and scoring (45.5).
13. The hottest: Oklahoma starts next season with the nation's longest winning streak (10 games).
14. The coldest: Rutgers starts with the longest losing streak (10).
15. Records wrap: There were a record 874 games this season. The average game lasted a record three hours, 24 minutes. NCAA president Mark Emmert is supporting an eight-team playoff. There goes the ol' "time demands on student-athletes" initiative.
16. Lost in the playoff haze: Clemson beat Alabama for the first time in 40,610 days. Or, to make it easier, for the first time since 1905.
17. That 70s Coach: At age 77, Bill Snyder will lead his 26th Kansas State team into the season as the nation's oldest coach. The Wildcats should be picked no lower than third in the Big 12. Amazing.
18. Bowled over: No, the world isn't coming to an end because Leonard Fournette and Christian McCaffrey skipped their bowl games to get ready for the NFL. Nor will the quality of bowls decline if, say, 20 top players skip bowls next season. You're confusing quality with quantity. And we love our bowls, all 40 of them.
Understand they are programming, people. TV shows. Television executives long ago determined you would rather watch the Miami Beach Bowl than ... bowling. The number of bowls will rise or fall because of market forces. If there are too many of them, they'll begin to die out. And they're not even close to dying out. Ask the Cubs.
19. Big 12 expansion wasted everyone's time: The confused, confounding 10-team league spent four months exploring adding teams. Then didn't do a darn thing. Prediction: There will be no more realignment at all until about the middle of the next decade.
20. Slumping Irish: After a 4-8 season, this is a key year for Brian Kelly and Notre Dame. Just an observation, but the modern teenager is growing up with less of an idea who and what Notre Dame is. It doesn't play for a championship, and its only entrée into the playoff is finishing in the top four (something it has done once since 1993).
21. Which way for Baylor? The first thought has to be with the sexual assault victims in the scandal that cost Art Briles his job and Baylor part of its soul. Among the innocents in this situation were the other players on the team who had to suffer the fallout. The 2016 recruiting class was gutted. An outsider, Jim Grobe, came in for one year. Their best quarterback (Jarrett Stidham) left the program to transfer to Auburn. The Bears started 6-0 before losing the next six, admittedly distracted by the lawsuits, news accounts and scorn directed at them. To-do list for college football in 2017: Emphasize crisis management and prevention.
22. The SEC (aside from Bama) can't get any worse. Can it? The conference finished with three quarterbacks in the top 50 in passer rating (Josh Dobbs, Austin Allen and Chad Kelly). Only Allen returns.
23. Exclusive club: Washington became the 18th team to play for the national championship in the BCS era (since 1998). Clemson became only the 11th difference team to win it. Next year marks the 20th anniversary of the championship game era. Only 14 percent of the current membership will have even played for a title.
24. A sillier than usual season: There were 104 days that elapsed between Les Miles' firing by LSU on Sept. 26 and Sonny Dykes' firing by Cal on Jan. 8. In that span, there were 21 coaching changes (16.4 percent of the 128 FBS teams). That qualifies as relatively light turnover. Nine of those changes involved teams with winning records. Temple's Matt Rhule (to Baylor) South Florida's Willie Taggart (Oregon), Minnesota's Tracy Claeys (fired) and Western Michigan's P.J Fleck (Minnesota) left programs that had won at least nine games and/or a conference championship.
25. Yeah, but it's complicated: The prospects of new Oregon defensive coordinator Jim Leavitt seem to sum up the season. The 60-year-old coach has rehabbed his reputation quite nicely. Leavitt has a contract provision that allows him to leave without a buyout if the Kansas State job comes open.
Bill Snyder's former DC took Colorado from 85th nationally in total defense to second in the Pac-12. That was four years after coaching linebackers for the Super Bowl-bound San Francisco 49ers and eight years after losing his South Florida job after being accused of laying hands on a player. Have you forgiven?
