College Football 2018: Biggest question facing every Top 25 team in spring practice
As spring practice continues, we explore 25 burning questions for the Top 25 teams they’ll be facing in spring camp.
The 2018 college football season has arrived! Well, sort of.
Appalachian State was the first FBS program to kick off the 2018 campaign when the Mountaineers opened spring practice Feb. 5. More than a dozen teams followed and began knocking the rust off from an increasingly short off-season last month, including the No. 1 team in our post-National Signing Day Top 25, the Clemson Tigers, who started practicing Feb. 28. Just about everyone else will have at least started spring practice by the end of March, and most will have wrapped things up by the end of April.
With spring in full swing, it’s time to delve into the burning questions that surround programs across the country. And with that in mind, we sought out 25 burning questions for the season – one for each Top 25 team, in the order in which they appear in our post-Signing Day Top 25.
Some of our questions are specific, such as, who will start at quarterback for Clemson or Alabama? Which playmakers will be toughest to replace at Oklahoma and Penn State? What coaching changes will have the biggest impact? Others are broader: Is Texas back? Can Notre Dame avoid a 2016-like collapse?
We believe we know the questions to many. Kelly Bryant has the inside track at Clemson, for instance. Others, despite the investigation that goes into them, are more difficult to answer. But we’ll try our best.
Can FAU take advantage of its non-conference opportunities?
Lane Kiffin quickly elevated the FAU football program to new heights in his first season. After winning just three games in 2016, the Owls improved to 11-3, sweeping Conference USA and blasting Akron 50-3 in the hometown Boca Raton Bowl. Though they never appeared in the College Football Playoff committee rankings or the AP Poll, FAU jumped from No. 115 two years ago to No. 11 last season in the S&P+ analytics rankings – an incredible rise.
Kiffin is a hot name in coaching once again (even if he still says dumb things, like his recent comments involving how he determined whether or not his assistant coaches are good recruiters), and though he had to replace both coordinators and his starting quarterback retired, Kiffin’s Owls are on the short list of programs worthy of contending for a New Year’s Six bowl game.
However, to take the next step as a program, FAU must do something it failed to do in 2017: beat an FBS non-conference opponent in the regular season. It would be easy to forget since the Owls won 11 of their last 12 games, including 10 in a row to end the season, but FAU started slow. Kiffin’s first game on the sidelines was a forgettable 42-19 loss to Navy, followed by a 31-14 loss at Wisconsin that wasn’t as close as the score would indicate. FAU got in the win column with a 45-0 victory over Bethune-Cookman but then lost to Buffalo. Yep, Buffalo.
Opportunities exist for the talented, veteran team. The Owls open the season on the road against a Baker Mayfield-less Oklahoma squad and then host Air Force. Following a Week 3 rematch with Bethune-Cookman, FAU travels upstate to face the reigning Group of Five champ (national champ?) UCF. Winning two of those three would likely make FAU the favorites to make it to New Year’s Day, assuming last year’s C-USA romp wasn’t a fluke.