College football Week 1: 5 teams on upset alert

Excitement and nerves are sure to run high in Week 1 of the 2019 college football season but these teams need to already be on upset alert.

Five straight days of college football to kick the 2019 season into full gear has arrived. From Thursday until Monday night, fans will be treated to a full slate of action throughout the country. And, hopefully, the quality of the Week 1 games will be better than the fumble-fest that was the Miami vs. Florida games in Week 0.

With all but four teams in the FBS having yet to play a game this season, everything that we think we know about college football right now is just educated conjecture.

Until the players are on the field and the potential issues are actually addressed, there is nothing that we can say definitively right, save for the fact that the Clemson Tigers and Alabama Crimson Tide are going to be tough to beat — which is an annual refrain at this point.

This type of thing is never more evident than when you look back at the preseason AP Poll at the end of a season. Despite all of the research, projection and so on that goes into forming the preseason rankings, the simple fact of the matter is that it doesn’t matter without games having been played, which can then cause things to swing wildly.

Week 1 of the 2019 college football season will provide some insight into some teams in that regard. While Clemson won’t be tested by a Georgia Tech team transitioning out of the triple-option offense and while Alabama likely won’t sweat much against Duke, there are some teams throughout the country that will need to prove themselves against quality — or at least frisky and tricky — opponents to begin the season.

These are some of those teams. Whether or not they are properly ranked or not in the preseason AP Top 25, these are five ranked teams that should be on upset alert in Week 1 of the 2019 college football season.