Back to his days of stardom in the early 2000s, David Pollack has known plenty about college football. After injuries prematurely ended his NFL career, Pollack has spent over a decade and a half analyzing college football for several outlets, with a lengthy stint at ESPN being most notable. But despite his continued expertise of the game from several areas, when asked about the top team in college football on his Bleacher Report show with Takeo Spikes on the week when his alma mater fell from the No. 1 spot, Pollack had a surprising take.
"Nobody," he said. "Every year I've been doing this for the last 15 years or whatever, if you ask me in week 8 and you were like, 'Hey, man, who do you think is the best team in the country?' Your boy with a big mouth would have been giving you an answer and told you about some tape and said, that, and the other. I ain't got a clue. If you give me eight teams and flip a coin, I'd like like, all right."
To Pollack's point, Week 7 of the season alone featured losses from No. 1 Georgia, No. 2 Notre Dame, No. 5 Indana, and No. 7 Texas. Sure, the Notre Dame and Indiana losses came to fellow top 10 teams, but bother Texas and Georgia fell to teams previousyl outside the AP top 25.
Pollack clarified his comments, admitting, "This is the most parity that we've had in college football, no question. It is so different now because you're spending so much money, everybody's spreading the talent all across the country. Who can take care of the ball consistently? Man, it's crazy to think we're this far into the season. We're like, 'Who's good?'"
The spreading of talent is demonstrable. A season after Indiana completed an undefeated season and won a College Football Playoff championship after being mired in mediocrity for over half a century, other surprising teams are surfacing in College Football Playoff discussions. After miserable seasons a year ago and hiring new coaches, both UCLA and Kentucky, for instance, find themselves in the thick of the CFP discussion heading into Week 8. Meanwhile, preseason top 10 teams Oregon, Texas A&M, and Oklahoma have a combined eight losses-- seven more than UCLA and Kentucky combined.
Of course, the parity discussion is interesting in light of the likely success of the proposal to extend the Playoff from 12 to 24 teams. Some have suggested that it will devalue the regular season-- which Pollack sees already as unusually messy.
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