Although college football teams don't often resolve major competitions or issues during spring practices -- at least they tend to resist public proclamations -- that's not going to stop us from making predictions. There's just too many juicy goings-on for us to keep quiet. So here are 10 bold predictions, though you might quibble with what degree of boldness we have attained.
1. Don't expect quarterback clarity at Ohio State until September: Not to be hyperbolic, but the quarterback competition at Ohio State might be the most fascinating position battle in the history of college football. Seriously. You have a two-time Big Ten offensive player of the year (Braxton Miller), a guy who finished in the top five of the 2014 Heisman Trophy balloting (J.T. Barrett) and a guy who turned in arguably the best run of three victories in program history while winning a national championship (Cardale Jones). You also have a new co-offensive coordinator/QB coach in Tim Beck, late of Nebraska. Further complicating matters, Barrett and Miller won't be able to participate in spring practices due to injuries (Barnett will have limited availability). Those injuries seem to have many favoring Jones, owner of the best arm of the three, even though he finished third in previous competitions. While Jones certainly can impress Beck and head coach Urban Meyer this spring, the only certainty is Meyer owes Barrett and Miller a legitimate chance to win back the job. That means they get all of August to make their claims. Beyond that, Meyer probably won't feel much of a rush to publicly name a No. 1 guy, even if a clear pecking order emerges by mid-August. No reason to make things easier on Virginia Tech, the Buckeyes' opponent in their season opener.
2. TCU will be challenged by the hype grind: After a spectacular 2014, TCU is certain to start next season ranked in the top three of both polls -- probably at No. 2 behind defending national champion Ohio State. That setting of the expectation bar will be freighted with a different sort of pressure and a different sort of national attention. Now, this isn't head coach Gary Patterson and the Horned Frogs' first rodeo. The program had a strong run its past decade or so as a Mountain West Conference member. In 2010, TCU started with a top-10 ranking and finished unbeaten after nipping Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl. Being good in the face of high expectations is not unexplored territory, but this is a first for TCU as a member of the Big 12, which means this is the first time the nation views TCU as a true national title contender before the season begins. That has an effect in the locker room. Further, quarterback Trevone Boykin is a leading Heisman Trophy candidate, which brings about its own sort of challenges. Patterson will need to manage the potential outside distractions, including his team's reading about how great it is before it has won a game. There's also the issue of handling a potential early slip -- the opener at Minnesota? Sept. 26 at Texas Tech? -- which will feel catastrophic but might not be.
3. Notre Dame's quarterback is Everett Golson: Yes, Golson was turnover-prone in 2014, particularly over the second half of the season. Yes, he yielded the starting job to Malik Zaire in the bowl game against LSU. And yes, a new offensive coordinator in Mike Sanford, hired from Boise State, makes it feel like the quarterback competition is wide open. But count on Golson, who won 16 of his first 17 career starts, asserting himself as a senior. That also is the best-case scenario for a promising team with 19 returning starters that should be viewed as a potential College Football Playoff contender. It's also probably in the back of coach Brian Kelly's mind that Golson, as a fifth-year senior reportedly on track to graduate this spring, might opt to transfer if he feels he's fallen behind Zaire. As for the bowl game, keep in mind it was Golson who was 4-of-5 for 50 yards passing on the Irish's game-winning drive, including a critical 12-yard completion on third-and-10. Oh, and Zaire's main strength -- running the option -- is something that could be used situationally, thereby keeping both quarterbacks happy.
4. Stand by with hot-seat flame for second-year coaches: The four marquee hires after the 2013 season -- Steve Sarkisian at USC, Charlie Strong at Texas, Chris Petersen at Washington and James Franklin at Penn State -- each had underwhelming first seasons. While a rational mind could provide reasonable explanations for why things weren't easy in Year 1, college football fans, particularly of A-list programs, aren't terribly rational. They want to win now, and if they don't get enough savory wins by Year 3, a coach could be pink-slipped. While Sarkisian, Strong, Petersen and Franklin will all be given a mulligan for their inaugural seasons -- and aren't likely to be fired next winter -- don't expect there to be much leeway for dissatisfaction in 2015. Sarkisian's Trojans will start the season ranked in the top 10, so anything less than a Pac-12 South title and a win over UCLA, which would end a three-year losing streak, will be almost prerequisites. Strong can't afford another losing season, particularly with an execrable offense. Petersen's Huskies look to be rebuilding next fall, but Washington fans who were so excited about his hiring will start to get grumpy with another mediocre campaign, particularly if it includes another blowout loss to rival Oregon. Although Franklin's team was young and thin in 2014 and salvaged some momentum with a bowl win, don't expect folks in Happy Valley to be smiling if 2015 produces another 2-6 finish in Big Ten play.
5. Oklahoma will have the nation's second-most interesting quarterback competition: Although Ohio State's quarterback quandary is fascinating, it's got a "are we taking Jennifer Garner or Beyonce or Scarlett Johansson to the prom?" feel to it. Oklahoma's, on the other hand, has a sense of newness and urgency and suspense to it. For one, you have a long-tenured, highly successful and notoriously grumpy head coach in Bob Stoops, who is surely aware that more than a few folks are questioning the plateau he has seemingly arrived at with the Sooners. Then you have a dashing, new offensive coordinator, Lincoln Riley, 31 years young, a disciple of Mike Leach. Then you have an embattled incumbent starter, Trevor Knight, whose Sugar Bowl heroism against Alabama after the 2013 season and his star-crossed romance with Katy Perry -- we might be embellishing that a bit -- have been overcome by want, woe and passing inefficiency. Enter transfer Baker Mayfield, the dark, brooding stranger with a mysterious past. As in, the Austin, Texas, native -- wait ... what? -- was the first walk-on true freshman to start an opener at a BCS school when he lined up behind center at Texas Tech -- Riley's alma mater! -- and won Big 12 offensive freshman of the year. And what are we to make of wild card Cody Thomas, who quit baseball to make a run at the starting job? It feels a little like someone put "True Detective," "Bull Durham" and "Oklahoma!" in a blender and then handed it to ESPN to drink.
6. SEC defensive intrigue abounds! There's a temptation to use the word "incestuous" to describe the defensive coordinator hires in the SEC this offseason, but we will resist using that highly charged term. And yet ... First, you have John Chavis bolting LSU for Texas A&M. Heck, he's bolted, and now he's suing both schools. Whom did Les Miles hire to replace Chavis? Kevin Steele, Chavis' lifelong friend and -- oh, by the way -- an assistant for Nick Saban at Alabama. Meanwhile, assisting Steele will be Ed Orgeron, former head coach at Ole Miss. Speaking of Alabama, the Crimson Tide's good friend to the east, Auburn, hired former Florida head coach Will Muschamp to coordinate its defense. The man who replaced Muschamp at Florida, Jim McElwain -- a former Saban assistant -- hired Geoff Collins to run his defense. He was Mississippi State's defensive coordinator the past season. Heck, if you want to extend this exploration to offense, there's also McElwain's hiring Doug Nussmeier -- McElwain's successor and Lane Kiffin's predecessor at Alabama -- to run his offense. Such intrigue even extends from the SEC to the ACC. North Carolina hired former Auburn head coach Gene Chizik to run its defense. Guess who the Tar Heels open against on Thursday, Sept. 3? South Carolina and the ole Head Ball Coach. So what's the prediction here? All this cross-pollination will complicate game planning, as offensive coordinators superimpose past games and old schemes on new personnel and project forward. Or might that create new inefficiencies?
7. We won't know who replaces the past two Heisman winners until late August: Florida State is replacing Jameis Winston and Oregon is replacing Marcus Mariota, so you'd think the departure of those two, likely the first two quarterbacks picked in this spring's NFL draft, would lead the spring football ticker. Nope. That's mostly because neither team will announce a starter until they are closing in on their respective season openers. With Oregon, a large part of that is because touted Eastern Washington transfer Vernon Adams won't participate in spring practices. Many view him as the favorite to win the job. At FSU, junior Sean Maguire is a slight favorite, but only because he has game experience -- he started against Clemson while Winston was suspended last year -- compared to the other candidates, which include redshirt freshman J.J. Cosentino and true freshman early enrollee De'Andre Johnson. Don't expect Jimbo Fisher or Mark Helfrich to be moved by fan interest to show their cards this spring.
8. Big Ten powers won't narrow the gap with Ohio State this spring: While Ohio State's biggest issue is choosing among three accomplished quarterbacks, the other Big Ten powers are in flux. Although Buckeyes archival Michigan is thrilled to have Jim Harbaugh -- Wolverines fans, it will never be boring -- the program is unlikely to make much noise on the national level in 2015. Wisconsin, a team with three Rose Bowl appearances to its credit over the past five seasons, is asking itself why it has lost two coaches to seemingly lesser programs, Arkansas and Oregon State, over the past three years. Nebraska is also breaking in a new coach, Mike Riley, whose surprising exit from Oregon State created Gary Andersen's surprising path from Madison, Wisconsin, to Corvallis, Oregon. Even Michigan State, which again looks like a top-10 team, is moving on without celebrated defensive coordinator Pat Narduzzi, who was hired as Pittsburgh's head coach.
9. Don't count Jerry Neuheisel out of the UCLA quarterback competition: Just about everybody believes super-recruit Josh Rosen will be UCLA's starting quarterback next year, no matter that he's a true freshman who all these everybodys haven't seen play versus Pac-12 defenses. There's a lot more to being a starting quarterback than physical talent, particularly in the scheme-centric Pac-12, and Neuheisel showed he could at the very least be adequate when he came off the bench for an injured Brett Hundley and led the Bruins to a win over Texas by completing 23 of 30 passes for 178 yards with no interceptions and two touchdowns, including a beautiful 33-yard game winner. Rosen, strong-armed and standing 6-foot-4, looks the part, but it's far from a sure thing he will be able to convince coach Jim Mora and offensive coordinator Noel Mazzone that he's ready to lead the Bruins against what should be a tough Virginia defense on Sept. 5. The odds might be against Rosen redshirting in 2015, but they also aren't terribly favorable that he will take the first snaps of the season.
10. Youth will trend behind center: Not too long ago, freshman quarterbacks were a rarity. That has changed for a variety of reasons, and our expectation is to see a significant number of first-year players -- redshirt and true freshmen as well as transfers -- starting behind center in 2015. For one, there are a lot of high-profile quarterback competitions -- 14 members of Mark Schlabach's "Way too early top 25" have questions at quarterback. Freshmen have a good-to-decent chance to start at Georgia, Florida, Texas, UCLA, West Virginia, Boston College, Michigan, South Carolina, Kansas State, Wisconsin, Northwestern, Oregon and LSU, among others. Although coaches tend to favor experienced players for good reason, youngsters are far more ready-made these days, and projecting forward, a multiyear starter is unquestionably enticing.