College football 2015: Five stories to follow in 2015

With big-time college football season just days away from kicking off – apologies to Montana and North Dakota State and their epic FCS clash on the weekend! – here are just a few storylines to keep an eye on as we dive headfirst into the year.

Ohio State’s quarterback situation
At the time of writing, the race was down to two, Cardale Jones and J.T. Barrett, and despite plenty of rumour and suggestion over the last few weeks, no one inside the Buckeyes organisation has made anything official.

When you look at the roles both possible starters played last season, it’s clear that there’s no bad choice for Urban Meyer to make. The question is, how will Meyer balance both players? Will there be formations and packages tailor-made for both quarterbacks, no matter who is the starter? Also, what sort of rope will the starter have given that there’s another guy waiting on the sideline.

A two-quarterback system has worked well in the past – remember Chris Leak and Tim Tebow at Florida, wining a BCS National Championship for Urban Meyer – but it can also have an adverse effect on team harmony.

While I’m not brave enough to tip a winner of this competition, I’m thinking we’ll probably see a bit of both Jones and Barrett under centre in the Buckeyes’ season opener at Virginia Tech on Labour Day Monday night. That won’t be an easy beginning, especially not missing a group of key players through suspension.

Oregon after Marcus Mariota
The Ducks have made the National Championship Game twice in recent memory, and were defeated narrowly on two occasions. 2015 sees them without their Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Marcus Mariota, and the Ducks have named former Eastern Washington quarterback Vernon Adams, a transfer from that Division II school who only arrived on campus two weeks ago, as starter.

It seems a crazy move until you consider the player in question. Adams is a big-game performer, and knows what he’s doing under centre. With EWU, he threw for more than 10,000 yards, with 110 touchdowns to just thirty one interceptions, completing passes at a snappy sixty-four per cent. He can run the football, too, amassing more than 1200 yards in four seasons, including eleven touchdowns. He’s torched some good Division I schools over the last few years, too, and will face his old team in the first week of the season.

Now, I’m not saying that Adams is in the same class as Mariota was, but he’s no slouch, either. The fact that he’s come in and won the job in just two weeks of practices says a lot about his ability. I’ve got a feeling that Adams is going to be just fine in Eugene. Of course, he’ll need to be, because the Pac-12 is as loaded in 2015 as it’s ever been.

USC’s make-or-break year
A lot hinges on a good season for the Trojans. Eyebrows were raised when Athletic Director Pat Haden chose former Pete Carroll disciple Steve Sarkisian to replace Lane Kiffin (and Ed Orgeron, for that matter) over a lot of other candidates. Sarkisian delivered a 9-4 season.

It was a season that could have been a lot better, and might have been, were it not for some bad lapses late in games. Crucially, a victory over archrival UCLA was not among those nine wins. Defensive depth didn’t help, but with scholarship restrictions in the past, we should see less of this.

The off-season has been rough for USC. Sarkisian was recorded using some fairly uncomplimentary language at a booster event recently, disparaging rivals and generally acting like an idiot. He’s apologised, blaming alcohol and medication, but it’s another off-field distraction the Trojans don’t need. It’s simple, Sarkisian needs ten wins, minimum, and a win over the Bruins to quiet the masses.

It’s not an easy schedule to navigate, with road trips to Notre Dame, Arizona State and Oregon before welcoming UCLA into the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The next twelve weeks are going to be very interesting.

North Dakota State’s quest for five
The Division II FCS Bison from Fargo, North Dakota are hunting an unprecedented fifth straight National Championship, and will have to dig out of an early hole after going down on literally a last-second score by Montana in Missoula yesterday, 38-35, in what was a really fantastic game of football.

You might scoff and say that it’s Division II, so it isn’t that much of a deal but you’d be wrong. These guys are still hugely talented. They won thirty-three straight games between 2012-14 and spent a record thirty straight weeks atop the FCS rankings, and they’ve won five straight games against FBS opponents, too. This is, by any definition, a good football team.

Notre Dame and Malik Zaire
Those who are in the know suggest that Zaire is the best quarterback that Brian Kelley has seen in South Bend. We saw him late in the USC game, when the Irish were down big, and he saw some playing time in the Music City Bowl, an impressive victory over LSU.

Zaire’s emergence is the big reason why Everett Golson transferred to Florida State. Kelley is putting all his faith in Zaire and second-year offensive coordinator Brian VanGorder, and if the fall camps are anything to go by, the Irish are going to be just fine.

Zaire’s main focus will be keeping turnovers to a minimum. That was where Golson absolutely killed the Irish. Remember their 6-0 start became a 7-5 season, losing five of their last seven, and a lot of those losses – particularly the blow-out loss to Arizona State – came after Golson threw four picks, two of which were returned for touchdowns.

Zaire is a better runner, and probably more well-suited to Kelley’s offensive scheme than Golson was. His progression through the year will be very interesting to watch.

Will Notre Dame be really good, as predicted? I think so. For mine, the Irish are looking at an eight-win season as a bare minimum, given they’ll likely go in as favourites against Virginia, Georgia Tech, UMass, Navy, Temple, Pitt, Wake Forest and Boston College.

The interesting games are the opener against Texas, Clemson on the road and the USC game in South Bend in mid-October. They’re a good chance in both, and may head to Stanford on November 28 undefeated.

Enjoy the season, everyone!