One Word: Focus

Hello All,

It is upon us.

College football is back.

This is the best time of the year.

Baseball is getting down to brass tax and games are played with an unrelenting intensity. That is, unless you’re the Baltimore Orioles, who are mathematically eliminated from having a winning season in late August. And yet, I digress.

The days are the prettiest in late summer and early fall, as cold weather has not arrived yet but temperatures become more bearable. If you live somewhere with trees, the leaves turn color. If not, well, you get to be homesick thinking about how awesome it is when the leaves change color. Score another for Los Angeles.

The NFL is getting ready to start up, which is great for several reasons. Fantasy football brings the ultimate medium through which to talk smack to your friends. Going in to a bar on a Sunday and sitting in the middle of the groups of die-hard fans for various teams is always fun, especially since none of them harbor any ill-will toward the Dolphins…they don’t have any reason to. And, best of all, we get to hear Gator fans make up bad excuses for why their latest crop of rookies is busting. Again.

SIDENOTE: I can’t wait until Tebow has his first five interception game and the Gator bandwagoners say something like “It is the offense’s fault, he shouldn’t be throwing this much.” To defend a quarterback. But hey, at least he has a bright future as a moyel.

SIDENOTE TO A SIDENOTE: I drafted Tebow with my 15^th pick in one of my fantasy drafts. Just to have the satisfaction of cutting him.

Best of all, college football is back. College football engenders more passion and pageantry than all of the other sports in this fine nation of ours combined.

I have made and lost friends based on college football. Is that even remotely possible when it comes to the Dolphins or Orioles? Not at all.

College football for me means playing Kanye West’s “Amazing” on repeat as I struggle to sleep the night before gameday.

It means getting up at 9am and starting to tailgate by drinking a Budwesier. It means grilled food and Corn Hole. It means going into the stadium 90 minutes before kickoff because I want to watch the ‘Canes warm up.

It means eating the same food and listening to the same music and watching the same pump up videos before every game and only changing things up after a loss. It means my buddy getting up to take a pee after every bad play to “get rid of the bad urine”.

It means losing my voice before kickoff, even when I am watching alone on my computer. It means getting chills watching “I was born of a Great Storm” and watching the players come through the smoke.

It means calling my dad after every series of plays to discuss the overwhelming importance of each play. It means calling him after a tough loss just to make sure this wasn’t the game that killed him. It means talking to my mom to make sure this wasn’t the game that made her want to file for divorce from my father as well.

College football means all of these things and more. It is literally an indescribable feeling, that which I get when just thinking about the season.

It also means I get to write a season preview.

Now, these things generally go one of several crappy directions. The main problem is that they are written by people not close enough to the situation to write well about it, are over-generalized (Miami is only about speed, OSU is only about strength, etc.) and come out months before fall practice even starts.

I am not going to do the same cliché preview that everyone else has done. Instead, I will stick to my one point that I made at the end of last season.

There is a reason that young teams don’t win national titles. It is hard for young players to treat every play as if it is the last. They have to be punched in the mouth a few times, bloodied up and left in a crumpled heap by a loss to a team they should have beaten.

It is why repeat national championships typically do not happen in this sport. The upperclassmen dominate on dominant teams, and after a championship season they all leave. Which is why expecting a championship of Miami the last two seasons was ludicrous. Freshmen and sophomores can certainly contribute to title teams, but they usually are not relied upon to win or lose the game.

Alabama, for instance, had Mark Ingram (a sophomore), Julio Jones (a sophomore) and Trent Richardson (a freshman) play big roles last season. However, the guys they relied on to win were on their offensive line-yes, I am fairly certain Javarris James could have won a Heisman behind that line—and upperclassmen Rolando McClain and Terrance Cody on defense. Everyone else was a complimentary piece.

Miami’s big problem last season was that they played to the level of their competition too often. That meant getting amped up and playing big time football early on, but it also meant trouble when it came time to play the Dukes, Wake Forests and Clemsons of the world. That, plus a fluky string of injuries, doomed the ‘Canes chances of winning a division title.

Injuries are a part of the game, but I certainly think this year has to be better to the ‘Canes in that regard. It certainly cannot be worse.

Miami has holes and questions to answer, but so does every team, including Alabama.

There are the obvious ones: Can Jacory stay healthy and limit interceptions? Can the linebackers (whoever they are) cover a tight end? Can the defensive line set the rest of the defense up for success by pressuring the quarterback?

And then there is the one that people seem to be missing: Have the ‘Canes developed a killer instinct?

You seem the good thing about a young team is that they keep getting better. I thought this team looked great for much of last season, and I do not think that it peaked. However, listening to a lot of Miami fans, you would get the sense that because Jacory threw a lot of picks last season he will do it again this year. They don’t take in to account the fact that he might possible be even better in his second year as a starter and his second year in Mark Whipple’s system. They want to live in the present (“every year we expect a title”) and yet base all of their assumptions off of the past (“Jacory throws too many picks to ever win here”).

I am not worried about the team being physically better. I think that if the offensive line keeps opening holes for the run game as well as they did last season then opposing defenses will have nightmares trying to stop the ‘Canes of offense. I also think the offensive line will be better (they got more talented after having a solid year last season). So let me ask you this: how do you stop Mike James, Damien Berry, Lamar Miller, Graig Cooper AND Storm Johnson in the running game while also stopping Laron Byrd, Aldarious Johnson, Travis Benjamin, Leonard Hankerson, Kendall Thompkins AND Chase Ford in the passing game if the offensive line, which was solid last season, got even better?

I am worried, however, about the team playing with the kind of fire that past Hurricane champions had against teams like Duke and Wake Forest and Virginia.

In the old days, the ‘Canes got insulted that they had to share the field with those teams. They were the ‘Canes, these other teams were nobodies and they were going to prove it. Last year’s team had that mentality in the big games but lost it in the lower profile yet equally important conference games. The key to this season will be whether or not they can maintain their focus week to week. The schedule is packed with big time opponents and payback games, but there are potential traps against Maryland, Duke and Virginia. If the ‘Canes stay focused, they will avoid the traps and could be in the BCS Title conversation. If they lose focus, they likely will also lose the divisional race, and that would be a disappointment for this team.

NOTE: There will be no game preview for the FAMU game. I tried to do one two years ago for the season opener against Charleston Southern and it was terrible. There is not a lot of info out there about these teams and I haven’t found a forum to discuss these teams with their fans. In order to not make myself look like an idiot, the first game preview will be for Ohio State.

Always guard the inbound passer.