As is often the case, ESPN is on top of the college spring practice scene, and more importantly, where teams are leaning as we look ahead to the fall. This piece by their Pac-12 man (and college go-to-guy!) Ted Miller does a great job surveying the landscape and looking at the BIG PICTURE in FBS football, as of March 2015!
Also, Heather Dinich writes a really great piece about where the current thinking is regarding out-of-conference scheduling - why the Big 12 schools are taking a risk (SMU, Lamar, and Rice? Really, Baylor?), while the Big Ten has the right idea (in my mind) with their 1910 plan - 1 major non-conference game, 9 conference games, 1 championship game, 0 FCS patsies scheduled.
Perfect.
No one's demanding you play a top ten school every week, big boys. Remember, there is no preseason in college football. Your first warm-up game counts! When Boise played "at" Ole Miss in August last year and lost, that game counted against them - it took a semi-perfect run of the table in October and November to get them back into New Year's Six contention. You lose that first game, you're in trouble - so if your first game is against the Little Sisters Of The Poor, Ohio State, I'll grant you that.
Just not the other two non-cons, okay? Play real teams.
Finally, there's a nice piece (also by Heather Dinich) which discusses the College Football Playoff system's successes and failures last year with the movers and shakers, decides that the former far outweighs the latter (and that they were burned by the constant 'tinkering' of the BCS formats), and that there won't be any changes in the near future to the CFP process. Four teams. Committee, some advance polls (maybe slight adjustments as to the when and how often), and no changes. The key word in the article is patience.
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