It's always a fun excerise. One season ends, and, immediately, the focus shifts to the next. It breeds the kind of hypotheticals we all love and hate. "If the season started today, ..."
Well, "today" in this instance was April 27, 2017. Just after Denver won its eigth national championship. Long before a few dozen early departures, a few specifically in South Bend, Ind., deemed everything we thought we knew wrong.
Except in one instance.
The national champions are still intact. Entirely. The Pioneers enter the season as the presumptive favorite to reclaim a second consecutive national championship — a feat no team has accomplished since the last time Denver did it in 2003-04.