College football is, at its core, an irreconcilable list of contradictions. The ‘inability’ to pay players, or allow them to transfer freely, while multi-million dollar coaches can leave in the middle of the night notwithstanding, the contradictions trickle down to the micro level of evaluating teams on a game-by-game basis. Due to small sample size, preconceived notions, and extraneous factors ranging from recruiting rankings to the more ambiguous “player development” and “talent deployment” make a team’s true talent level impossible to pin down.
Take Virginia Tech.
- After Week 1, the college football media collective sang Bud Foster’s praises for shutting down Florida State’s offense in Tallahassee, a 24-3 win.