College Football Week 1 storylines: ACC needs FAST start after Top 10 upset | CBS Sports

Welcome into a fresh new hour of CBS sports HQ. We are presented by Geico today. Get more with Geico. Hailey Sutton and Chris Hassell with you for the next hour or so. Chris, it's a very busy day on the calendar. If we talk NFL, of course teams have to make their cuts today to get to that final roster. So we'll be monitoring that throughout the day as that goes. But in the college football world week zero, we already got our first upset and we have a lot of coworkers who are upset themselves. So many Florida State grads. Our studio is in South Florida. Really an opportunity though for the ACC to kind of change the narrative in week one. As we look ahead, because they have a lot of opportunities against ranked opponents, against really good opponents. And Josh Pate is going to join us to discuss a lot of that. Pate state with a new logo and a new show name. It's Josh Pate's college football show, and it's tonight at 8 p.m. eastern. You can still it's the same show I love the new logo though. Love it. Josh Pate energy it is resembles Pate, a little bit. Let's get paid in here. He's going to be at the Miami at Florida game in the swamp Pate. That's one of those ACC games where they have an opportunity to kind of change the narrative. Because after that, Florida State showing I know it was an ACC opponent. They played. But after an off season where the ACC was docked quite a bit and you're wondering about the future, this is a big weekend for them. Huge. I mean, first off, thank you for the endorsement of Chucky. Both of you. Huge weekend. Could go could go like violently either way. So it could ramp up. Everyone needs their everyone needs their tires pumped a little bit in ACC country after the Florida State debacle, mind you, they lost to an ACC opponent, but no one wants to tout Georgia Tech. It's just Florida State imploded. So hassle. Let's talk about this. Miami could go into Florida and there are two schools of thought here. I think it would be a high quality win. Of course you have the crowd out there who projects Florida to not make a bowl game. That would they would both hate on Miami if they lost. And if they win, they'll say, well, who cares? It was just Florida. Okay, so stay away from that negative thinking. Look right above him Clemson plays Georgia. Clemson not expected to win. But then again neither was Georgia Tech. So what if Clemson is in a like 2323 dogfight with the Bulldogs of Georgia in Atlanta late in the fourth quarter? That alone, plus that sneaky North Carolina Minnesota game on Thursday night. That's a big deal, for the conference and for also the perception of who's capable of getting more than one playoff team in this thing, the big 12, it's assumed they get one. The ACC, it's assumed maybe 1 or 2. Well we could be out of week one. And already people are saying, yeah, that conference is going to get one. And by the way, hassle not to just totally filibuster you. Let's not totally ignore that. Nashville's football team, the Vanderbilt Commodores, do welcome in Virginia Tech. Virginia Tech is only a 13.5 point favorite, so let's just not both eyes. Just keep one eye on it. That's all. I'm asking Virginia Tech. That's a team. I've heard a couple of national analysts say look out for Virginia Tech. That could be a team that steals an ACC championship. I know your pick is for Miami to do just that and to win in the swamp. We'll look forward to your coverage this weekend. We mentioned the Georgia Clemson game and this is really interesting for Georgia because even though it's a big brand name, it's one of the spotlight games of the week. This is not expected to be one of Georgia's toughest games of the season. How difficult is this road going to be for Kirby Smart and company this season? The toughest they've had since he's been there in the regular season? That's how tough he's going into his ninth year, I think. So think about this. Cooper Petagna does really good work here and released on 24 over seven Sports.com last week. The whole team talent composite for this year, Georgia had the second most talented roster in college football. Not a surprise Hassell. Clemson was fifth. Clemson. Although they may not be vintage Clemson of the mid 20 tens, especially at wide receiver in recent years, they've still got a relatively loaded roster. It's just that the last couple of years have tempered people's expectations. So Clemson line of scrimmage, their defensive line versus Georgia's offensive line. One of the best matchups of opening weekend, by the way because both of them think respectively they are the most dominant unit in the country at that particular position. It's one thing if we see, you know, Georgia 30, Clemson 24. Okay Georgia do that to a lot of folks. But there's another world hassle where we turn this thing on in the fourth quarter. And it's Georgia 34 and Clemson 13. And man that's not Clemson. Like you cannot let that happen. That point spread should never be like that. Now I know point spreads don't mean anything when the game's kicked off. But if the game reflects what the oddsmakers think, it will reflect, that's week one. That's like Clemson last year lost to Duke in week one, and we had 11 more weeks of what's wrong with Clemson. Well, that would kick that off. And then you'd start to look down Clemson's schedule and realize, oh, they got two more losable games in the first month at least. So there is no time to work themselves into a lather. Clemson's got to start fast and Georgia has number four, number five and number six in the preseason poll. All on the road. Even the game against Clemson number 14. That is not a home game that is in Atlanta. And there will be a lot of Clemson fans there. Great matchup. As you've talked a lot about throughout the offseason in college Station, you say the winner of this Texas A&M, Notre Dame game is going to go to the College Football Playoff. Now, Jimbo Fisher never won more than eight regular season games with the Aggies. Why do you think that Mike Elko is better positioned in year one than Jimbo has been? So I'll go back to the same article. I didn't think we were giving Patagonia this much shine today, but in that very same article it had Texas A&M with the number seven roster in college football. And then you think back and you think, well, recruiting wise, that's come to think of it, that's true. They have recruited pretty well even that 2020 I think it was 2022 class. The one that was number one of all time. A lot of that's fallen apart. But even above and beyond that they've got layer over layer of really good roster there. And I think back to Mike Elko and I think to what he did when he came in the door at Duke, he came in the door and it didn't take a couple of years. He immediately upgraded them, which just goes to show you, sometimes it's not a total rebuild. Sometimes if the proper ingredients are in the kitchen and the right chef walks in, he can have you a meal pretty ready to go in like 20 minutes and you say, wow, I didn't think we were capable of producing that in here. Well, now he walks into Texas A&M. He's got a better roster situation, got bottomless resources and unlike Kalen DeBoer taking over at Alabama, who is expected to compete for a title immediately, people don't expect that from Elko, even though I think he's capable of it so he doesn't get burdened with the sky high expectation. He gets all the benefit of resource. He gets a top ten roster dropped in his lap, and unlike his predecessor, Jimbo Fisher, he understands organization. He actually is a CEO type. He injects everything that was badly needed in that place, and it's a place he knows very well because he was just there three years ago, so they don't have to wait. It's not a tune up week or two for them. Week one Prime time spotlight against Notre Dame hassle. I think you and I know about Mike Elko. I don't think most of the world does. I think there's a large part of the college football public Saturday night that will turn on the A&M game, and say, oh, the Duke guy, he's at Texas A&M now because that's how overshadowed that hire was. Duke should have beaten Notre Dame last season. Duke almost beat Florida State at Florida State if their quarterback, Riley Leonard, who's now at Notre Dame, doesn't get hurt, they probably win that game, too. We've got ranked games on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Florida State plays on Monday. Let's talk about the standalone game on Sunday. It's in Vegas. It's LSU and USC, and we're going to probably do a lot of blind resumes when we're talking at large teams for the College Football Playoff. How about like a blind resume? If you put Brian Kelly next to Lincoln Riley because they took over their respective programs at the same time. They both have one Heisman winner. They both have one conference championship game appearance. They both have basically identical records. But why does it seem like Riley has more to prove at this point this season? It's a really good question because there's a there's another theme there, and the other theme is Lincoln. Riley did not make the moves out of the gate in terms of his defensive staff that he needed to. So he just had to flush that side of the ball. Well, Brian Kelly had to do the same thing. He made some really poor personnel decisions. Hassle. They had the worst defensive staff in the SEC last year. Lincoln Riley's had bad defensive staffs. That was fairly new for Brian Kelly. So they're facing off. They're both in defensive rebuild mode. They're both putting new quarterbacks under center and they both are in very, very much prove it years. And it's just so ironic. They face off. And then if you further want to go down that storyline foxhole, if you will Brian Kelly's at LSU because Lincoln Riley's not his. His name was tied to LSU. Then he goes to USC at the 11th hour and the LSU jobs open. And they go get Brian Kelly. And so they face off here. And it's the most unpredictable game on the marquee of week one to me. Hassle because this is the one where you could sell me that. Either one of them wins by double digits. There's a world where LSU takes that big offensive line and that ground game that they think is improved and I agree with, and they figure out, oh, USC's defensive front can't match up. We'll just lean on them all day. We'll do what Michigan did to Penn State last year. There's that world. There's also the world where USC comes out really hot, and they realize the LSU secondary is no better than it was last year. And Miller Moss and that underrated receiver room cars them up. They're up 14 to nothing. Six minutes into the game either. One of those things could happen. So a lot is going to be made and a lot of a lot of really really nasty headlines will be written depending on who loses this one same theme with the Florida Miami game, which is the beauty and horror of week one College football. You saw last season. How many points were scored combined when LSU or USC played? It was up in the mid 70s. The total for this one 64.5. So about ten points lower. Maybe Maybe you take a chance on the over and a lot of points. Or maybe the defenses will be improved. So we asked you for storylines and the last one you sent us is not necessarily a statement. It's a real question. So I'm going to read it back to you and you give us the answer. The question is, do we have any elite teams this season? I don't know that we do. Christopher. Maybe one emerges. I don't see one. People would call Georgia that I've got too much question about their defensive front to say that. People say that about Ohio State. Are you Premier enough at quarterback to where I can just assume you win every game you play? I don't know that you are that. Ditto with the offensive line for Ohio State, but to a lesser degree. So let's take a look at the 12 team playoff era. If we get to the end of the road hassle and there are some elite teams, the 12 team playoff is going to look pretty foolish because the 12 team playoff will just end up producing more of what we already had, and we'll go into the thing realizing this is a waste of time. Everyone knows this team or that team is going to win it. However, and this is what every college football fan should probably hope for. If we don't have elite teams and it's obvious it's like a 2007 season. For example, where two loss LSU won it. If we're going into November and we got that on our hands that November will really consist of 15 to 20 teams reasonably thinking they could win a national title. Now, that is not typical for college football, but if we just so happen to get one of those years and it coincides with the advent and the introduction of a 12 team playoff, you could have one of the most memorable Novembers in the history of this sport. We just got to find out if we have elite teams or not. That's the variable in the equation. And here we go. It's week one games kicking off on Thursday, and we've got them all the way through Labor Day weekend. Josh Pate with us here on HQ. You can hear more from him on his podcast later on tonight. It's called Josh Pate's College Football Show. Don't worry, it's the exact same podcast as he's done. Just a new name, same place, live