Every year, like most of America, I enter a NCAA basketball pool. 2002, was a year to remember. As the tournament grinded down to 16 teams, there were 4 teams seeded 8 or lower, including two teams from mid-majors. This was the tipping point for college basketball. Where mid-majors earned the name mid-majors and teams like Southern Illinois and Gonzaga no longer were Cinderellas but rather favorites.
I remember this so vividly because the site we used to run our pool was ESPN. "The Worldwide Leader" did an unprecedented thing that year. They did a "redo," giving everyone a second chance to fill out their brackets.
This is college football's tipping point. Five years from now, ten years from now, we will remember this season as the year power programs gave up their stranglehold on non-BCS schools. We'll remember this year as the year where we can take nothing for granted. This year will go down as the year basketball schools became dual sport schools and underdogs became favorites. No longer are their sure things, and every season we'll look back at Appalachian State and Stanford and say, "This could happen."
The unimaginable has happened this year, and that's including witnessing Ohio State, South Florida and Boston College at the top of the polls. No one could have predicted this.
With this in mind, I'm giving myself a "redo," churning out 7 NEW predictions for the rest of the season, at this, the halfway point.
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