Easy there snot nose. Back up a little bit.
Don't assume I was making light of Louisville’s team, just stating a fact. They’d be a completely different team without Lamar Jackson. Completely different. Just take it as a compliment towards your quarterback. He’s a special talent. Freakish athlete. If he stays healthy he'll win the Heisman Trophy. But if he gets hurt, Louisville becomes a fairly average team. Kyle Bolin ain't scoring 7 or 8 TD's a game.
I’m not one of these people that only know about Louisville what they just recently saw in terms of Heisman hype for Lamar Jackson on ESPN. There’s a lot of those out there now. I probably know a lot more about Louisville and the players they have than you think I do. Been watching ‘em for years. Most of ‘em since they were in high school. Hell, it’s a safe assumption that I know a lot more about every team in country than most.
However, I told you before the season that Florida St. was too high in the Coach’s Poll that came out and Louisville was too low. Louisville certainly deserves their top 3 ranking, for now. But my point is, I’m here to tell you it’s a much different type of pressure that’s felt when a team is taking the field with that #1 next to their name. The kids feel it. The coaches feel it. It builds every single week. Teams that have been there know that. It just gets multiplied even more after it’s been placed there by the playoff committee in October. Just being ranked in the top 4 is too much pressure to handle for some teams.
If Louisville goes undefeated they're in. And deservedly so with Clemson, Florida St., Houston, and the ACC Coastal champion on their resume. That schedule is nothing like the Boise St. schedules of days gone by.
Bottom line is we don’t really know what 4 teams are going to navigate through it all to be there in the end. What we do know is that the Big-10, SEC, ACC, and Pac-12 all have elimination games coming up, and we know who the viable participants are going to be in those games. There’s a long ways to go for everybody involved. Including Alabama. Although we agree it’ll be fun.