Every Friday, the Friday Five will rank something in the world of college football -- anything and everything from the logical to the illogical. This week, we rank five teams likely to take a step backward in 2016.
In last week's Friday Five we looked at five Power Five teams that could be considered a dark horse in 2016. Now, no matter how you define dark horse, at the center of it, it's a team that defies expectations for the better.
In this week's Friday Five, we're going to go in a bit of a different direction. You see, while every college football season brings us teams that exceed expectations, those teams don't always live up to them the following year. So I've gone ahead and looked at five teams I believe are poised to take a step back after strong 2015 seasons.
These teams all won at least 10 games last year. Some of them even won their own divisions and came close to winning their conferences.
By including them on this list, I'm not saying they're going to experience a major collapse or anything. I'm simply saying that, if their fans are expecting an encore of last season, there's a good chance they're going to be disappointed with the results.
I'll be ranking them in order of how drastic I think the step back may be, from least to most.
5. North Carolina: The Tar Heels had a fantastic 2015 season, finishing the year 11-3, with an 8-0 mark in ACC play. They came within eight points of beating Clemson in the ACC Championship and earning a berth in the College Football Playoff.
This season they've been chosen to repeat as Coastal Division champions, but I'm not so convinced it's going to happen.
First of all, the schedule is a bit more difficult in 2016. The Tar Heels avoided both Clemson and Florida State during the regular season in 2015, but this year they're going to have to hit the road to play the Seminoles. They also open the season with a "neutral" site game against Georgia in Atlanta. They also have to break in a new quarterback with Mitch Trubisky.
The good news for North Carolina is that there is still no dominant team in the Coastal Division, so another division title is definitely in play. I just have a hard time believing the Heels will be able to get to 10 wins again, let alone 11.
4. Iowa: Iowa is in a similar situation as North Carolina, in that it plays in the weaker division of its conference, and it's expected to repeat as champion. The Hawkeyes claiming another West Division crown is certainly in play, but there's simply no way they're going to be as successful in the regular season as they were last year.
The Hawkeyes went 12-0 during the regular season before losing a close game to Michigan State in the Big Ten Championship, and then being blasted by Stanford in the Rose Bowl.
The reasons I'm skeptical about 2016 is that the schedule won't be as forgiving in 2016, as the Hawkeyes now must play nine Big Ten games, and they get a road trip to Penn State as well as a home game against Michigan as part of their cross-divisional draw. Also, even though Iowa went 8-0 in Big Ten play last season, five of those eight wins were by less than 10 points, and Iowa had one of the best turnover margins in the conference.
History suggests that turnovers are more a product of luck than anything, and that luck balances out, so I expect that to happen here, and if it does, some of those close games could go the other way.
So, yes, Iowa could win the West, but it's not winning 12 games. I'm going to say 8-4 is far more likely.
3. Baylor: There were reasons to anticipate a possible Baylor slide long before Art Briles lost his job as part of the fallout from Baylor's handling of assault allegations against its athletes, though the loss of Briles certainly doesn't help Baylor's chances on the field next season.
Still, even putting all the off-field messes to the side and focusing purely on football, we probably shouldn't glance over the fact that Baylor has to replace four starters on the offensive line, as well as all three starters on its defensive line.
Furthermore, the schedule is a bit off. Baylor starts the season with five games in five weeks, takes a week off, plays Kansas, then takes another week off before finishing with six games in six weeks. Aside from the weird timing of the byes -- you need all the time you can get to prepare for, and recover from Kansas -- the Bears will also be playing both Texas and Oklahoma on the road this season.
So when you put all of that together, and then include all the distractions of this offseason, it's really hard to see Baylor having the kind of season we've come to expect from it this year. While I still believe this is a team that's going to finish in the middle of -- if not slightly higher --the Big 12, at the same time, if they ended up missing a bowl game altogether I wouldn't consider it a major shock.
2. Temple: Temple is going to be good in 2016, but not as good as we saw last season when this team was playing for an AAC title, and a possible spot in a New Year's Six game. I believe 2015 was something of a perfect storm for the Owls, as the depth chart was filled with juniors and seniors, but now many of those players have moved on.
The Owls return only 12 starters, and this isn't a major program that just reloads. You can't just plug in another linebacker to replace the production of Tyler Matakevich.
Now, that's not to say there's no reason for optimism. The Owls will not have to play Houston during the regular season, and they get to play both Cincinnati and USF -- the two teams you have to consider their stiffest competition in the East -- at home. Then there's the road schedule in conference, which is also favorable.
So there's a good chance the Owls will be in the division race all season, but I don't think they'll be able to fly nearly as high this season as they did in 2015.
1. Wisconsin: Wisconsin was a team that really wasn't as good as its record last season. The Badgers finished 10-3, but anybody who looked closely realized that there were plenty of flaws, and that they were taking advantage of a thin schedule.
Wisconsin played only three teams that won at least seven games during the 2015 regular season (Alabama, Iowa, Northwestern) and it went 0-3 against them. The only other bowl teams the Badgers played were Nebraska and Minnesota, and they got to bowl games despite having 5-7 records simply because there weren't enough six-win teams.
This season the schedule is a lot tougher.
Wisconsin will play five teams that won at least 10 games last season (Michigan State, Michigan, Ohio State, Iowa and Northwestern), and four of those games will be on the road. It will also open the season against an LSU team that won nine games last year and has a Heisman favorite at running back in Leonard Fournette.
As a result, we're looking at an instance where this year's Wisconsin team might actually be better than last year's team, yet finish with three or four fewer wins.
Football is funny that way sometimes.
Honorable Mention: Navy, Northwestern, Ole Miss, Stanford, TCU, Utah
