College Football 2021 – A Season For the Ages

I don’t think I’m overstating things when I say that the 2021 College Football season was one of the most entertaining, interesting and unpredictable seasons that we’ve seen in nearly a generation. Yes, in the very end we did have a predictable matchup for the title. This season was not the answer to the larger issue of competitive balance among the elite in the sport; though I will remind our readers that Georgia last won a national championship in 1980. Like recent seasons in which there are seemingly never more than two teams good enough to realistically win a title (and some years there’s really just one), in 2021 it was pretty much Georgia, Alabama, and everyone else.

Chalk it up to recency bias, but I believe that judging the season based solely on the identity of the two teams left standing at the end does a disservice to how great 2021 was. Don’t look at this through the lens of January 2022. Look at it through the lens of August 2021. What if I told you last August, before a single game was played, that all of the following things would be true about the upcoming season:

• The champions of the ACC, Big 12 and Pac-12 would be teams that had never before won an outright* title in their respective conferences. (*Baylor did win a share of the Big 12 in 2014)
• Clemson, Ohio State and Oklahoma not only wouldn’t win their conference, but none of them wouldn’t even play in their conference championship game.
• Two of the four CFP participants would be making their first ever appearance.
• One of those two would be a G5 team.
• The national champion would be someone who hadn’t won a title in several decades AND they’d be led there by a former walk-on QB.

You’d probably tell me to lay off the hallucinogenics if I tried to get you to believe all that back in August. Yet here we are.

Let’s reflect back on some other great themes and moments from the season:

• Defense mattered again
• Fans were back in stadiums, and they mattered too

• Week 1: After suffering a catastrophic knee injury three years earlier that nearly cost him his leg, QB McKenzie Milton took the field for Florida State and led a comeback that nearly resulted in an upset of Notre Dame
• Week 2: The feel-good vibes would not last long in Tallahassee, as FCS Jacksonville State would defeat the Noles on an inexplicable walk-off Hail Mary

• Week 5: Then #7 Cincinnati went to South Bend to face then #9 Notre Dame. The Bearcats pulled off an impressive 24-13 victory over the Irish that would ultimately be the difference-maker in them being the first G5 team selected for the Playoff.
• Week 9: #6 Michigan vs #8 Michigan State. My game of the year.

• Week 8: Then #7 Penn State is upset at home by Illinois in a game that went 9 overtime periods. Yes, the new method for settling OT games needs an adjustment, but that does not diminish how big a moment this was for the Illini and Bret Bielema in his first season back in the Big Ten.
• Week 11: Walk-on freshman FB Jared Casey hadn’t played a single snap all season for the lowly Kansas Jayhawks. Injuries forced him on the field for the final play of their OT game at Texas, a 2-point conversion attempt that would end it, win or lose. Casey found an opening in the end zone, and Jayhawks QB Jalon Daniels found Casey. Two points for Kansas, and one of the biggest upsets of the season (never mind how lousy Texas ended up being). For his off-the-bench heroics, Casey landed himself an NIL deal with Applebees.

• Also Week 11: Texas Tech K Jonathan Garibay nailed a 62-yard walk-off FG against Iowa State. His exploits earned him an NIL deal with Church’s.

• Week 13: The heartbreaking Week 9 loss to MSU doesn’t keep Jim Harbaugh and his Wolverines down, as they roll over hated rival Ohio State to claim the Big Ten East title, and their first win over the Buckeyes in a decade.
• Championship Week: The Utah Utes steamroll Oregon for the second time in 3 weeks to claim their first ever Pac-12 title. The Utes overcame much adversity to reach this point, including a 1-2 start and a QB change. But nothing was tougher than losing CB Aaron Lowe, who was shot and killed in the early morning following their Week 4 game. In the saddest of ironies, Lowe had just been named the recipient of the Ty Jordan Memorial Scholarship named after the Utes RB who died of gun violence only one year earlier. The Utes honored both players throughout the season, and hosted both families at the Pac-12 Championship Game and subsequent Rose Bowl Game.

I’m sure there are some omissions on this list, so please, jump on the message board and share some of your favorite moments of the 2021 college football season.

During the offseason, which seems to be getting ever shorter these days when it comes to off-field activity, I’ll be writing about some of the issues college football faces today, and what the solutions might be (some realistic, some maybe not).