Ad Disclosure
Alabama went home with the National Championship, while Clemson was left to ponder what might have been after Monday’s title game.
But there were other winners and losers from the last college football season as well. Let’s go down the list:
WINNERS
Alabama/Derrick Henry — Aside from a stumble against Ole Miss, the Crimson Tide washed away the stain of last year’s playoff loss to Ohio State with a 14-1 record and a fifth national championship for coach Nick Saban.
Thrashing Michigan State along the way and taking the Big Ten down another peg was a nice bonus, too.
As for Henry, he rushed for an amazing 2,219 yards and 28 touchdowns while winning the Heisman Trophy and a handful of other honors as well. It’s hard to imagine how the talented back’s last college season could have gone much better for him.
Chad Kelly — Kelly came into the season as a bit of a question mark in some circles. His talent was obvious, but could a young man that had his issues at Clemson handle the spotlight of the SEC? The answer was an emphatic yes. Kelly passed for 4,042 yards and 31 TDs, both league highs, while adding another 500 yards and 10 scores on the ground. He’s coming back for his senior season, and if new playmakers emerge around him, he could take the next step to Heisman contender.
Jim McElwain — The end of the season was disappointing, but a 10-4 record and an SEC East title in his first season at Florida exceeded expectations. Assuming he finds an answer at quarterback, the best could be yet to come for him and the Gators.
The SEC — After Ohio State’s national title last January and Clemson’s rise to prominence this season, media from around the country began gleefully suggesting that the rest of college football is catching up with the SEC. In the words of Lee Corso, “not so fast, my friends.”
The league put up an 9-2 record in bowl/postseason games, winning those games by an average of 15.6 points. With those games, the SEC posted a 15-8 record against other Power 5 schools — the best mark nationally by far. Even if some continue to miss the point, the SEC is still king of the college football hill.
LOSERS
ESPN — With the controversial decision to hold two playoff games on New Year’s Eve, the ratings took a beating. Both playoff semifinals from the 2014 season, played on New Year’s Day, pulled in more than 28 million viewers. This year’s games didn’t fare so well, as Clemson-Oklahoma got 15.6 million viewers and Alabama-Michigan State pulled in 18.5 million.
The national title game was thrilling, but it was still down 23 percent from the Ohio State-Oregon game from last year. Considering the money Disney has tied up in college football, those are some dismal numbers.
SEC East — The SEC East had a rough 2015 season. Even champion Florida endured theNot suspension of its starting quarterback for PEDs while Georgia watched its best player, Nick Chubb, go down with a gruesome knee injury before eventually parting ways with its coach.
Tennessee finished hotter than a firecracker, but fizzled its way through very winnable games with Oklahoma, Florida and Arkansas early in the season. Missouri had one of the worst offenses in the nation, off-field drama with a threatened player boycott and watched its coach forced into retirement by cancer.
Kentucky wasted a 21-0 lead in a rivalry game it needed to win for bowl eligibility on the last day of the regular season, and Vanderbilt had a strong defense, but couldn’t find enough offense to win more than four games. At the bottom of the standings, South Carolina was so bad that Steve Spurrier resigned halfway through the season.
Brighter days are coming, but this was a rough year for SEC East schools.
Officiating — Not to be a prisoner of the moment here, but officiating in college football was not good enough in 2015. Specifically, the ejection part of the targeting rule should be removed because college officials can’t seem to ever get that call right. Player safety is important, but isn’t 15 yards punishment enough in almost every case?
Texas A&M — Something strange is going on in College Station, and it’s generating enough negative headlines to put A&M on this list. A pair of former five-star quarterback recruits, Kyle Allen and Kyler Murray, transferred to Houston and Oklahoma, respectively in December. That was followed by the decision for coach Kevin Sumlin to “part ways” with offensive coordinator Jake Spavital in early January, followed by the resignation of athletic director Eric Hyman two days later.
Rumors are swirling around Sumlin, too. Smart money says that 2016 will need to include a couple more wins, and a lot less instability, for Sumlin to hang around.
Randy Capps is a contributing writer for Saturday Down South. He covers SEC football, South Carolina and Georgia.
