The annual, popular feature returns for its 2025 version, with resident Comstock Park (Mich.) Head Coach and Scoop Director of Content Doug Samuels the only panelist riding into the season on the wings of victory. What's his encore? Where do Scott Roussel, Zach Barnett and John Brice land with their proclamations?
Samuels a year ago was the only member of Team Scoop with a banger. He deftly predicted LAST AUGUST that the Big Ten Conference would continue its ascent to the top of college football when Samuels forecasted one-third of the first-ever 12-team College Football Playoff would hail from the Big Ten.
So, for an encore? Samuels is sticking in the Big Ten, but he is going in the opposite direction. Samuels has nothing but disappointment in store for the reigning CFP title-winning Ohio State Buckeyes.
He doesn't have them even in the CFP field. They're the nation's No. 3 team in the AP Top 25 and host to No. 1 Texas this weekend.
Elsewhere, and thus the picture directly above, Roussel, the Godfather of 26-year-old FootballScoop, believes that selecting preseason AP No. 6 Notre Dame, the reigning national runner-up, to hoist that gold, spaceship-looking CFP National Championship trophy is the winning ticket.
He explains his selection in great detail, a year after having tabbed those plucky underducks from Oregon to hoist the school's first-ever national title in football. Guided by a quarterback who has yet to throw a pass in a college football game, Roussel is calling 2025 the end of the Fighting Irish' 37 year National Championship drought.
LIke Samuels, Barnett is picking a team to fail. He's got the aforementioned and first-time-ever-in-the-preseason Texas Longhorns slated not only to fall from their lofty perch but to miss the CFP. He's got the Horns down to the tune of an 8-4 forecast.
And Brice, Tennessean by grace and Midwesterner by present, is sticking in America's heartland. He's got the Iowa Hawkeyes rebounding from a disappointing 2024 season, a decade-long offensive funk and coming from outside any top 25 rankings to secure a CFP berth.
A second year with offensive coordinator Tim Lester and the arrival of fabulous former FCS All-America quarterback Mark Gronowski, a two-time national champion at South Dakota State, push the Hawkeyes to a new level.
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