Now that the 2018-19 College Football Season is over with the Clemson Tigers claiming the National Championship, it’s time to do a “post mortem” on how the season went, including how The Kickoff measured in terms of our preseason predictions. Of course, you can only be so accurate before Game One, basing your analysis on the prior season’s performance, historic performance over time, the quality of returning and new players, and factors such as the difficulty of schedule, coaching changes, etc. That can all get thrown off if a seemingly difficult schedule ahead is impacted by teams who underperform. That’s part of what makes the off-season so exciting: Trying to look into a crystal ball and determine how things will turn out.

As always, 2018 brought us the share of disappointments and surprises. Once we got into the actual games and Media Days hype turned to Game Day realities, adjustments in expectations naturally followed.