(USA Today Sports Images)For a brief moment, it looked like Oregon might give Louisville a run in the final five minutes of its Sweet 16 game.

And then Louisville decided to turn up its defensive intensity, and that moment passed pretty quickly.

With 5:13 left, Oregon scored to cut Louisville's lead to 70-64. And by the time the Ducks scored again, the game was over.

A miss, an offensive foul, a turnover, three more misses, another offensive foul ... you get the point. Oregon's offense was completely locked down by Louisville's defense with the game on the line. The Cardinals moved on to the regional final with a 77-69 win.

Louisville coach Rick Pitino extended one of the odder and more impressive records in college basketball on Friday, improving his record to 11-0 in Sweet 16 games over his coaching career.

This wasn't the complete domination Louisville had shown since it started a legendary run against Syracuse in the Big East title game, but the game never really seemed in doubt either.

This offseason we will count down various topics from Monday through Friday, bringing you the top five of the important and definitely some not so important issues in college football. It's the Doc Five, every week until we will thankfully have actual games to discuss.

COLLEGE FOOTBALL'S BEST CINDERELLA STORIES

NO. 1, 1984 BYU WINS NATIONAL TITLE

Perhaps a playoff will allow some underdog to achieve what BYU did in 1984. But in the nearly three decades since the Cougars won an unlikely national title, the chances of someone replicating that accomplishment have become almost impossible.

A WAC team that was unranked in the preseason, and had just lost future Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young, won a national championship. That's incredible. There hasn't been a national champion from a conference not currently affiliated with the BCS since then (Penn State, Notre Dame and Miami won as independents in that stretch). There hasn't been a team that was unranked in the preseason win an AP national title since. In today's college football there are two common threads for every national title team: They come from a major conference, and they're ranked before the season. BYU was neither.

The perfect storm the Cougars had that season, and the inconceivability that it could be repeated in today's environment, makes that BYU team the biggest Cinderella story in college football the last 30 years.

(USA Today Sports Images)Dr. Saturday will be looking at the 25 most interesting teams headed into spring football through March, examining which programs have the biggest questions, the most expectations and the best storylines. This isn’t the 25 best going into the spring, just the 25 we’re keeping the closest eye on. Previously: Virginia Tech

ALABAMA

What happened in 2012
Alabama took another huge step towards establishing itself as one of the greatest (or is it the greatest already?) dynasties in college football history.

The Crimson Tide won their third national title in four years, becoming just the second team to win three AP national championships in four years. They joined Notre Dame, which won three from 1946-49. Nebraska also won three titles from 1994-97, but the last one was split, with the Cornhuskers finishing first in the coaches poll. Those are the only teams since college football started using the polls in 1936 to win three titles in four years.

While Alabama was at times absolutely dominant in 2012, its title also showed that luck can sometimes play a role. The Crimson Tide were on the outside looking in after a loss at home to Texas A&M. Then on one crazy evening, Stanford beat Oregon and Baylor beat Kansas State, giving Alabama a second chance to play for the BCS title. Georgia fell a few yards short to Alabama in the SEC Championship Game and the Crimson Tide played (and steamrolled) Notre Dame for the title. Alabama was fully deserving, but it also should be grateful for the late-season upsets by Baylor and Stanford.

Alabama fielded a great team in 2012, which should be no surprise. The Crimson Tide is set to do the same again this year.

What makes them interesting in 2013

(USA Today Sports Images)There are a lot of reasons Mike Gundy considered leaving Oklahoma State for Tennessee this offseason, of course.

And he was close to leaving, as CBSSports.com's Jeremy Fowler's story on Gundy points out. Gundy provided details about his kids starting to research Knoxville, and Tennessee putting on a full-court press that included Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam. The Volunteers badly wanted him to succeed Derek Dooley, who was fired after the season.

“At some point, that's where we thought we were going to go,” Gundy told CBSSports.com.

And, according to Fowler's report, one thing Gundy seriously considered as he contemplated leaving Oklahoma State was his philosophical opposition to a couple of tough non-conference season-opening games for the Cowboys in 2013 and 2014.

Yes, with neutral-site games against Mississippi State in 2013 and Florida State in 2014 on the OSU schedule, Gundy almost went to Tennessee to avoid those contests.

This offseason we will count down various topics from Monday through Friday, bringing you the top five of the important and definitely some not so important issues in college football. It's the Doc Five, every week until we will thankfully have actual games to discuss.

COLLEGE FOOTBALL'S BEST CINDERELLA STORIES

NO. 2, APPALACHIAN STATE WINS AT THE BIG HOUSE

Technically, Appalachian State over Michigan wasn't even the biggest upset of the 2007 college football season.

The Mountaineers were unofficially 33-point underdogs, a number that comes from Pregame.com (via MLive.com). Las Vegas sports books generally don't post lines on FBS vs. FCS games. Later that season, Stanford won at USC as 41-point underdogs. That's the largest underdog, by known point spread history, to win a college football game outright.

That hardly matters. Appalachian State is still the most widely remembered and mythologized upset of the last 30 years in college football. The 1983 N.C. State team was only a 7.5- or 8.5-point underdog to Houston. Technically, if Oregon beats Louisville this week in the NCAA tournament it would be a bigger upset. Nobody would make documentaries about an Oregon Sweet 16 win over Louisville in 30 years.

So no offense to Stanford, whose upset was tremendous (and a sign of things to come). But say the name Appalachian State to a college football fan years from now, and odds are they'll remember that 2007 win at Michigan.

NCAA president Mark Emmert (USA Today Sports Images)Without knowing how the Nevin Shapiro-Miami case will turn out, one unexpected outcome is that the NCAA continues to have its integrity battered by the Hurricanes.

There haven't been many cases, at least those not involving Jerry Tarkanian, in which the subject of an investigation has laid bare its feelings about how it perceives the NCAA and how it has handled its case. After Miami has ripped the NCAA, it will be hard for any institution being investigated to not be at least skeptical of the NCAA's methods, or perhaps hostile as well.

Miami will file a motion to the NCAA to dismiss the case on Friday. The Miami Herald had some new claims by the school that are involved in that motion. The paper reported that after a NCAA investigator was fired following improperly using Shapiro's lawyer to build a case against Miami, his successor continued to try and work with Shapiro's lawyer to get information. Also, Miami claims the NCAA lied to interview subjects by telling them other interview subjects said things they never did, to presumably coerce them into giving information.

The claims make the NCAA, which already looked about as bad as could be in the Miami case, look even worse.

(USA Today Sports Images)Injuries happen in spring football. Unless they're serious, ACL-type deals, they're not going to have a huge effect on a team. Even a three-month injury gives players time to be ready for training camp.

But when there's a cluster of injuries at one position that's so severe it might actually change the way a team operates its spring game, that's newsworthy.

So it goes for Florida, which can't keep offensive linemen on the field.

(USA Today Sports Images)This offseason we will count down various topics from Monday through Friday, bringing you the top five of the important and definitely some not so important issues in college football. It's the Doc Five, every week until we will thankfully have actual games to discuss.

COLLEGE FOOTBALL'S BEST CINDERELLA STORIES

NO.3, JOHNNY MANZIEL WINS THE HEISMAN

We don't think of Johnny Manziel as a Cinderella story. His rise was so thorough that we knew we were watching greatness by the time he guided Texas A&M to a win at Alabama, and he just cemented his standing with an unreal Cotton Bowl performance.

That takes away from Manziel's journey to that pedestal. In August, three months before he was accepting his Heisman Trophy, he was just a redshirt freshman with a middling recruiting ranking who was fighting for a starting spot.

It's hard to think about Manziel as a Cinderella story right now. He's still in the middle of what is already a historic career, and he's the biggest star in college football. But it's also a fact that he is one of the most unlikely Heisman Trophy winners in many years.