Alabama WR Amari Cooper (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.

SPRING GAME REVELATIONS

NO. 1, ALABAMA'S PASSING GAME MIGHT MAKE IT UNBEATABLE

Whenever nitpicking Alabama's weaknesses, it's relative. Alabama's weaknesses would be strengths for most other teams in the country.

But the Crimson Tide's running won't be the same in 2013. Last year Alabama had one of the greatest offensive lines in college football history. There's a chance four of the five starters will at some point be first-round NFL picks, and the fifth, center Barrett Jones, might have had the best college career of the group. Three of those linemen are in this year's draft. There's also a good chance that Eddie Lacy will be the first running back drafted by the NFL next week. That's a lot of star power to lose.

T.J. Yeldon is a can't miss star at running back and returning starting linemen left tackle Cyrus Kouandjio and right guard Anthony Steen are fantastic. But the running game will not be the same, not without losing four great components.

[Also: Kansas State coach says college football is 'in a bad place']

Still, it's pretty obvious Alabama will run the ball better than most teams. And it might not be an issue, because through the spring it looks like the Crimson Tide's passing offense is getting ready to become unstoppable.

(AP)

Earlier this week, UCLA released it’s “You Can Play Project” video encouraging homosexual athletes in collegiate sports to be comfortable coming out, and football coach Jim Mora was candid about his support for a gay player or coach joining his program.

However, not everyone in college football is as open-minded as Mora.

The Daily Reveille, LSU’s student newspaper, talked to several LSU football players and asked their thoughts about having a gay teammate. The responses, as one could imagine, were diverse.

“Football is supposed to be this violent sport — this aggressive sport that grown men are supposed to play,” senior running back Alfred Blue told the paper. “Ain’t no little boys out here between them lines. So if you gay, we look at you as a sissy. You know? Like, how you going to say you can do what we do and you want a man?”

It’s all-too-common attitudes like Blue’s that have likely prevented the first FBS player to come out while still in school. The air of machismo in the college football locker room is heavy and cutting through that is no small task.

(AP)

Bill Snyder is often referred to as the grandfather of college football – mostly because of his age relative to the nation’s other college football coaches – so when he speaks, people listen.

And he doesn’t speak out very often.

But for some reason Snyder felt empowered this week and used an interview with a Kansas City radio station to lash out at the very sport he coaches.

“I think [college football is] in a bad place right now, and I think it’s in a bad place for a variety of different reasons,” Snyder told KCSP in Kansas City. “We’ve allowed it to become money-driven. We’ve allowed it to become TV-driven. We’ve allowed athletic programs or football programs to mean more to a university than what the university was really supposed to be all about. The last I heard, these were educational institutions, and that’s what it needs to be about. … It’s not driven by values. … It’s driven by dollars and cents, and that’s unfortunate.”

I needed a day to process this comment; to calm down. Then I came to one very definitive conclusion: What a sanctimonious crock of crap.

I know Bill Snyder is old, but how could he conveniently forget how this college football revolution began?

(@McMurphyESPN)Notre Dame's gesture of support for the people of Boston during a tragic and terrible time might be small, but it's still pretty cool.

The Irish will wear helmet stickers with the clover they wear on the famous gold helmets sometimes, and the clover will have a Red Sox-style "B" inside, colored blue and yellow to match the "Boston strong" ribbons.

The picture of the stickers were tweeted out by ESPN's Brett McMurphy.

There have been gestures like this around the sports world, like the Yankees playing "Sweet Caroline" at their first home game following the horrific tragedy at the Boston Marathon on Monday. Those gestures don't fix what happened, but they're still great signs of support.

(@evanwoodbery)

If Tennessee players begin to slack off during practice, Butch Jones is sure to catch it with the new technology he introduced during Wednesday’s practice.

A drone was flying high above Tennessee’s spring practice doing drone-like things (whatever those are). Jones told reporters following practice that the drone would be used to help with film study.

(USA Today Sports Images)

It’s been more than a year since Michael Dyer carried a football for a college team.

The once promising young running back had back-to-back 1,000-yard rushing seasons with Auburn in 2010 and 2011 and won a national championship with the Tigers in 2010.

During that time, however, trouble seemed to follow him wherever he went and it ultimately got him somewhat blackballed from the FBS ranks.

But now he says he wants back in. Dyer has spent the past year at Arkansas Baptist College getting his grades and his mind right. He’s been working out, not playing football, and on Wednesday he joined THV 11’s Mark Edwards to discuss a possible return to the FBS.

“I was asked to sit out a year,” Dyer said on the broadcast. “I was asked to do a lot of changing and maturing to become a better person and a better football player. I spent this whole year doing exactly what I was asked to so that I could reach some of the goals that I knew later that I wanted to do.”

(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.

SPRING GAME REVELATIONS

NO. 2, JOHNNY MANZIEL IS READY FOR HIS ENCORE

There are a few people – repeat, a curious few, who likely hate Texas A&M for whatever reason – who strangely believe that Johnny Manziel hasn't proven anything yet. That he was a fluke, for some reason.

We know because the comments show up on our Facebook page or in the comments at the end of our Manziel posts. Mostly deal with the odd notion that Manziel hasn't proven himself as a passer yet. He threw for 3,706 yards, 26 touchdowns and completed 68 percent of his passes last year. As a freshman. For a SEC team.

The skeptics are wrong, of course. Manziel didn't turn out the greatest freshman season ever for a quarterback by some stroke of luck. He's a great player, his freshman season is all the proof we need of that, and most people who watched him understand that obvious fact.

But, just in case, it seems this spring that Manziel is ready to put any remaining doubts to rest. He looks like he has improved since the end of last season.

(Instagram/uconnhuskies)

We're not quite sure yet what to make of the new UConn football helmets, but we will give them points for creativity.

Connecticut is changing its logo and its overall look, with new uniforms (we're sure of those, they look great) and helmets. The Huskies, who put a picture of the helmets and jerseys on their Instagram page, have eschewed the traditional side logo for the front "looking at you" mascot look. Kent State used it in its bowl game last year, and really that one looked kind of creepy.

The UConn look isn't creepy, really. But we're not sure what we think about it.