College GameDay’s Kirk Herbstreit includes Iowa among teams to potentially unseat Michigan
Could the Iowa Hawkeyes be positioned to spoil the Michigan Wolverines‘ bid for three straight Big Ten championships?
As college football returned over the weekend, the College GameDay crew was back in full force as well. Led by host Rece Davis, analysts Kirk Herbstreit, Desmond Howard and Pat McAfee broke down a number of topics in college football.
Michigan’s reign atop the Big Ten and who could potentially knock off the Wolverines was one of the primary topics in question. Howard is sticking with the Wolverines to win the conference again and actually picked UM to win the national championship, too.
“I think Michigan is going to win their third-straight Big Ten Championship,” Howard said. “J.J. McCarthy is going to take a step up. He has the most talented backfield behind him, so I’m going with the Michigan Wolverines.”
Meanwhile, Herbstreit and McAfee each chose Ohio State to unseat Michigan in the Big Ten.
“I feel real good saying this because we have no idea who the quarterback’s gonna be, but give me Ohio State,” McAfee said. “Just strictly because of what has happened over the last couple of years and then getting a chance to watch them play against Georgia, who would obviously go on and do what they did to TCU. I think Ohio State has found an attitude and culture. Now who’s the quarterback that is going to lead it?”
Herbstreit responded to McAfee and shared some of the reasons why he likes the Buckeyes to win the conference.
“And I think the defense it’s gonna be interesting to see after the way they played the last couple of games against Michigan and Georgia where they gave up some explosives. They had an entire offseason to try to really improve with Jim Knowles and now in his second year in the system.
“The quarterback to me is the beneficiary of being able to get to—now Brian Hartline is the new offensive coordinator and play caller, but it’s still Ryan Day and his scheme—so the beneficiary having that scheme with Marvin Harrison and Emeka Egbuka. They’re just so loaded and TreVeyon Henderson’s back healthy. I still think they have a great shot to make the run,” Herbstreit said.
Then, the crew got into potential dark horse candidates where McAfee made an argument for Penn State.
“They have eight returning starters on offense, eight returning starters on defense. It all comes down to the quarterback Drew Allar. They had two freshman running backs last year that had almost 2000 yards. They have it all seemingly on paper to make a run. So it’s not just an Ohio State-Michigan conversation in the Big Ten,” McAfee said.
Herbstreit agreed that Penn State is talented and could factor into the race. But, he also headed West for the conversation, too.
“Everyone’s excited about what (Drew Allar) can do, highly-touted recruit actually out of Ohio. But there’s Nicolas Singleton. I mean, they’re loaded and I think their defense is gonna get back to being nasty. They got guys that could rush to quarterback, so I’m with you. And I even think I would throw in on the other side. I think Wisconsin with Luke Fickell who we talked earlier about what they can do with Tanner Mordecai coming in there.
“Iowa with Cade McNamara with him leaving Michigan, you would think that obviously offensively it can’t be any worse than they were a year ago. They’re going to take some big steps. So I think the Big Ten, we talked about the Pac-12 and the Big 12 and the depth they have. I think the Big Ten has some pretty good depth this year as well,” Herbstreit said.
There’s understandably plenty of buzz surrounding the big three in the East, but it’s nice to see one of the top voices in college football toss Iowa’s name into the hat as a legitimate contender out of the West alongside Wisconsin.
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