News From CBSSports: Here are five potential Cinderella teams for college football in 2017

This week’s Friday Five took a look at college football’s all-time best Cinderella stories . But what about 2017? Will there be a team to rise from nowhere and make a run, either at the conference or playoff level?

College football is a sport that heavily favors, well, the favorites. There are reasons for that. There’s no salary cap, no draft that gives the worst teams the opportunity to select best players, and no overall vision of equality. Even at the Power Five level, there’s noticeable separation. The best programs generally get the best athletes and have the most extensive resources.

About the only thing that binds two teams together is the scholarship limit. And with the way college football’s regular season and postseason are set up, the opportunities for Cinderellas to stand out are usually limited. Still, every once and a while, a team makes an improbable run and caps it off with a memorable win. Boise State did it as famously as any team in 2006-07.

With that in mind, here are five teams who could become college football’s Cinderella next season. This doesn’t mean the following teams will compete for, let alone win, a national championship. But it does mean they could be in for a surprise season that makes them a team du jour down the stretch.

BYU
Who better to take on the title of college football’s Cinderella than the team who arguably best personifies it? At the very least, BYU is on the short list for well-known “giant killers.” In the three years of the College Football Playoff, no team outside the Power Five has cracked the top four, but the Cougars have a chance with their schedule.

That, by the way, is heavily front-loaded. On Sept. 2, BYU plays LSU at a neutral-site game in Houston. The following week, it gets a home game against nemesis Utah. After that, it’s another home game vs. Wisconsin. October doesn’t let up much with back-to-back games against Boise State and at Mississippi State.

That’s a tough stretch, but the Cougars are talented enough to win many of those games. Furthermore, they don’t lose many starters off of last year’s team, though the quality of the losses cannot be overlooked. Leading rusher Jamaal Williams is gone as is top pass rusher Sae Tautu. Finding another bell cow back and rebuilding the defensive front will be top offseason priorities. Do that, and perhaps BYU can notch some impressive, and perhaps unexpected, early wins.

Mississippi State
The Bulldogs were a fun Cinderella team in 2014 when quarterback Dak Prescott led them to a brief No. 1 ranking and eventually a New Year’s Six game. With all the talk in the SEC of Alabama this and even Auburn that, Mississippi State is one of the many teams being given the back-burner treatment.

However, Mississippi State has something many other unheralded SEC teams do not: a quarterback. And his name is Nick Fitzgerald. There was a lot of inconsistency in his game as a first-year starter in 2016 but also a lot of promise. My gut feeling is MSU is still a year away from a more realistic run out of the West. However, with home games against LSU and Alabama, Dan Mullen’s team might get a big win to show the signs are there.

Syracuse
Cuse is placed in an awful division to make a Cinderella run. Clemson and Florida State every year? Are you serious? Still, coach Dino Babers showed in his first year that there was some potential left in this Northeastern program. The future is bright even after a 4-8 season. The two-deep was littered with freshmen and sophomores, and now they all have a year in Babers’ system under their belt. Quarterback Eric Dungey has some serious guts about him as well.

Beating Virginia Tech at home confirmed an ever-growing belief about the Orange under Babers: They were going to knock off somebody they shouldn’t. If Dungey can stay healthy, and if the defense can be even moderately better after finishing dead last in the conference in points per game allowed, this team is going to be a pain in the side for the rest of the ACC.

Honorable mentions: Boise State, Missouri, Troy, Western Kentucky

*** (Kansas State and and USF are the other two.)

Here are five potential Cinderella teams for college football in 2017

 

This might make for an interesting start of the '17 season.

 

LSU playss 3 of the 5 in the first 4 games.

 

Did the early bowl predictions come out yet?

 

LSU will be 5-0 going into the Florida game.

 

Mel Kiper Jr says if I can maintain consistency of form I can roll a 300 game.

 

It won't be overly interesing, because for the first time in a decade LSU will actually have an offensive system that isn't from the stone ages. All four of those teams are going to get trampled.

 

How is it that Tenn isn't in the mix given they play the Gumps every year? :/

 

How would a Tennessee team be characterized as a "Cinderella" when they finished last season with nine wins? How would ANY team who has been projected to win their division over the last few years be called a "Cinderella?"