The 10 worst narratives of college football season

The ebb and flow of a college football season lends itself to overreaction. What we see one week becomes fact — until the moment we see something else. From the moment South Carolina kicked off against Texas A&M back on Aug. 28 until now, there have been plenty of conclusions drawn and then re-drawn, narratives created and destroyed, hype that raged out of control before falling flat.

And now that we have arrived at the final week of the regular season, it's worth looking back on the 10 most egregious instances of fans and media jumping on a narrative that turned out to be, well, just flat wrong.

1. Nick Saban's dynasty is over! It was almost gleeful, the way people quickly declared Alabama had fallen back to the pack in the SEC following a 23-17 loss at Ole Miss on Oct. 4. The only thing more in-vogue than asking what was wrong with the Crimson Tide was bashing offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin.

Now look where we are: It's Nov. 27 and Alabama is a huge favorite to beat Auburn, win the SEC title and probably the national title. It doesn't mean they will, and it doesn't mean there weren't some problems early in the season that Saban needed to figure out. But if Alabama wins the inaugural College Football Playoff, it's four titles in six years. That's a dynasty, folks.

2. Ohio State is done without Braxton Miller! The biggest mistake people make in evaluating college football (and basketball) teams year to year is they focus on what teams lose, not what teams have. Now, to be fair, few outside of Ohio State's program knew what they had in J.T. Barrett.

But when you combine a talent like Barrett with Urban Meyer's system and Tom Herman's coaching, good things are likely going to happen. How good? Barrett has thrown for 33 touchdowns against just 10 interceptions, and now people are wondering whether Miller should transfer next season or risk becoming a backup. Miller was going to have a tremendous season had he not gotten injured, but people wrote off Ohio State far too quickly.

3. Move over, Johnny Football, it's Kenny Trill's world! Remember all the breathless descriptions of Kenny Hill's first game as the successor to Johnny Manziel at Texas A&M? Sure, Hill looked spectacular in a 52-28 victory at South Carolina on the season's opening night, throwing for 511 yards and playing generally mistake-free. But it was still just one game, a fact plenty of people in the Heisman punditry ignored, as did his parents.

Rushing to trademark his nickname two weeks into the season, while perhaps smart business, didn't exactly come off the right way. As we quickly found out, Hill was not that good and South Carolina's defense really was that bad. By Nov. 1, Hill had lost his job to Kyle Allen.

4. Virginia Tech is back! After a couple mediocre years by Virginia Tech standards, few expected the Hokies to go into Ohio State in Week 2 and win with Michael Brewer, a Band-Aid quarterback transfer who barely played at Texas Tech. So when they did — quite impressively, by the way — the easy conclusion to draw was that the Hokies had rediscovered a formula that would return them to national contender status. It only took a couple weeks to find out that was indeed not the case, and in fact, the Ohio State win was one of the season's biggest outliers.

Virginia Tech lost five of seven after the triumph in Columbus, and now the Hokies need to beat Virginia on Friday just to become bowl eligible.

5. UCLA is a fraud! Nobody's 4-0 start was picked apart more than the Bruins, a team with preseason hopes of making the Playoff. They struggled at Virginia, barely beat Memphis (which now looks like a good win) and were very fortunate to come back against Texas with a backup quarterback (also looking like a good win these days).Then, when UCLA lost in consecutive weeks to Utah and Oregon — both at home — the Bruins were basically called a flop.

Though UCLA still has some offensive line issues and quarterback Brett Hundley hasn't taken the huge step forward many expected, Jim Mora's team is 9-2 and has a puncher's chance of making the Playoff. Some things would have to fall in place, including a victory against Oregon in the Pac 12 title game, but there was clearly some overreaction about the Bruins' early struggles.

6. The Big Ten is out of the playoff! Make no mistake; Sept. 6 was a bad day for the Big Ten. In addition to losing three high-profile matchups — Michigan State at Oregon, Ohio State to Virginia Tech and Michigan at Notre Dame — the Big Ten was also embarrassed by Northwestern (home loss to Northern Illinois), Purdue (blown out at home by Central Michigan) and even Nebraska (needed a last-minute touchdown to avoid overtime against McNeese State). Still, declaring the entire league as a waste of the playoff committee's time after two weeks? Come on.

Ohio State may come up short at the end, and it's true the Big Ten hasn't given the Buckeyes a lot of opportunities to beat quality teams, but they're still in the mix. If there's more chaos the next two weekends and Ohio State slides into the top four, the fact that people wrote off an entire league so early is going to seem silly.

7. Charlie Strong is a bad fit at Texas! For anyone familiar with how Strong got things going at Louisville, it should have come as no surprise that there was immediate roster attrition and some early difficulty getting players to adapt to Texas' new identity. Still, there was plenty of panic after the Longhorns' 3-5 start, fueled in part by a lack of pop in recruiting and the fact that Strong had dismissed nine players (with an array of other suspensions).

The grumbling has ceased, though, as the Longhorns have won three in a row to get bowl eligible and a run of verbal commitments have come in (their 2015 class is up to 16th in the 247Sports.com rankings). More than anything, though, fans are starting to see how Strong's toughness-based culture is going to translate on the field.

8. Everett Golson is a Heisman contender! After a year away from the program due to an academic-related suspension, Golson looked like a completely different player the first three weeks of the season. That got the Heisman hype cranked up pretty early — even though he didn't have a 300-yard passing game against Rice, Michigan or Purdue — and brought even more acclaim to quarterback guru George Whitfield, who worked with Golson over the previous year.

But Golson, in reality, has had a sub-par year. He's a better passer than in 2012, but he's become a turnover machine. In Notre Dame's past eight games, he's responsible for 13 interceptions and seven fumbles. The media too quick on the trigger to anoint a Notre Dame player as the next big thing? Who'd have thunk it?

9. Dan Mullen to somewhere! The cowbells hadn't even stopped ringing in Starkville on Oct. 11 — the day Mississippi State beat Auburn and took over as the No. 1 team in the country — before the talk started about where Mullen would land next. Florida? Michigan? It was almost assumed that he'd jump on the first thing smoking out of Starkville.

But what if…gasp…Mullen actually stays at Mississippi State? For some reason, people have a habit of getting ahead of themselves on Mullen's future. He was not on the hot seat last year, as some suggested, and he's not a lock to go to Florida this year, as others have suggested, just because he worked there before. Things can change, of course, but as of today the most likely outcome is Mullen returning to Mississippi State in 2015.

10. The playoff selection committee releasing weekly rankings was a terrible idea! Give Bill Hancock and company a little bit of credit. Even though the weekly ranking show is contrived for television, creates a lot of unnecessary in-season work for very busy people and is ultimately meaningless to the final outcome, it has helped fuel passion and discussion about college football. Controversy? All the more reason to watch.

And the fact that the committee has done some unconventional things (TCU over Baylor, despite head-to-head, for instance) has added context to the games that are played every Saturday. Also, the sense around college football is largely that people like knowing where they stand in the process.