College football longshots, pretenders and more: A Saturday Blitz Podcast

Who won their division in 2018 but looks least likely to repeat the feat in 2019? Who offers great longshot odds among national title hopefuls?

Whether in the Power Five or the Group of Five, winning a conference title requires making it to the title game. And to get to the big game, everyone (except the Big 12, of course) has to claim a division championship.

Getting there once is tough enough. Repeating the feat a second year in a row is far more likely for some schools than others. This week, John and I dive in to assess which teams look least likely to pull off a repeat and even which seeming locks could possibly collapse.

That is the first of the three things we tackle in this week’s Saturday Blitz Podcast. In addition to looking at conference contenders and conference pretenders, we take on a look at the most recent 2020 College Football Playoff national championship futures betting.

Specifically, in the spirit of this week’s edition of the podcast, we look at the teams with longer odds who could be legitimate contenders for a spot in the College Football Playoff. Where might you be able to lay some money and have a seeming chance of claiming big returns?

In the final segment, we get a little personal and look at some of the memorable bowl games of yesteryear where we wish we could climb into the time machine and go back to see the festivities in person.

Some of the games we had the opportunity to see on television, while others occurred before either of us were born. In all cases, they speak not just to our personal leanings as fans of particular programs but also to the broader arc of college football history.

Spring winds down and we wait for the final set of spring games to take us into the offseason proper. But while we are fast approaching the long lull before the new season begins, this week’s podcast is as good an opportunity as any to look both forward and back.

The Saturday Blitz Podcast is part of the FanSided Radio Network at Spreaker. The show goes live every Wednesday morning. You can reach John Mitchell at @jlmitchell93 and Zach Bigalke at @zbigalke on Twitter.