For the near year and a half that I’ve blogged about sports, pro football has been the sport that I’ve predominantly blogged about the most, with NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball being a very distant second, followed by the NBA and Major League Baseball.
Now I have blogged about college football, but not entirely, as the two times that I did so were tied to pro football during both my 2019 NFL Draft prediction entry and 2019 NFL Draft reaction entry.
However, that narrative changes today, as for the first time in this current Art Infliction era, I will fully blog about college football, by predicting the College Football Playoff National Championship between the reigning champions in the Clemson Tigers (number 3 overall) and the top-seeded LSU Tigers.
Now I don’t know the names of most of the players on either team, let alone the names of most of the players in college football, period. However, I do know who Joe Burrow and Trevor Lawrence are, as well as some of Burrow’s offensive teammates (Clyde Edwards-Helaire, Ja’Marr Chase, Justin Jefferson, Thaddeus Moss) and some of Lawrence’s teammates (Travis Etienne, Justyn Ross, Tee Higgins, Amari Rodgers), and all of those players are among some of the most explosive and effective in all of college football.
Clemson hasn’t lost a game since the 2017-18 College Football Playoff semifinal against the Alabama Crimson Tide, a team that they throttled last season to claim their second national championship in three seasons. As for LSU, this is their first time in the title game since the 2011-12 season when they lost against Alabama, a team that they defeated in Tuscaloosa this past November 9 to put themselves in this position. And as for when Ed Orgeron’s bunch last lost a game, well you’ll have to go back to November 24 of 2018 when they a lost a seven-overtime game against the Texas A&M Aggies.
Currently, Clemson is on a 29-game winning streak. But it could have stopped at 28, as the Ohio State Buckeyes had them on the mat at 16-0 in the semifinals and nearly dethroned the defending champions. LSU, on the other hand, has won their last five games by 21 points or more.
LSU is a far-more superior opponent than Ohio State and like Ohio State, they will jump out to a double-digit lead in this one. But that’s where the similarities end, because LSU will keep pouring it on to thwart any and all Clemson comeback attempts.
Yep, I’m picking the Bayou Bengals to dethrone Clemson and I’m picking them to win 45-28.