Season Opens Under a Cloud of Chaos and High Stakes

The most disruptive storyline entering the new season has nothing to do with what happens on a field. The NCAA's standoff with LSU over the eligibility of former NFL players moved into federal court on Wednesday, with the rest of the SEC now openly weighing expulsion and boycotts. It is the kind of institutional crisis that rarely surfaces at the start of a season, and it hangs over everything scheduled for this weekend.

On the field, several programs are opening new chapters under circumstances that are either scrutinized or fragile. Lane Kiffin's debut at LSU — against Clemson, no less — arrives shadowed by tampering allegations and a book excerpt that surfaced days before kickoff. At Florida, Jon Sumrall is trying to restore basic credibility to a program that won four games last year. And at Colorado, Deion Sanders is taking a team still in the middle of a rebuild to Georgia Tech, starting a redshirt freshman at quarterback.

The season does offer at least one conventional intrigue. Matt Campbell opens his Penn State tenure against a Marshall team that arrives with a credible dual-threat quarterback and something to prove. Nearly a hundred years have passed since these programs last met, and the Nittany Lions spent that century growing considerably larger than a 65-0 blowout might suggest. Whether Campbell's first test is a coronation or a complication sets a tone either way.