Flipping the Field: 2016 starts with a bang

Around 11 p.m. on Christmas Eve, my wife sent me to buy batteries for the pile of new toys that Santa was expected to deliver later that night. Because of the timing, I expected there to be zero activity inside the store. But, also because of the timing, I was shocked at what I found.

There were a half-dozen employees frantically ripping down the holiday décor and replacing it with ... Valentine's Day stuff. Really? It was nearly two months away!

"Don't act all offended, dude," the guy behind the counter said to me, rolling his eyes. "You're the guy who comes wandering in here on June 1st every year asking when we're going to have the college football preview mags in stock."

Checkout register dude was right. I am that guy. But aren't we all? The morning after the College Football Playoff National Championship presented by AT&T, as I waited to board my flight home from Phoenix, I was chatting with an Alabama fan who suddenly stopped in the middle of his breathless breakdown of the title game like he'd been zapped with a cattle prod.

"Oh damn, I just realized something!" he declared to all at Gate C30. "The season is over!"

Yes, it is. But when the new season finally begins some 220-something days from now, the slate of opening weekend games will make it well worth the painful wait. The 2016-17 college football season will actually start on Aug. 27 in Australia, when Cal takes on Hawaii. But the gate will be kicked open one week later when everyone else is in action. It's a cross-conference slate that feels every bit like bowl season, though I'm betting these games will provide us with much more fun.

USC vs. Alabama, AT&T Stadium (Arlington, Texas)

The newly crowned champs open their title defense at Jerry World, which by now should be renamed Tuscaloosa West. The Trojans and Tide have played just five times, the most recent coming in 1985. They played four times in the 1970s, splitting the series 2-2. The most famous of those was in 1970, when USC rolled 42-21 in Birmingham, Alabama, a loss that Bear Bryant used to convince his bosses that it was time to finally integrate the Tide's roster.

Clemson at Auburn

In 1892, a man named Walter Riggs played for Auburn's first football team. It was called the Tigers, based on a poem by Oliver Goldsmith. When Riggs was hired four years later by Clemson to head its engineering department, he started football on that campus, too, and he also named that team the Tigers (though he unconvincingly claimed it was to honor Princeton, not Auburn). Isn't that awesome? You know what's not awesome? In 2016, Auburn will be the only team guaranteed to have to play both participants of the 2015 national title game.

Oklahoma vs. Houston, Reliant Stadium (Houston)

Cougar Nation badly wants into the Big 12 when the conference inevitably expands. Consider this an audition.

Notre Dame at Texas

Speaking of measuring sticks, forget the fact that this is Week 1. If Charlie Strong's third Texas team hangs with the Irish, it would be a significant sign that the burnt orange battleship is finally starting to turn around. But if the Longhorns get housed at home after overhauling the offensive coaching staff to go up-tempo, look out below. Again.

UCLA at Texas A&M

With this game, the three already listed, SMU at North Texas, and home games at Baylor, TCU and Texas Tech, this is the part where I dial up Google maps and try to figure out how many Lone Star State games I can get to in one day. Does National Car Rental have helicopters?

LSU vs. Wisconsin, Lambeau Field (Green Bay, Wisconsin)

When the Mad Hatter arrives at the House Lombardi Built, he'll have to eat some grass from the frozen tundra, even if it isn't frozen yet.

North Carolina vs. Georgia, Georgia Dome (Atlanta)

The annual ACC vs. SEC kickoff game features one of last season's good surprises, the Tar Heels, against one of the bad surprises, the shooing of Mark Richt from Athens, Georgia. New UGA coach Kirby Smart is a defensive mastermind. Good thing, because Larry Fedora's offense ranked 12th in the nation in total offense with 487 yards and 40 points per game.

Kansas State at Stanford

College football's professor on The Farm? Yes, please. Speaking of which, did anyone really believe that Bill Snyder wasn't coming back for 2016? Anyone? Hello? Yeah, me neither.

Florida State vs. Ole Miss, Citrus Bowl (Orlando, Florida)

The Labor Day closing act features two brand-name teams who will likely start on Tier B of preseason expectations. A win on the big pre-NFL Monday night stage would be a giant step toward getting to Tier A.

Y'all, this is just Week 1! And we didn't even get into Boston College vs. Georgia Tech in Ireland or BYU vs. Arizona in Glendale, Arizona. The following weekend brings another slate of sweet matchups, headlined by Tennessee vs. Virginia Tech at Bristol Motor Speedway, a game that aims to break the single-game attendance record. It might also be the event that finally ends my longtime dueling social media timeline streams of "Go back to NASCAR!" and "Why have you abandoned NASCAR for college football?!" But I doubt it.

The point? Yes, it's a long wait between now and then. But when "then" finally becomes "now," our patience will be paid off in full.

OK, now that we've started the process of flipping the field toward 2016, let's get on with the process of actual Flipping The Field.

And scene . . . If you've hung with Flipping The Field since August (and thanks, if you have), then you know that the real theme of the 2015 college football season was coaches cutting a rug. But on Saturday, SMU coach Chad Morris went on Twitter and topped all others, including Dabo's Dab and Nick Saban's robotic bobbing locked-arms thing. With this, can we officially declare the fad over? Please?

"We're going streaking!" A full week later, I'm still sifting through the mountain of stats produced by the thrilling national championship. The calculators over in ESPN Stats & Info are still smoking, but they also inform me of the following: Saban is still perfect in national title games, now 5-0 with four wins in BCS games (the first coming at LSU) and his first playoff championship. Among Alabama's file cabinet full of accomplishments: It was its 12th straight win, the 13th straight win over Clemson, its 11th national championship is the best of the poll era (since 1936), and the Tide are now 8-4 all time vs. AP No. 1-ranked teams, also a record. According to Elias, the Tide also became the first team to record 12 wins in a season vs. teams that posted winning records. It also marked the SEC's 22nd.

"Get in the car, Frank . . . " Clemson had multiple streaks snapped with its loss, including a school-record 17-game winning streak and a run of 51 games when it had carried a lead into the fourth quarter and successfully protected it. One streak Clemson unfortunately kept going: The Tigers are now 0-9 all time vs. AP top-two teams.

Tommy West coach's news conference of the week: OK, it wasn't really a news conference. But it was a media breakfast. On the Monday morning before the championship game, the Football Writers Association of America held its annual awards breakfast. It's always a good time, but this year it was downright special. I know he'll never brag on himself, so I'll do it for him. Ivan Maisel received the Bert McGrane Award, which is essentially the election into the FWAA Hall of Fame and will put his name on display in Atlanta's College Football Hall of Fame. It's been an excruciating year for the Maisel family after their son Max went missing on Feb. 22. As Ivan accepted his award with a smart, funny, heartfelt speech, he also did what felt like an impossible task, addressing the death of his son in front of an audience of family and longtime press box colleagues. He steered through it with the same self-effacing grace that has earned him the respect of those peers over the decades. That's why those peers cried with him in Scottsdale, Arizona, just as they did when the search for Max finally ended and the grieving process began nearly one year ago. It's a good group, those press box folks. They are a group that likes most everyone. But they truly love only a few. Ivan Maisel is one of those few.

Danny Ford scientific rocket quote of the week: To start listing all of Swinney's quotes from championship weekend would take up all the space on the ESPN.com servers. But the best line from the College Football Playoff's two weeks came from Saban, and it wasn't even really his quote. According to ESPN colleague Kaylee Hartung, Saban went full MMA, quoting Conor "The Notorious One" McGregor prior to the team's semifinal matchup with Michigan State. The coach told his team: "We're not here to take part. We're here to take over." Alabama won 38-0. So ... good talk, Russ.

Comeback of the week award, also named for Frank Reich: Alabama not only came from behind to win the national championship game, it also dug out of a hole over the course of the season. After losing to Ole Miss in Week 3, the Tide became just the fifth team since 1936 to lose a game in September and still recover to win it all.

The guy you used to know about but forgot about but you should know about again: Adam Griffith, PK, Alabama. Remember the guy who used to miss more field goals than he made? Remember the guy who started this year 0-for-4 and 6-for-12? Remember the guy who shorted the long field goal at Auburn that turned into Kick Six, perhaps the most notorious game-ending regular-season play in college football history? Well, he's also the guy who finished the year 17-of-20, executed the gutsiest pop-fly onside kick of all time, and just announced he would return to Tuscaloosa for a fifth season. Not bad for a former orphan who was wandering the streets of Poland drinking and smoking when he was still in grade school.

Extra Point: I told this story on the weekday finale of our Championship Drive podcast, but I'll tell it again here. On my flight home from Phoenix the morning after the national title game, I found myself seated next to a still-drunk Alabama fan. As we sat and watched others board the plane, he suddenly sat straight up in his seat and said to me, "Aw hell, look bud, Pat Summerall is getting on the plane!" I replied, "No, that's not Pat Summerall." He dismissively responded, "Oh hell yeah it is. From TV, you know, with John Madden?" I tried again. "Seriously, dude, it's not Pat Summerall." He tried again. "You're wrong. I'm gonna ask him if he's Pat Summerall ... Hey dude, you're Pat Summerall aren't you?!" The gentleman, who did indeed slightly resemble Pat Summerall, politely joked, "I hope not. Pat Summerall is dead." Buzzed Bama guy now turned to look directly at me, like three inches from my face, as the gray-haired gentleman moved along to his seat. "F--- you, Mr. Know-It-All, I know that was Pat Summerall."