“We’ve scheduled tough,” Swinney said. “All you can do is play the schedule that you have. It is what it is. We basically have an SEC-Big Ten invitational; that’s basically what we’ve got in college football. So you’ve just got to focus on what you’ve got.”

I traveled to watch the nation's top four teams in the preseason polls, and my in-person impressions of those programs have helped shape how I handicap the College Football Playoff.