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DJ Lagway could be the second coming of Cam Newton. Clemson could be the most complete team since the 2020 Alabama team. Arch Manning could be the next, well, Peyton Manning.

Notre Dame was reloading, too, after a run to the national championship game.

Three weeks into the season? Get too close to the smoke billowing out of the preseason hype machine, and you might get pelted by a gear or screw spewing from the engine. Preseason predictions have been derailed in spectacular fashion and record time.

On a chaotic Saturday, Clemson lost for the second time in three games and is still looking for a victory over a Power 4 opponent. In three weeks, it went from preseason title contender to unranked.

Manning went 10 passes between completions at home against UTEP, a program that has had one winning season in the last decade. Texas fans booed him and the Longhorns. Godspeed to any NFL fans clamoring for their franchise to tank for a quarterback who ranks 83rd nationally in passer rating.

Notre Dame is 0-2, losing two close games as a favorite and once again needing a red-hot run through the rest of its schedule to make a return trip to the College Football Playoff.

And Lagway? The only debate is which of his five interceptions against LSU was the ugliest and/or costliest in a 20-10 loss. Florida is 1-2, hasn’t beaten an FBS team, plays seven more ranked teams, and all the talk of Billy Napier’s late-season rally in 2024 to save his job, carrying momentum into 2025, has gone quiet.

Part of the beauty of college football is its unpredictability. Expecting 100 18-to-22-year-olds of varied maturity to offer consistent output from week to week is a pipe dream. One might as well leave a kindergarten class unsupervised for a week and expect to find a civil, well-governed society waiting for you upon return.

However, if I were a college football fan leaning on pundits for all my expectations in the fall, I might feel like I was sold a bill of goods. On behalf of my profession and for pundits everywhere, I offer an apology for an especially brutal Saturday that challenged preseason priors more strongly than any week we’ve seen this season.

I’ll handle my part: I picked Clemson to win the national title. That ain’t happening. I also used my second-round pick in our staff’s Heisman draft to take Lagway. I’m good with tearing up that ticket.

However, what has happened in the first three weeks has been compelling, too.

Oregon looks like it’s living out a redemption story, with new faces fueling a comeback after last year’s embarrassing Playoff exit at the Rose Bowl. First-year starting quarterback Dante Moore and receiver Malik Benson — on his third blue-blood school in three years — have the Ducks flying into the meat of their schedule and looking like one of the nation’s best offenses.

Miami might be back, winning with dominant play on the line of scrimmage and a bruising running game. Mario Cristobal’s Hurricanes coughed up an ACC title and Playoff bid by blowing a 21-0 lead at home to Syracuse in the regular-season finale last season. This year, they’ve already beaten Notre Dame and dominated Playoff contender South Florida.

Florida State might be living the most dramatic character arc since Anakin Skywalker. The Seminoles were served the biggest injustice in Playoff history in 2023. Then went 2-10 in 2024.

This year, they’ve already pushed around Alabama and have an offense that looks rejuvenated under new coordinator Gus Malzahn.

Best of all: Parity has arrived in college football. No team has better national title odds than +550 in Vegas.

A sport that was once dominated by Alabama, Ohio State, Clemson and Georgia has changed. A debate about the best team in the country through three weeks is premature. The sport is a land without a king, especially now that Nick Saban spends three hours every Saturday on television instead of getting an SEC coach fired because he was too good at his job.

So it’s not surprising that preseason prognostications went awry.

My advice: Don’t worry about what the sport isn’t this season. Week by week, let it reveal itself.

(Photo of Clemson’s Adam Randall: Rich von Biberstein / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)