College Football Dark Horse Teams 2008

In this age of parity, limited scholarships, and the bowl system, a college football program that has been terrible for years has the potential to put together a string of good seasons and go from scrap heap to relevant. Even this soon after the bowl season, before recruiting is even finished, there are eight teams who stick out as having the potential to be strong dark horse teams to really turn things around next year and go from the scrap heap to competitive, a winning record, or even a bowl game. Here they are, in a vague reverse order of likelihood to break out.

Duke Blue Devils: And another head coach bites the dust. Ted Roof managed to get some higher level recruits to Duke, and this team played hard this season. Not only did they beat the 6-6 Northwest, but they took Miami, Navy, Virginia, Wake Forest, and North Carolina down to the wire. Trouble is, they didn't win any of those games.

The Blue Devils hired Tennessee offensive coordinator David Cutcliffe as the new head coach. If he can make Erik Ainge look like a legitimate quarterback, he should do wonders for this Duke team, who returns young QB Thaddeus Lewis, a player who had a great season and is only a sophomore. In an extremely weak ACC, a good passing system could be enough to get over the hump and strike at a 6-6 record.

With how bad Duke has been, anything close to 6-6 would be a boon for this long suffering program.

Temple Owls: This season was a definite improvement over the one win season of a year ago. The Owls won four games, including a winning streak in the MAC that shows that the rebuilding process in Temple is definitely taking shape. This is a very young team, and in the MAC anyone can surge forward to get a chance at the MAC title. This team has gone from 0 wins to 1 win to 4 wins, and there are more and more under the radar recruits coming in. They still need to make a jump, but that's not as impossible a task as it once looked.