As the 1980 college football season begins, everybody is hunting Alabama and The Bear. Winners of two straight national titles to close out the decade, the Crimson Tide starts the year perched at number two and riding an eighteen-game winning streak. The first week of games features Bobby Bowden and his renegade band of Seminoles continuing their raid on college football’s elite with a season opener in Death Valley against LSU while the Georgia Bulldogs and their prized freshman recruit, Herschel Walker, take on Tennessee in front of the largest crowd to ever watch a football game in the South. Meanwhile, in the Midlands of South Carolina, the Gamecocks’ George Rogers gallops against the University of the Pacific.

After losing the 1979 National Championship by a single point, the number-one ranked Ohio State Buckeyes open their 1980 season against the Syracuse Orangemen in the Horseshoe. In Pittsburgh, Jackie Sherrill and the Panthers uncage one the most talented defenses of all time to feast on Boston College while Lawrence Taylor and the fifteenth-ranked UNC Tar Heels travel to West Texas for a duel with the Red Raiders.

Alabama reclaims its top spot in the polls after Ohio State’s close call with Syracuse. The Fighting Irish of Notre Dame look for their second big win of the season when the Michigan Wolverines come calling and it’s a battle of USC’s as South Carolina and George Rogers invade Los Angeles to take on Ronnie Lott and the Southern Cal Trojans. Plus, Georgia squares off against Clemson between the hedges with freshman running back Herschel Walker firmly entrenched as the starter.