Every college football team aspires to be the national champion at season's end, yet the reality is only a few programs enter each year with a realistic chance of winning that honor.
So which teams fall into this category for the 2016 campaign? After looking over the cases of all of the contenders, it seems only 11 clubs are strong enough to be included in the legitimate title contender group.
This is the first in a series of 11 articles reviewing each of these program's prospects, and detail why they will be the best of the 2016 college football season.
In order to give each program equal billing, we'll go about this in alphabetical order. That means the defending national champion Alabama Crimson Tide will kick off this series.
It might seem tough for Nick Saban's club to be a repeat king of the mountain given its relatively low number of returning starters, but it turns out those personnel losses are nowhere near as impactful as they might seem at first glance.