Who is a real national championship contender in college football, and who is just pretending? As the sport hits the final weekend of October and turns toward the home stretch of the regular season, we have a good idea of who most of these teams are.

Bake in the injuries and the wild swings in performance, though, and this is the most parity I think we’ve ever seen in college football. The list of teams that could realistically win a national title is broad as we approach the start of November.

So let’s play a game of Pretender or Contender with three of the biggest names in the College Football Playoff picture: the Indiana Hoosiers, the LSU Tigers, and the Ohio State Buckeyes.

LSU is a sneaky national championship contender

I’m getting to the point where LSU belongs in the contender conversation. I said in the preseason that the Tigers were going to hit some bumps in the road, and they did. They lost to Ole Miss, and then they got stunned by Kentucky. Not ideal.

But this group of transfers is starting to settle in. And quarterback Sam Leavitt, who has been a huge wild card, seemingly gets more and more comfortable every single game. That comfort is showing up where it matters most. He isn’t nearly as erratic as he was earlier in the year.

Throw in the fact that LSU now has Trey’Dez Green back in the fold, which I think is a massive addition. I believe this defense can scramble the brains of any quarterback it faces.

And you may say, Tegan, this team lost to Kentucky. How are you calling the Tigers a national championship contender? Fair question. The answer is the game against Auburn.

The way LSU stepped into that game and dominated could be a sign of things to come. A huge test is waiting against Alabama after the bye week, and that game will tell us a lot. If the Tigers handle Alabama after the bye, don’t be surprised when they’re the team nobody wants to see in December. Right now, though, the trajectory points one direction: LSU could be a sneaky national championship contender.

Indiana is a contender with a huge asterisk

It’s hard for me to fully call Indiana a pretender. But I’m putting a huge asterisk on its contender label.

My concern is quarterback Josh Hoover. Given how he plays, I don’t know that the Hoosiers can string together enough wins in a playoff setting to definitively call them a national championship contender.

Now, here’s what keeps them on this side of the line. Last year, Indiana was a buzzsaw. Anybody who ran into the Hoosiers was going to lose by multiple touchdowns. This version is different. This is a team that keeps landing in one-score games and keeps finding different ways to win them. Pair that with a defense of this caliber and a coaching staff that consistently figures it out, and there is real value in that when the College Football Playoff arrives.

So yes, Indiana is a contender as of right now. I’m just putting the Hoosiers at the bottom of that list.

Ohio State is a pretender without Julian Sayin

For Ohio State, I have to say pretender. And that verdict is rooted solely in the loss of Julian Sayin.

Now I want to be clear, there’s plenty to talk about here. The coaching staff will try to put either Luke Fahey or Tavien St. Clair in the best position to succeed. And every time the Buckeyes step on the field, they’ll have the best player in the entire sport. That’s all fine and dandy.

But the truth is, even with Sayin, this was not a program that ran the football effectively. Its offensive line was not dominating games. There is no counterpunch to this offense that makes me comfortable saying Ohio State can go into a playoff setting, if it even makes the playoff at all, and win the whole thing.

Here’s the uncomfortable part. When I really sat down with it, the only reason I believed in the Buckeyes was the brand and the logo. Then I asked myself what this football team has actually done to put itself in the national championship conversation. I came away with more questions than answers.

Say what you want about the Buckeyes’ talent, but talent alone isn’t carrying an offense with no run game and no dominant offensive line through a playoff bracket. As it stands, Ohio State is a pretender.