Starting next week, I'm going to dust off the annual "Contenders" series, breaking down teams that have a good shot of opening the season at No. 1 and their chances of actually finishing there next January. Since national championships were on the brain, then (and because I've already made made a similar point this week), an aside by Chris Dufresne as he marveled at Southern Cal's draft bonanza in today's L.A. Times caught my eye:

It also makes you wonder why Florida has won two national titles since 2004 and USC hasn't.

Ah, yes, those enviable Gators. It does make you wonder, since USC has a better record than Florida (or anyone else) since 2004 and has matched or exceeded their record three out of those four years, with a dramatically better winning percentage (.778 to Florida's .600) against teams that finished in the final AP poll. The Trojans have four conference championships -- and, subsequently, BCS appearances -- to the Gators' two, and a near-FSU-like run of 10-win seasons and top-five finishes, each now at eight straight to Florida's one straight on both counts. Both SC and UF have had two one-loss seasons in that span, and neither has been undefeated.

But Florida leads in crystal footballs (and year-end poll votes), two-nil, and those things ought to come with a gavel to bang out an end to the discussion. The Gators are the gold standard in this conversion because consistency is not success like the peak is success, and USC -- along with Oklahoma, Ohio State and, if it doesn't deliver this year, Texas -- hasn't been to the peak in an entire recruiting cycle. The bums.

The distinction -- especially the last two years, when making one among four or five barely distinguishable contenders in early December has seemed so fundamentally unfair -- is a reminder of the critical role of two seemingly ephemeral issues when considering a preseason No. 1: A) Scheduling, not for the clichéd "clear path" to the title game, but for difficulty, which offered Florida (for example) a chance at redemption after its early loss last year that USC did not have despite a virtually identical defeat on its record (see also: Michigan in 2006); and B) The shear, maddening randomness of it all, the kind that can bestow a championship on a team with two losses to unranked opponents in 2007 three years after denying an undefeated team from the very same division from even playing for one and still count both as rational outcomes.

As a peak, No. 1 is relative, and the exact altitude teams have to scale to be one step above the competition changes every year. Only one variable remains relatively constant:

A reporter asked [Ohio State safety] Kurt Coleman what it was like to be on such a different team, one that isn't on anybody's national-championship radar, and the senior cornerback looked perplexed.

"That's fine," he said. "Because what it comes down to is, if you win all your games, you're going to be put into the talk of a national championship."

Coleman's zen moment may not strike anyone but me and the Columbus Dispatch's Bob Hunter (who saw in it the fundamental greatness of college football, or at least a column idea in late April), but it's the other great reminder of preseason prediction season: Right now, they're all contenders.