5 teams that won't live up to the hype in 2014

Over the next few weeks, we will be taking an in-depth look at the upcoming college football season. Want more? Read our full preview. 

The college football season is fast approaching, and many teams have turned their hype machine to its highest setting.

It can be hard to make sense of all the noise coming from each of the programs at the moment, with every team holding onto hope that this could be their year.

Here are five teams that won't live up to the hype in 2014.

Ohio State Buckeyes

With Ohio State going 24-0 in its first 24 games under Urban Meyer, it's understandable that many have tabbed the team as contenders for the national title.

The issue comes in the fact that the team faced a very soft schedule in building up that record. The Buckeyes' toughest matchups in Meyer's 26-game tenure with the program - the Big Ten Championship game against Michigan State, and the Orange Bowl against Clemson - both resulted in losses, with the team showing some major warts along the way.

Now they enter a year in which their running back corps, a major strength each of the last two seasons, is a question mark going into fall camp.

Auburn Tigers

Auburn's historic run in 2014 saw the team get past Georgia on a late Hail Mary, down Alabama on a last-second return in the Iron Bowl, and outlast Missouri in an unexpected shootout.

This season, the Tigers' luck might have run out, as they are slated to face arguably the toughest schedule in the nation. In addition to squaring off with the likes of LSU, Texas A&M, and Alabama in the SEC West, their crossover games come against two of the best teams in the SEC East in South Carolina and Georgia.

As if that weren't enough to deal with, quarterback Nick Marshall will get a late start to the year after he was suspended for the team's regular season opener for some offseason transgressions.

South Carolina Gamecocks

Many pundits have tabbed South Carolina as a dark horse candidate to get into the inaugural College Football Playoff. The main reason for that is the perceived weakness of the SEC East, allowing the Gamecocks to walk through their division and into the SEC title game, which would effectively be a one-game playoff itself.

However, the SEC East looks like it will shape up to be a lot tougher than many expect. Georgia has some turnover to deal with, but there is still plenty of talent on the roster, Florida endured a down year due to injuries, but a major bounce back could be in order with Kurt Roper in town to bring some legitimacy to the team's offense, and Missouri proved a year ago that they are very much capable of being a force themselves.

UCLA Bruins

Get labelled as the top team in the country by one clever pundit and all of a sudden the weight of the world is on your shoulders.

That's the case for the 2014 edition of the UCLA Bruins. Getting quarterback Brett Hundley to return for another year is a big deal, but it's hard to imagine the team making the leap to the next level the way some expect. 

Jim Mora has the program headed in the right direction, but there's still a lot of work to do to get the team into the national title conversation, and that starts with figuring out a way to get by Stanford and Oregon.

Baylor Bears

Baylor finished atop the Big 12 for the first time a year ago, and now they are expected to continue pushing forward, particularly with quarterback Bryce Petty returning and garnering some chatter in the Heisman Trophy discussion.

The Bears took advantage of a down year for some of the conference's elite programs a year ago, but Oklahoma looks too strong not to work their way into the College Football Playoff this season. The Bears will also have to make the trip out to Norman when the time comes to battle the Sooners.