If you're not first, you're last. At least that's the mentality at championship programs, right? But for the teams who aren't loaded with talent and blessed with depth, respectability is the approach and baby steps are viewed as mini-wins during rebuilds.

Former Vegas oddsmaker Danny Sheridan, who guest writes for Cigar Aficionado, recently ranked college football's 16 worst teams approaching Week 3 of fall camp. He expects this group of programs to capsize in 2018, for various reasons.

Sheridan only mentioned teams from Power 5 conferences, so bottom-dwellers like East Carolina and Charlotte are safe from this one. We've a brief outlook for each with a heavy emphasis being on schedule difficulty.

During every struggling program's rise, few things are as important as what other teams are doing around you — whether that's improving, remaining stagnant or falling behind: