It’s been a while, but let’s go …
From the coaching salary craziness that’s coming – at least predicted to be here sooner than later – to the hot underground team the hipsters are all slamming to, Pat McAfee and what College GameDay is now, and Nebraska as the possible College Football Playoff team no one is gushing over, here we go …
@PeteFiutak
I know, it’s been years since I’ve done one of these, but everything I pitched, whined, and ranted about since 1998 has happened.
Players are getting paid – this got royally screwed up, but whatever.
There’s a playoff that, in its current form, doesn’t suck – it will eventually get royally screwed up, but whatever.
Expansion blew up, and despite claims to the contrary, it doesn’t suck.
We can watch every single college football game being played – that doesn’t suck.
We can legally bet on almost anything now – that doesn’t suck, for now, but it will once someone cares that wayyyyyyyyyy too many players and coaches have a vested interest in the outcomes of games.
In a good way, just about every dumb scandal we all lost our minds over is now part of the business model. Yes, the sport is being more professionalized, and the transfer portal has taken the college out of college football in so many ways, but just about everyone has a good starting quarterback now who doesn’t suck.
The fundamentals of college football are strong. It’s bigger, and in most ways, better than ever before.
Analytics have sucked the smart out of the sport, turning normally reasonable people into blithering cyborg idiots – seriously, Michigan, going for two to potentially be down nine? – but that’s a sports theory and not a real problem.
The expanded playoff has brought more fan bases into the fun. The crazy TV contracts mean everyone is making money. Overall, there’s just as much interest in the game, if not more, than ever before.
College football isn’t quaint anymore, but neither is anything else in the world.
College football is okay, so it’s time to do column stuff again in an attempt to screw that up.
I didn’t even think twice about this because I thought it was so benign, but I posted on that apocalyptic X wasteland something about how, if I were the agent for Curt Cignetti or Lane Kiffin, I’d be going to Penn State, Wisconsin, Florida, Arkansas, and maybe if there’s some oil money between the couch cushions at Oklahoma State …
You want my guy? Indiana and Ole Miss, you want to keep my guy? $25 million a year. Right now (or a handshake agreement for three months from now).
Because I’m weird like that, a few months ago I had on a random classic Missouri game from the late 1990s. The announcers were speaking with shock and amazement at the contract that Tiger head coach Larry Smith signed, paying him …
Almost $200,000 a year.
It wasn’t all that long ago that the idea of paying a college football head coach a million a year was totally insane. Or how about spending $4 million on a 20-year-old quarterback transfer?
Just wait. All it takes is one program to do it, and then everyone else will follow.
With the cash that’s about to flow into the top schools from various hedge funds (I just wrote that like I know what those are), paying a superstar college head coach like a mediocre NFL starting quarterback will soon be the norm.
Since I first started doing this column – not this current one, although it will seem like it soon – I had kids, dropped kids off at college, and I have to pay for these people. I thought this 25 years ago, and triple it now with tuition payments.
As long as I’m blowing the coin on these places for school and stuff, you have to be out of your damn fool mind if you think I’m donating a single solitary penny to pay for college athletic labor and/or management.
Trying that with me is like asking if Diet Pepsi is okay when I ordered a Diet Coke.
You entertain me, college sports. It’s not my job to wave my hands in the air like I just don’t care, followed by a scream. That’s what I’m paying you to do with my ticket/ads on my screen.
DO … NOT … FALL FOR MAJOR COLLEGE ATHLETIC DEPARTMENTS CRYING POOR.
If they really want to – (cough) Jimbo Fisher buyout (wheeeeeze) – they can afford anything and anyone (especially when they finally get past their fears and desires and eliminate most non-revenue sports, but that’s a long-time rant for another day).
Okay, on to the fun football stuff …
Cut and paste this. Have it tattooed in reverse on your forehead, so every time you look in the mirror, you see it.
I’ve had this knockdown, drag-out argument over and over and over again over the last few weeks …
FOR NOW, until the precedent is broken by the College Football Playoff committee, if your power program doesn’t have at least ten regular-season wins, or you don’t win the conference title, don’t even think about approaching the CFP bouncer.
“But (insert Alabama, South Carolina, Ole Miss here) almost got in last year with nine wins!”
Yeah, almost isn’t in.
The CFP screwed up last year. I wouldn’t have liked it, either, but it should’ve put Alabama in over SMU if it did it right, but it went for the big number in the win column. The easy fallback is always a ten-win record from a power conference, and there will be enough to fill up the 12-team tournament this year.
The No. 1 thing I get asked by the casuals is some form of “What do you think about (my favorite college football team)?”
No. 2? “What do you think of Pat McAfee?”
Way back when, there was this fresh, new, crazy ESPN announcer who screamed all the time, had the energy of an eight-year-old on his ninth bowl of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs, and I loved every single thing that man said.
The old, snooty media types hated the schtick. Too boisterous, too over-the-top, not traditional …
And to this day, I still adore Dick Vitale.
No one has ever made a sport more fun to watch. (By the way, to answer another cocktail party question, he’s No. 1 on my celebrity industry heroes I’ve never met list.)
I’ve never met Pat McAfee or been on any of his shows – not like I’m some big figure or anything, but it’s a strange quirk in my world as America’s college football sports talk radio guest; for whatever reason, I rarely do podcasts.
It’s nothing against him – I’ve heard he’s a good guy – but I don’t really consume sports media, and have less than zero interest in anything with a brotastic tinge.
(Even way back when, I always had an uppity smell-the-fart face attitude when it came to the Maxim, Limp Bizkit culture, even though I had a Maxim subscription and dug Limp Bizkit.)
Again, not dogging McAfee in any way, or the generation that eats up his style, but I rarely watch College GameDay anymore – and it’s not because of him. The show became a case of more isn’t better, and pregame Saturday mornings are usually the one break I get during the week.
GameDay was the inspiration for me starting College Football News back in 1998. Chris, Kirk, and Lee proved there was a way to do big sports atmosphere energy in an understated way, but that was a jillion years ago.
So when I get asked about McAfee by older people, I always respond the same way.
“Do your kids like him?” The answer is almost always an emphatic “yes.”
Great, then the man is doing his job, and your kids are having a good time because it’s their thing.
He’s a unique entertainer who brings the fun, the heat, and the energy to college football, and all the squares can like it or get run over. Either way, no one younger than you cares.
That’s exactly how it’s supposed to be.
5. I still don’t have a true handle on Nebraska. It’s fine at 5-1, but it’s hard to find the WOW with this bunch – that doesn’t matter. It’s winning, and it might be the sort of team that falls into the College Football Playoff chase in late November thanks to its record.
At Minnesota, Northwestern, USC, at UCLA, at UCLA, at Penn State, Iowa. Now that Penn State stinks at college football, the schedule isn’t totally awful.
All of a sudden, though, the trip to LA is scary because …
4. I told you Nico Iamaleava was Jayden Daniels lite. I’m not budging from my core belief that 1) he’s the best quarterback in the Big Ten, and 2) at some point this season, he’d have been the difference between Tennessee being fantastic and national title-fantastic.
3. Out of all the obnoxious fun stats around Indiana football, here’s the craziest. Before the Oregon game, the Hoosiers allowed just three trips into the red zone, and now the total is up to six. Texas (8) and Oklahoma (9) are the only other teams to allow fewer than ten.
Even more impressive – one red zone touchdown allowed. Ohio State has given up two, Oklahoma three, and everyone else five or more.
2. One of the most interesting instant underground turnarounds is the Greatest Show On Surf at San Diego State. If you watched the Week 2, 36-13 loss to Washington State, there was no way the Aztecs were winning four games.
Now they’re 5-1, and if they beat Fresno State, Wyoming, and Hawaii, the showdown against Boise State on November 15th will be a national attention game.
1. If John Mateer had Arch Manning’s day, he’d be the Heisman front-runner. If Arch Manning had John Mateer’s day, social media would be wondering where 16’s transfer destination would be.
Illinois. It was a really, really, really bad day against Indiana, but the Illini were banged up in the secondary, and the game got away from them. Blow off the 63-10 final score – Illinois couldn’t catch up to the Hoosier fastball.
If Illinois wins at Washington in two weeks, with Rutgers, Maryland, at Wisconsin, and Northwestern to close, it’s going to be 10-2 with the two losses to two of the three best teams in college football, and wins over a Huskies team that will proably finish around 9-3, USC, and (I’ll save my Blue Devil love for a later column) Duke.
(As I did in the past, these are gut-reaction, go-with-your-first-answer picks – so I may or may not screw it all up when I dive in for real in the game previews)
– Minnesota +8.5 over Nebraska
– Utah State -4 over San Jose State
– LSU +2.5 over Vanderbilt (NO CHANCE this line holds by the time you’re reading this)
– Ohio State -25.5 over Wisconsin
– Air Force-Wyoming OVER on 58.5
– Tennessee +8.5 over Alabama
Overrated: The $49 million to buyout James Franklin
Underrated: The $50+ million this year paid to an injured Joe Burrow
Overrated: Dunking on Bill Belichick
Underrated: Simply saying, “we’re rebuilding, numbnuts” in some sort of press release
Overrated: That last Overrated/Underrated thing
Underrated: (speaking it into existence) Your 2026 North Carolina head football coach, James Franklin
Overrated: The relative-to-the-accomplishment national underappreciation that this is INDI-frickin-ANA doing this
Underrated: Curt Cignetti post-game interviews …
Overrated: Brownies
Underrated: Cookies
Like James Franklin, and all of us in life, the column was just one late defensive stop away from being okay.
