Brian Kelly Page 2 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The best Heisman bets outside of the obvious
The best player in college football this year is Caleb Williams. USC struggled with the now 1-3 Arizona State on Saturday, and the reigning Heisman winner still had 322 yards in the air, and five total touchdowns. While he’s currently tied for the best odds to hoist the trophy in New York again this...

The SEC is a one-bid conference — again
This is a weird season for the SEC thus far. Only one team appears worthy of the playoff, and Georgia didn’t exactly look like world beaters against South Carolina on Saturday either. Tennessee lost to Florida (who already lost to Utah), LSU lost to Florida State, and Alabama lost to Texas. Those th...

You know you’re cooked when Woody Allen comes to your defense
Whenever Luis Rubiales’s case ends, and it’ll hopefully be soon, he’ll know that Woody Allen voicing his opinion on the side of Rubiales was the death knell. There’s no coming back from Allen thinking he’s your ally. If Rudy Guiliani calls soon, he’ll know it’s very much over. ...

Newcomers at USC, Notre Dame could impact College Football Playoff
Notre Dame and USC both debuted Saturday, and with it, a couple roster additions who could alter the playoff picture this season. Wake Forest transfer Sam Hartman had as many touchdowns as incompletions (four) for the Irish during a 42-3 romp over Navy in Ireland. Trojan true freshman Zachariah Bran...

Jaden Rashada’s failed Florida NIL deal resembles a coach’s contract — so what’s the issue?
Sports is one of the few industries in which a person’s salary is public knowledge. It’s how we know what Nick Saban, Jim Harbaugh, and Brian Kelly are making. But in the case of former University of Miami, University of Florida, and now Arizona State-commit Jaden Rashada, a quarterback prospect tha...

Should Brian Kelly have to give $1 million back to LSU over a clerical mistake?
Louisiana State University (LSU) reset the college football coaching market in 2021 when they signed former Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly to a 10-year, $95 million contract. Kelly responded by winning 10 games in his first season in Baton Rouge highlighted by a home win over Alabama and an appea...
![Keep an eye on these 23 breakout stars in 2023: Part 1 [Updated]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/6cf68cc114d6fc425405878c9d90ecc7.jpg)
Keep an eye on these 23 breakout stars in 2023: Part 1 [Updated]
One year ago, who would have thought that Julián Álvarez would be the breakout star of the World Cup instead of Gio Reyna, or that TCU backup Max Duggan would lead the Horned Frogs to a national championship game on the 1-yard line of 2022’s closing? Trying to predict which figures will rise to the ...

A Massachusetts politician will be the next NCAA prez
What a weird hire. The dumpster-fire organization known as the NCAA had to make the right move in naming its next president. Mark Emmert’s tenure left the NCAA a mess so bad people questioned why the organization even existed in the first place. To fix all the issues at hand, Massachusetts Governor ...

The 10 best college football games of the 2022 season
With bowl season rapidly losing its significance and only really three games that matter remaining, now feels like as good a time as any to look back on the best of college football’s regular season. From upsets to heated rivalries and Heisman-defining moments, there was no shortage of great games i...

It’s never been easier to rebuild or bottom out in college football
The transfer window for college football players doesn’t officially open until Dec. 5., but that hasn’t stopped disgruntled wide receivers, linemen, linebackers, QBs, running backs, and every other position from making their intentions known. Per ESPN, there were 3,085 transfers in 2021-22, almost d...

Welcome to the pressure cooker, Matt Rhule
It’ll be interesting to see if the day ever comes when the hiring of a new coach at Nebraska is met with a cavalier attitude. “Well, shit, why not him?” is only uttered when the university names a men’s basketball coach. ...

The top 6 teams have a nerve-wracking path to the CFP — minus Georgia
There are many reasons to be envious of fans with teams in contention for the College Football Playoff, but the most relevant to this weekend is the mental and physical energy expended to get to the end of the regular season tightrope will be enough to work off those Turkey Day calories. While the r...

We were foolish to think any SEC game could steal the show from Alabama-LSU
While Saturday’s Georgia-Tennessee game was the biggest contest in the history of that matchup and the de facto headliner for Week 10, it was the SEC rivalry that has defined the conference for most of this century that once again stole the limelight. In his first time helming LSU against Alabama, c...

This is not the year to rely on SEC bias for a trip to the College Football Playoff
College football fans would presume that a one-loss SEC team who doesn’t have to play in the conference title game would’ve lucked out as far as the College Football Playoff is concerned. Georgia made it last year with one loss, as did Alabama in 2017-18. The only one-loss SEC program not to get an ...

First-look CFP rankings: Rocky Top on top while Big Blue is singing the blues
The initial College Football Playoff rankings were released Tuesday, and as usual, a few fanbases came away upset. However, one long-struggling group of orange-clad supporters walked away ecstatic. The Tennessee Volunteers saw their name atop the heap, and in the history of the CFP, only one team ra...

Auburn has to hire one of these 3 college football coaches
He was so ass and everyone knew it. Auburn’s head football coach Bryan Harsin was fired about nine months too late on Monday morning, the finale to a terrible second season coaching the jewel of The Plains. The Tigers’ biggest accomplishment in 2022 was surviving an average Missouri team that should...

It’s impossible to be completely miserable (or happy) during the sports equinox
There are 17 gazillion things happening in sports right now, and as much as I’d like to update you on all the happenings of the opening weeks of the NBA and NHL, the World Series-deciding MLB rounds, College Football Playoff-ramification slates, and every NFL, EPL, MMA, boxing match, game, contest, ...

College football Week 8: It’s hard to stop chasing the dragon after last week
Expecting the college football gods to give us a second helping of last week’s madness is asking a lot. Four undefeated Top-10 schools fell, and three different crowds rushed the field, with the Vols starting a GoFundMe-type deal for their goalposts that were dumped into the Tennessee River....

Coaching HBCU football is a stepping stone for Deion Sanders, but a brick wall for his peers
The spotlight Deion Sanders has brought to historically black college football programs has been unparalleled. Interest is at an all-time high and Sanders has championed multiplying exposure for the talent at HBCU programs. Sanders was specifically referring to the players, but the same sentiments c...

College Football Marty McFly Rankings Week 6: Tennessee, L.A. football, and Texas are all back
Like a poorly thought-through movie-to-TV series, it appears the Marty McFly rankings are on life support. The actor I hired to play Michael J. Fox’s character is no Michael J. Fox, the de-aging for Christopher Lloyd is too expensive, and the DeLoreans keep breaking down. Never mind that these are t...