briankelly Page 2 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

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...

Two takeaways from college football on Saturday
There wasn’t much surprising about the results from Saturday. Oklahoma continued its free fall, getting shut out by Texas, 49-0. Even though Jimbo Fisher gave Nick Saban a game in Bryce Young’s absence, the Crimson Tide pulled through. None of the top 10 lost despite Oklahoma State playing with its ...

There’s a reason Mike Leach’s quarterbacks have never cost him his job
The next time a pundit says “Missing on such-and-such QB cost coach X his job” will be my next visit to the psych ward. You know why Spencer Rattler didn’t cost Lincoln Riley his job, and Paul Chryst couldn’t survive Graham Mertz? One looks at a chalkboard as a place to draw plays, and the other see...

College football Marty McFly Rankings Week 5: Is UCLA back? Is Chip Kelly back? Do they even qualify for being back?
I think we’re going to need to redefine what is a lost program. For example, if Virginia Tech returns to the form that Frank Beamer consistently had them at, would they be back? I ask because schools that were trying to get back this year are disappearing like Spider-Man in Infinity War. (I can’t re...

Dave Aranda and Matt Campbell are a few clones away from being billionaires
College football programs are racing to fire their coaches so they can perfect that desperate vibe in an attempt to attract a new hire. You know which desperate vibe I’m talking about. It’s the one that single people are allergic to, the one that says, “I’m lonely and have gone through way too much ...

Brian Kelly vs. Mike Leach, a Notre Dame win watch, and more from college football’s unranked
There are so many good games featuring at least one ranked school this weekend that it’s easy to overlook the unranked matchups that are still compelling this early in the season before teams amass nicks and cuts and flaws and people deem their season a loss. If you’ve only got one TV/screen, you’re...

Don’t celebrate just yet, SEC fans, there’s another independent who could claim a CFP bid
For the segment of college football fans who blackout with anger every time Notre Dame makes the College Football Playoff, this season could not have started better. Marcus Freeman’s team came up short against Ohio State and then stumbled trying to get back up against Marshall, and there’s really no...

Beat writer claps back at Brian Kelly
All is well in Baton Rouge. First-year LSU head coach Brian Kelly became the first Tigers’ leader to lose his inaugural game at the helm since Gerry DiNardo in 1995, who helped LSU to momentary failure against then-No. 3 Texas A&M. Kelly’s troops lost to an inconsistent Florida State team in their h...

The Marty McFly Rankings Week 1: Which college football program is most on its way to being ‘back’?
It feels like an abundance of college football programs are “back” this season more so than in recent iterations. USC beat Rice 66-7, and they’re already the Pac-12’s best hope of making the College Football Playoff. Florida State topped LSU (who’s still a candidate to make this list if Brian Kelly ...

The SEC is obnoxiously perfect in Week One
The upset of Week 1 in college football wasn’t really an upset — if you ask SEC fans. Bill Napier, in his first game as the head coach of Florida, knocked off defending Pac-12 champ, No. 7 Utah, in a contest of physical strength that featured six lead changes and a tie....

Is any college coach under more pressure than Jimbo?
There’s a different brand of pressure mounting around Texas A&M head coach Jimbo Fisher. It’s not the-hot-seat-reaching-an-inferno temperature coaches like Nebraska’s Scott Frost are facing. This isn’t a battle to stay relevant on a national scale like the Deion Sanders-led charge from Jackson State...

We asked Leigh Steinberg if Myles Brennan will get to keep his NIL deals
After five years, a championship ring, two major injuries, three starts, an entry into the transfer portal, a coaching change, and an exit from the transfer portal, sixth-year LSU quarterback Myles Brennan announced on Monday that he would be stepping away from football permanently. ...

The AP preseason poll is in! College football is almost here
People, we are less than two weeks away from real football. In 12 days, games will be on television, and will be played in various parts of America — not just Birmingham — and I assume players can keep their scholarships if they don’t want to eat chicken salad at the hotel....

Predicting college football’s New Year’s Six teams
College football starts in a little more than two weeks. And for 135 days, the jostling to become a national champion will be ongoing. Obviously, only four teams will compete in the College Football Playoff but a dozen teams will be selected to the most lucrative bowls, otherwise known as the New Ye...

Guess poor recruiting was all Brian Kelly’s fault
Notre Dame has landed a five-star quarterback — their highest-rated offensive commitment in a decade — in none other than C.J. Carr, the grandson of national-title winning Michigan head coach Lloyd Carr. This is the latest in a series of offseason wins for Marcus Freeman, who has yet to clock an act...