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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...

Did you know Manhattan College canned its coach less than two weeks before the start of the season?
The Manhattan Jaspers start the 2022 college basketball season in a dozen days. Sounds like a great time to fire your head coach. And that’s exactly what happened in The Bronx (yes, Manhattan College is in The Bronx, get over it), as Steve Masiello was dismissed from the program just short of starti...

Is it time for Clemson to permanently bench D.J. Uiagalelei?
Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney’s gridiron shakeup, 49 months old exactly on Saturday, further cemented the Tigers’ spot among college football’s elite. One of the highest-rated collegiate prospects of all-time, then-true freshman Trevor Lawrence, replaced Kelly Bryant as the team’s starting quarter...

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...

Top 5 Heisman candidates at college football's midway point
The Heisman Trophy is awarded to college football’s most outstanding player. Entering this season, three quarterbacks — including last year’s winner — were favored to earn this prestigious honor. It’s Week 8 and that trio of QBs are each building a strong case. But they’re joined by two other stando...

3 SEC teams in the College Football Playoff? Here’s how that could happen
I heard your collective sighs when reading the headline and kicker to this story. Great, the most dominant conference in the country only hoards a bigger portion of the most exclusive quartet in college football. How could that be good for the sport? Calm down, Tommy. (what I’m choosing to call the ...

ESPN’s <i>College GameDay</i> has its new resident jackass — and he’s not the worst
In its heyday, College GameDay was the de facto No. 2 studio show behind Inside the NBA. Pregame shows are notorious for filling the air time with a panel of experts struggling to find opportunities to make points or move the conversation into a meaningful discussion. I challenge you to watch the Su...

Those seeking College Football Playoff clarity this weekend should think again
This year more than others in recent memory seems to have a lot of standout teams. It feels like the top 10 squads have evaded missteps that they might normally fall prey to. We saw the Tide escape against Texas A&M, Georgia overcome a brain fart against Mizzou, USC barely get by Oregon State, the V...

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...

Alabama’s gridiron clash with Texas A&M becomes a dud
It was dubbed the most anticipated college football game of the season. The narrative of a College Football Playoff-ready Texas A&M invading Tuscaloosa to truly see how strong its armor was against the impenetrable fortress of Bryant-Denny Stadium. Alabama held up its end of the bargain. The Crimson...

There are many reasons why eight is the perfect number for the CFP expansion
The way I’d describe Week 5 of the college football season is the invisible fence test. If you’re unfamiliar, and you shouldn’t be since I just made it up, I’m referring to the phenomenon that is big dogs shrugging off the shock of an electric barrier....

These are the top 10 unbeaten college football teams through Week 5
A quarter of the way through the college football season, you start to get a sense of which teams are for real, and which teams are not....

Saturday was a perfect example of why the best college football coaches are coveted like Infinity Stones
Oklahoma getting caught by Kansas State is an annual tradition for the Sooners, and it happened again Saturday night, with the visiting team pulling out a 41-34 upset in Norman. Running back Deuce Vaughn and quarterback Adrian Martinez combined for 264 yards on the ground, with Martinez adding anoth...

College football's Marty McFly Rankings Week 3: And then there was one team from Florida left
Merriam-Webster has four different entries for “back,” but none of them apply to college football teams. So it’s left up to people like me to determine what “back” actually is. Being back to Miami is not the same as being back to Washington. Also, can you get back if you never technically got anywhe...

It’s about time college football stopped leaning so hard on neutral-site games
In recent years, the NCAA has saved its best Week 1 college football matchups for neutral sites — mainly NFL stadiums....

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...

Here comes The Sun...Belt
There’s a lot of uncertainty around college football right now as it looks like the landscape of the sport is forever changing. Texas and Oklahoma are joining the SEC. USC and UCLA are joining the Big 10. It looks like we’re headed toward two super conferences that will be the top tier, and then the...

Scott Frost was destined to be college football’s ‘Great White Nope’
Scott Frost’s whiteness kept him employed for as long as it could. But, when you suck as bad as he did, even your “All-American” charm can’t save you....

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...