Clemson is finalizing a six-year contract extension for head coach Brad Brownell, multiple media outlets reported Wednesday. Financial terms were not disclosed about the deal that will keep Brownell with the program through the 2030-31 season. Per reports, the extension is pending approval from the Clemson board of trustees. After taking the program to the…
The top three in my annual ranking of the best coaches in college football was easy. After that, things got more complicated. How much does recency bias factor in? For me, not as much as it does for Stewart Mandel, whose Top 25 can be found here. I’ve always given coaches more credit for what…
(Editor’s note: This article is part of the Bracket Central series, an inside look at the run-up to the men’s & women’s NCAA Tournaments, along with analysis and picks during the tournaments.) Drake’s in, so we can dispense with the arguments about whether Ben McCollum’s Bulldogs would have made the field of 68 without winning the Missouri Valley…
Five years ago, this was a fairly simple exercise: Rank Alabama either No. 1 or 2, then drop Ohio State, Clemson or Georgia immediately before or after. Look like a genius 365 days later. But these days, it takes the GDP of a small country to keep a roster intact in college football. Ohio State…
One evening after the inaugural 12-team College Football Playoff concluded with four blowout games staged on campus, ESPN host Scott Van Pelt and football analyst Tim Hasselbeck held a conversation that mirrored many like it taking place on social media and in barrooms. The host teams won by an average of 19.3 points, and the…
And now, 12 Final Thoughts from the first weekend of the first-ever 12-team College Football Playoff. 1. The first on-campus Playoff game kicked off at 8:10 p.m. ET in front of 77,622 roaring fans at Notre Dame Stadium. You didn’t have to be in the 25-degree South Bend weather to get the chills. Anyone watching…
Joe Burrow circa 2019 is not walking through the door of this College Football Playoff. There is no Deshaun Watson nor Trevor Lawrence to be found. It’s not that there aren’t a bunch of really good quarterbacks in the first 12-team College Football Playoff field. The teams wouldn’t have gotten this far if that were…
Who will win the first 12-team College Football Playoff? Six teams received at least one vote in our survey of 30 college football writers and editors at The Athletic, a big change from 10 years of postseason tournaments in which only four teams were in the field. Though Oregon got a majority of the votes, plenty…
Of the many things worth hating about college football, most of them are at least tacitly associated with the most hated people in sports: television executives. They fix games that hurt your team. They don’t fix games that should be fixed to help your team. They find a way to keep those games at four…
Who will win the first 12-team College Football Playoff national championship? I believe there are six teams that have the personnel, savvy and leadership to make a run and win it all, handling top competition as the margin for error gets smaller and the spotlight gets so much brighter. I love so many of these…