More than 1,000 Division I men’s basketball players have entered the transfer portal since it opened on March 24. That’s a lot of names and faces to learn as college basketball’s roster management busy season increasingly resembles NBA free agency. This is where The Athletic’s transfer portal rankings come in. The rankings are a living…
NEW YORK — The concentric circles of John Feinstein’s life spread the news of his death Thursday. First, John’s brother, Bob, passed along the sad news to Gary Williams, the legendary former Maryland coach. He first met Feinstein in 1978, when Williams was a 30-something-year-old coach at American University and Feinstein was a young Washington Post…
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…
This article is part of our Rankings & Tiers series, an evaluation across sport about the key players, front offices, teams, franchises and much more. What better way to commemorate the 40-year anniversary of the NCAA Tournament’s expansion to 64 teams than to create a flawless, universally beloved ranking of every men’s basketball champion in that…
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…
David Yost has been coaching quarterbacks at college football’s highest level since 1996. His method of evaluating the sport’s most important position has not changed much over the years. The former offensive coordinator at FIU, Texas Tech, Utah State and Missouri has a checklist he uses to identify players he would like to coach. Does…
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…