Bowls are over, CFP is over, the Portal is closed, Recruiting for the class of 2025 is done. Now it's winter conditioning and Spring Practice coming up. But we still have NIL money coming in, like this for the Alabama WR, Ryan Williams. Never thought I'd see the day that a football player would be promoting nail polish. But hey they have tats, piercings, and extreme hairdo's....so why not polish.
The SEC/Big 10 are meeting next week in New Orleans to make some decisions on the 2025 CFP. Apparently those 2 are now pretty much in control of the CFP. Go to 14 or 16 teams and at least 4 guaranteed slots for their teams are things that are on the table form "sources". I'd be OK with 16 teams and half of them being SEC/Big 10 and then 1 slot each fo the ACC and Big 12 and no guaranteed slots to the Group of 5 or Notre Dame. Sources: SEC, Big Ten building momentum to further expand College Football Playoff to 14 or 16 teams
Also since there are no longer divisions in college, I don't see the point of a seperate Championship game. The winner is the regular season champion. Esp given that both participants in the games will get into the playoff anyway.
I think they should stick with the current format for a couple of years and evaluate how to move forward. Generating more income now may not be the best strategy in the long run.
No spring gane for Texas. Sark says long season makes it too much for the players. Marcus Freeman is handling the off season and spring differently also due to the long season. Still having a spring game though.
Coach Day says Spring game will be different this year, not anything like past years and fans will pay to watch!
Matt Rhule and kp are on the same page. As a ND fan I wonder if this will result in the Irish being forced to join the ACC full time if they can't get a decent schedule together due to Conference teams not willing to schedule them. From the Athletic. Meyer told Rhule he’s “really worried” about nonconference scheduling moving forward — and he should be, now that he’s a TV guy — because “it’s the right thing for Ohio State to play Texas (to start the 2025 season), but why?” “At the end of the day, Ryan Day has got to make the Playoff. Matt Rhule has got to make the Playoff,” Meyer said, mentioning series fans would love such as the Nebraska-Oklahoma rivalry that was killed by realignment (read: TV people) and reprised in 2021-22. “It’s great for fans, but is it great for Matt Rhule and the Huskers?” Rhule, an unpopular man in Knoxville, Tenn., these days for killing a Nebraska-Tennessee home and home that was supposed to happen in 2026-27, was already shaking his head as Meyer got to the question. “Why would you ever … why would you ever play those games?” Rhule said. “If we’re being completely honest. Coach Meyer, I’m at the point in my career where, in my fourth job and getting fired in the NFL, I kind of say what I feel nowadays. I could care less.” (Note: He means he “couldn’t” care less.) Rhule continued: “Why in the world would a Big Ten team who is already playing nine conference games, why would you ever play one of those games?”
Some good comments from Jack Sawyer (Ohio State) and Howard Cross (ND) on the long season and how it impacted them preparing for the Combine. Other players had 6 weeks to work on skills that are targeted at the combine and Irish and Buckeyes have much less time. IMHO if NFL GM's put so much emphasis on what happens at the combine that they can't see what has happened all year on the field for players like Sawyer and Cross then they are very short sighted.
In my opinion, saying you don't want to play a highly competitive, tough-to-beat team outside your conference because it risks a loss is like saying you're OK with mediocrity. The SEC and Big10 folks will take issue, saying their respective conferences are meat grinders. Every game? Give me a break. There certainly are 2-3, occasionally 4 games if one is nonconference, that can make or break your season, but if you want to be among the best, don't you have to play and beat the best? If you can't say yes, then your team isn't there yet and perhaps never will be under your coaching. Go ahead and water down your nonconference schedule. It doesn't guarantee that you're going to be among the 2-3 best teams in your conference or the 12 most deserving teams in the CFP.
Sid, I used to agree with what you said until Indiana. If you don’t make it to the playoffs you cannot win the National Championship. There are no guarantees but playing 4 or 5 ranked conference opponents is hard enough, why travel to play a ranked out of conference team? Last year there appeared to be only 2 criteria: (1) Number of losses and (2) Did you make it to your Conference Championship game (you didn’t have to win). I will even guess that if I was the big 12 or the PAC 12, I would be tempted to manipulate the conference schedule to get maybe 2 of my teams in the playoffs.
Kyle, I anticipated that someone would cite Indiana, which is a valid point and which contradicts my rationale. I'm guilty of resident loyalty to my state's university when I say that it wasn't IU's fault that after many years of mediocrity (an overstatement), the program exploded like it did last year. My thinking relates to what Nebraska is doing. It's a traditionally strong program which has fallen on hard times and wants to crawl back to respectability by intentionally weakening its schedule ala cancellation of the Tennessee games.
Once again Sid, it’s not Indianas fault that their conference schedule did not have any ranked teams. This really has nothing to do with Indiana, the whole issue is your conference schedule is fixed. There is nothing you can do about that, my point is I don’t think adding a quality out of conference opponent has any up side anymore. The number of losses is all that counts.
Together with the above post, I want to make it clear that I don't pretend to be right. It's just my opinion. Lord knows I've been wrong a few (thousand?) times in my life. Having said that, here's an article wherein the Texas AD defends the scheduling of teams like Ohio State. I don't know if it's a pay site, but I was able to access it, and I'm not a 247 subscriber: Texas AD Chris Del Conte stands firm on scheduling: 'Our brand should play the greatest brands'
I can’t read it, but if your school wants to do it it’s fine, it doesnt change the fact that if there are 12 teams left with fewer losses than your team you risk being left out. You can be very proud as you sit out the playoffs.
This isn't really a new debate, though perhaps things have changed a bit with the new 12 team playoffs. Rightly or wrongly, I have always felt that the answer lays somewhere in between the two arguments. You can prove yourself by playing well against a great team or two...but lose two or three of those and you're out of contention. On the other hand you can play the safe route of scheduling weaker programs but run the risk of being voted off the island when the chips are down and the folks doing the ranking aren't that impressed with you compared to somebody taking a tougher track. I am always opposed to an FBS school scheduling an FCS school...except sometimes when that is their only option after a schedule gets screwed up for some reason (like, say, Nebraska dropping Tennessee).