Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnndd...we're off!! Some really good games this weekend. Penn State @ Wisconsin - 2 heavy weight contenders in the Big 10 square off in week 1. Both had disappointing seasons last year and both are expected to rebound and be contenders for the Big 10 Championship. Should be a great game, I'll be curious to see what the attendance is at Camp Randall. Ohio State @ Minnesota - CJ Stroud gets his first start against Minnesota, Buckeyes of course have way more talent than the Gophers, but still it's the first start. Stroud will be assisted though by what most consider the top group of receivers in college football. Alabama vs Miami at Mercedes Benz Stadium. I'm doubtful that Miami can put up much resistance to the Tide, but still it's a good opponent for the Tide to open the 2021 season. Indiana @ Iowa - Another game between teams expected to have good seasons and maybe even contend for the Big 10 title. Indiana of course had a magical season in 2020 fueled by their improbable upset of Penn State. It jump started their season and IU fans hope that it continues in 2021. Tom Allen is seemingly got them turned and headed in a good direction. Iowa got off to a rough start in 2020 but finished pretty strong. Louisiana @ Texas - The coming out party for Steve Sarkesian against a dangerous team in Louisiana who has one of those hot young coaches at the helm and something like 21 starters returning. Texas is a big favorite. All eyes will be on the Texas offense with hot shot RS Freshman QB Hudson Card and Heisman Candidate Bijan Robinson at RB. Sark needs to get off to a good start here and have the Longhorns ready to rock and roll. No 3 point win at the buzzer with a FG or god forbid a loss. Oregon State @ Purdue - Don't know much about either team to tell you the truth. But it's still Power 5 v Power 5. Georgia vs Clemson at Charlotte - This is the game of the day. Both expected to be playoff teams, loser isn't out of it. But a lot of story lines. No Trevor Lawrence or Travis Etienne but the new QB got some valuable playing time last season and showed a canon for an arm and was very accurate. Also look out for Will Shipley their Freshman RB, that kid is fast and good. Georgia of course always known for defense and conservative offense, but with a healthy JT Daniels maybe not so conservative in 2021. Should be a great game. LSU @ UCLA - UCLA had a warmup game last weekend vs woeful Hawaii, while LSU had to get out of town early to dodge Hurricane Ida. LSU no doubt the more talented team. LSU no doubt expected to win, would be big for the Pac12 to get a win here. Notre Dame @ FSU - 2nd year for new guy from Memphis, Mike Norvell. They were pretty bad last year. Irish likely more talented than FSU, but we have a lot of new pieces to break in so you never know. I don't know if McKenzie Milton will be the starter at QB or Jordan Travis last years starter. If you remember Milton was headed for a Heisman type of season when he got a horrible knee injury. This will be his first time back on the field if he plays. Louisville vs Ole Miss at Mercedes Benz Stadium . Kiffin has reportedly lost 30 -40 lbs in the offseason. Hopefully none of it from his exciting offensive mind. He made a big splash last season with that offense, but they didn't play defense. I don't know much about Louisville, I don't expect them to be one of the better ACC teams though. Lots of other buy type of games this week. Nebraska gets a week off with Fordham coming to Lincoln for a beating and a check. Fordham? Competition this weekend from the FEDEX Cup finals at Atlanta's East Lake Golf Club and don't forget the women are playing the Solheim Cup at Inverness in Toledo. Not to mention the US Open at Forrest Hills. Enjoy the weekend!
Joe Milton, the Michigan transfer won the starting QB job at Tenn. They open against Bowling Green this weekend. While in Ann Arbor, Cade McNamara won the Michigan QB competition and will start for UM vs Western Michigan.
Sark now saying that the QB competition continues, as while Hudson Card will start, that Casey Thompson will also play.
I see and hear everything and everyone saying ND wins this one but as I said before this game scares me.
All of the conferences have now said there are to be no accommodations for missing players, if you can't play you forfeit. I expect we'll still see some covid issues this season, not all players are vaccinated, not all coaches, coaching staff, training staff, and others around the programs are vaccinated. So we'll see covid pop up, we'll see break through cases. You see it in the NFL and MLB, it's going to happen in college football as well. Brian Kelly said this: "There are going to be, during the season, unavailable players like we had last year where we're gonna go out on the field and you're gonna go "Where is No 26 or 32 or 57?" and we certainly can't comment on them, but I think you guys will be able to deduce what that in fact is. So it's still here. Covid has not gone away." Some took this to mean the Irish have players who are not making the trip to FSU, but I think he was just speaking in general terms, not giving a heads up that we had some guys who will be missing due to Covid issues either break through infection or contact tracing.
NCAA Guidelines for Covid this fall..some key points Non-vaccinated athletes are tested weekly during the season, via either a single PCR test or three antigen tests. If there's a game that week and testing via PCR, it has to be done within three days of the game. If antigen, it has to be taken within one day of the game. Out of season, non-vaccinated athletes go through surveillance testing based on local recommendations and community spread. Vaccinated athletes do not need to be tested during or outside the season, unless they are symptomatic, or based on a risk assessment of a documented close contact with COVID-19. Non-vaccinated athletes must quarantine in accordance with local public health authority guidance for close contact with another individual with confirmed positive COVID-19. Vaccinated athletes only need to mask in public indoor settings for 14 days with discontinuation if a COVID-19 test is performed three to five days after exposure and is negative, or if assessment does not reveal high risk. A positive test results in a 10-day isolation period, regardless of vaccination status. This link takes you to a page on the NCAA.org there is another link at the top to a document on the guidelines if you are interested. NCAA.org - The Official Site of the NCAA
Interesting story at South Carolina, where a Grad Assistant will be their starting QB. Zeb Noland thought his QB career was over after his last game as a QB with North Dakota State in the FCS playoffs and he took a job on Shane Beamers new staff at South Carolina. Of course like all players last year he gets a free year due to covid and the projected South Carolina starter got injured and they didn't have a lot of depth so they moved him on to the squad as a grad transfer and he won the starting job. He was Trey Lances (#1 draft pick of the 49ners') backup but as you remember Lance opted out of playing this Spring when North Dakota State resumed football as a Spring Sport this year. He started 6 games but not in the playoffs. Doesn't sound like he was a great QB at NDSU though. We'll see how he does for So. Carolina. He played at Iowa State before transferring to North Dakota State.
Yikes, Ohio State QB, Quinn Ewers, has reportedly signed a 1.4M $. NIL contract. Not the starter, probably not the backup or the 3rd string guy. Simply amazing. Reports: Ohio State freshman QB Quinn Ewers signs $1.4M NIL deal
I wonder if this is the year the Neb sellout streak comes to an end. I see that they had a benefactor buy the remaining tickets for the Fordham game and donate them so that the streak would continue. Sounds like they are committed to continuing the streak by whatever means necessary. The Irish streak ended in 2019, we had a few games where somebody bought up the remaining tickets and donated them along the way. I doubt if even though the team has played well in the last 4 years, that we'll have sellouts for every game in 2021.
A significant portion of Irish game attendance is made up of people who fly to the games for a weekend visit. With the pandemic it's probably going to reduce that group. Additionally many people are avoiding large crowds which will probably have an effect on every school.
I will be curious to see the attendance at games this weekend. Almost all schools are open 100% capacity. But as you noted will all who have tickets go to the games or stay home to feel safer and avoid crowds. I know I wouldn't go to a game this year. We already know the Neb game is a selllout, I wonder if they'll have a lot of no-shows. We had that at Texas esp in the early games vs a directional sacrificial lamb school. Sellout but 20,000 no shows, now those were mainly due to Sept heat and not really caring to watch a non-competitive game. I imagine the Clemson/UGA game in Charlotte is a sellout, but will there be no shows? Same for Alabama/Miami in Atlanta or Ohio State@Minn on Thursday night. Right now I know that the Cincinnati @ ND game is an official sellout. People have said Cincy fans were snapping up all the tickets though. USC is bound to be a sellout, but the rest of the home schedule even the UNC game might be large crowds but not sellouts.
I do not expect to see a sellout at Minnesota tomorrow night on the road but we shall see. I am more concerned by our young and inexperienced defense against the Gophers.
They were talking about Minn/Ohio State on ESPNU, the analysts were really excited about the Buckeye offense, said that Stroud fits what Ryan Day wants to do more than Justin Fields did last year and that your offense could be the top offense in the country this year, agreed with your assessment of the defense but said that they only have to be pretty good because they expect an offensive explosion from OSU something like what LSU did in 2020 and Alabama did in 2021. Gophers have some good offensive talent in Tanner Morgan returning at QB and a potential AA RB in Mohamed Ibriham. Could make it interesting for the young Buckeye defense.
Kind of late to decide you don't want to be on the team isn't it? Florida Gators defensive end Andrew Chatfield has entered the transfer portal five days before the kickoff of the 2021 season. Just five days out from the Florida Gators' first action of 2021, BUCK rush end/outside linebacker Andrew Chatfield Jr. has entered the NCAA transfer portal. According to a report by On3Sports, Chatfield, a former four-star prospect out of high school, has elected to leave the Florida program before the beginning of the season.
Wow that is late. Have to wonder if this is the dreaded "I'm not starting so I'm taking my ball and going somewhere else" syndrome we expected?
One of the things that will make these early games interesting is that most of the top teams have new players in critical positions....ie QB. Now those new QB's are highly rated kids, but they still all have very little experience. Alabama has Bryce Young and a new OCoord in Bill O'Brien. They also don't have DeVonta Smith and Jaylen Waddle or Najee Harris. They have guys to replace them and they are highly rated kids but again experience. Ohio State has CJ Stroud another highly rated QB, but little experience. However he has the top tandem of WR's to throw in college. Something that had to have been a big help for Mac Jones last year when he was having such a great year. Master Teague at RB is an AA candidate. Clemson lost generational QB Trevor Lawrence and Travis Etienne. Again highly ratee replacements but not the same level of experience Georgia on the other hand has a highly rated QB returning. OU also has a highly rated QB returning Texas A&M has a very young OL and a new QB who again has some experience, was highly rated but not the level of experience that Kellen Mond brough to the LOS. They do have an AA caliber RB though in Spiller. The Irish have a new QB, but he's got quite a bit of experience in his time at Wisconsin. We do have a lot of new pieces on the OL though and our WR's are unknown in terms of production even though most of them are upper classmen. We have a deep RB room though if the OL can gel. Iowa State, UNC and Cincinnati all have Sr qB's who had great seasons last year coming back. Really looking forward to the Ohio State/Minn game tonight. Boise State v UCF could be a great game. Boise State with a new coach in Andy Avalos an alum who had a great career on the Blue Carpet, then on the other sideline is the Gus Bus, who is free to not worry about Alabama anymore! Weber State at Utah isn't a great match, other than they are in the same region. Utah has former Baylor QB, Charlie Brewer as their starter and some think they could contend for the Pac12 South. Kyle Whittington always puts together a good solid team that comes to play.