Official 2021 College Football thread

[Solecismic]

Thinking about the early signing day, and how that played out. It won't happen, but maybe college football worked better without playoffs and conference championship games.

That drove conference expansion. So I'm looking at the Big Ten, and if it weren't for Iowa's late run of CB/S players, the entire western division finished behind the entire eastern division (including Rutgers) in 247's rankings of the signing classes.

Then you look at Nebraska, which used to be a powerhouse. They have the 14th-ranked recruiting class in the Big Ten. Was it a good idea to leave the Big 12?

I know I sound a little "make college football great again" here. Not what I had in mind. Sports evolve. And the "big two, little eight" I grew up with probably wasn't as much fun for people who lived in West Lafayette and Champaign as it was for those of us in Ann Arbor.

I'm not sure any of what we're seeing can be fixed. Amateur athletics and billion-dollar television contracts don't mix well at all. My niece and nephew both run cross country for a Division III school, and they're good enough that they get something tied into a tuition reduction. That means a big deal to them.

There are something like 100,000 college athletes and for the overwhelming majority, the opportunity to have that experience (they love their teammates, friends for life) and have it pay for some of their education is a good thing. And it has very little in common with the job major college football players have. Honestly, I'm stumped by how we can have one and preserve the other.

[Atocep]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

If people truly cared about competitive balance, they would have been screaming about the disparity in coaching salaries, facilities, TV contracts, and so on. They don't because this isn't about competitive balance.

They have been. I've seen numerous articles complaining about all of those things and it's a massively popular topic on boards like Rivals, specifically on boards of schools that don't have the advantages a handful of the others do.

[Atocep]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

But a by-product of the portal is that there's no longer any natural evolution of the sports as they have usually unfolded over a number of years. One team's great recruiting class one year can all leave the next. It kinda sucks, but students shouldn't be forced to attend a college or play for a coach/school where they don't want to be.

I largely agree with everything you said, but the downside is it's incredibly easy to change a 19 year old that didn't get to play because the guy in front of him is better's mind and offer him a situation that isn't in his best interest. It's the grass is always greener thing and the portal has opened the door to players being recruited that aren't in the portal and didn't really have any intentions of transferring until a certain school came along and made an impression. Yes, it's against the rules that are currently in place, but those rules are also 100% impossible to enforce.

The NIL is currently a state level thing where we've seen with the Florida bill introduced today that it's going to be arms race to create the most advantageous bill for schools in your state.

The Portal has the best intentions, but it's also made tampering a new thing coaches have to deal with. For every player that lands in a good spot because of the portal there are probably at least 5 that end up in a worse place, but it's easy to sell promise to an unhappy teenager.

[Ksyrup]

Again, in all sports but FB and BB, tampering always happened because transfers were allowed (without sitting a year). The portal was a way to give players a clear way to talk to other schools when they had decided to leave. FB and BB had the double whammy of introducing immediate transferring and a formal way to do it. All the other sports were at least accustomed to some level of year to year transfers.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by Solecismic

Amateur athletics and billion-dollar television contracts don't mix well at all.

This is the crux of it. It's tough to be amateur athletics to some but billion dollar business for everyone else.

If you want to make college athletics "pure" or whatever, you'd have to really become an amateur sport. Coaches who are paid what professors at the school make. Run as a true non-profit where you bring in just enough money to operate the sports. Maybe this means limiting marketing deals or putting your games on TV for free.

When you have coaches getting $20 million buyouts and guys getting $100 million extensions for a single 10-win season when other schools can't afford to get out of a six-figure contract, the cries of competitive unbalance seem odd.

[RainMaker]

For what it's worth, I think NIL will make football and basketball more competitive. The same with loosening of transfer rules.

There's only so much money businesses can pump into a program before the returns start to diminish. I'm guessing you might find more success in getting deals as the starter at a school like Illinois as opposed to being the 3rd string at Auburn. There's a lot of untapped endorsement potential in these non-competitive college towns.

In basketball, players on the bubble of being drafted may opt to stay an extra year or two. The one and done guys at Kentucky and Duke are gone, but maybe someone like Joe Wieskamp hangs around for another season at Iowa because he is making a living on the side. Does that help close the gap between the prominent programs and some mid-tier ones?

A school like NC State was never going to compete with Alabama in recruiting. They don't have the prestige or history. But I think NIL levels that a little bit.

[RainMaker]

Also I'm not advocating for expanded playoff, but I do think it would result in more competitiveness long term (I'm told that's something college fans care about). If you want to compete for a national title and play on a big state, you have a handful of schools to choose from. But if you've got a 12-team playoff where conference champs are in (and maybe an autobid to the top G5 school), mid-tier P5 schools have something they can sell.

Similar to how the expansion of the NCAA Tournament in basketball has spread the talent out a bit more and create more competition. You don't have to play for Duke or Kentucky to compete for a championship.

[tzach]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

Deion Sanders flips No. 1 overall recruit Travis Hunter from Florida State to Jackson State on signing day - The Athletic

...is that as nutso as it sounds to a semi-informed guy like me?

deion sanders broke the game -- and that has potential to fundamentally change the NFL as well

[Swaggs]

Originally Posted by Solecismic

Thinking about the early signing day, and how that played out. It won't happen, but maybe college football worked better without playoffs and conference championship games.

That drove conference expansion. So I'm looking at the Big Ten, and if it weren't for Iowa's late run of CB/S players, the entire western division finished behind the entire eastern division (including Rutgers) in 247's rankings of the signing classes.

Then you look at Nebraska, which used to be a powerhouse. They have the 14th-ranked recruiting class in the Big Ten. Was it a good idea to leave the Big 12?

I know I sound a little "make college football great again" here. Not what I had in mind. Sports evolve. And the "big two, little eight" I grew up with probably wasn't as much fun for people who lived in West Lafayette and Champaign as it was for those of us in Ann Arbor.

I'm not sure any of what we're seeing can be fixed. Amateur athletics and billion-dollar television contracts don't mix well at all. My niece and nephew both run cross country for a Division III school, and they're good enough that they get something tied into a tuition reduction. That means a big deal to them.

There are something like 100,000 college athletes and for the overwhelming majority, the opportunity to have that experience (they love their teammates, friends for life) and have it pay for some of their education is a good thing. And it has very little in common with the job major college football players have. Honestly, I'm stumped by how we can have one and preserve the other.

I was thinking about some of these things the other day. I think one of the things that has made the sport less interesting for me to follow is the combo of playoffs and conference expansion has taken away the "What if?" factor. When I first got into college football, you had the Big Ten, Pac Ten, SEC, SWC, ACC, Big 8, and the Eastern and Southern Independents + Notre Dame. You could have undefeated teams or powerhouse teams in 6 or 8 regions and had to hope for good bowl match ups to parse through and debate to see who was the best. Now, everything is funneled through the power 5 (soon to be 4, from what I am hearing) and Notre Dame. We don't have situations where Miami, Florida State, Alabama, Penn State, Michigan, Nebraska, Texas, Notre Dame and USC all have a chance for an undefeated season midway through the season because they are all in the same conference and will end up playing each other.

I guess the current model allows it to truly settle things on the field, but it was kind of nice for more teams to have an opportunity for a dream season each year.

The consolidation of all the power teams into four, neat packages is just kind of boring and, to me, leaves less opportunity for teams to have some upward mobility.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

Given where the game feels like it is going though, it begs the question - is he exactly what a program like FSU needs? Celebrity endorser-high caliber FB player-getter, make sure his recruits have access to all the money they will need to come to the school and surround him with competent Xs and Os coaches to manage the minutia of, you know, the actual games. If he brings in enough talent and you are able to pay them what they need to come to your school, can you duct tape the rest with the right foot soldiers running the program beneath his ego and celebrity status?

How many competent Xs and Os guys will work for someone who has no credibility aside from his name/image?

How many will come work for someone that has yet to prove he's in it for the long haul? Or that might vanish when the novelty wears off?

[JonInMiddleGA]

Almost stuck this comment in my previous post but it struck me as deserving of it's own post.

How far are we from players paying their coaches for playing time out of their NIL money? I mean, ya gotta spend money to make money, right? So the bigger picture might make it worthwhile to give up 20% of your paycheck in order to protect the other 80%.

[Ksyrup]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

How many competent Xs and Os guys will work for someone who has no credibility aside from his name/image?

How many will come work for someone that has yet to prove he's in it for the long haul? Or that might vanish when the novelty wears off?

Depends on if he's successful. He hasn't buffooned his way out at Jackson State yet. Long road to a P5 I understand, but winning builds credibility, and the Xs and Os guys don't need to be in for the long haul. If they have success, they can move onward and upward themselves.

[Ksyrup]

Cristobal and Leavitt under Taggart at Oregon is a good example of solid coordinators masking a head coach's issues.

[Ksyrup]

And btw, I'm not really advocating for Deion at FSU. It is a convenient narrative, but Norvell deserves time. Despite the ESD debacle yesterday on multiple fronts, we still landed a top 15 class. Unfortunately, since Ron Dugans can't recruit WRs, this is going to be our offense next year:

This gonna be our offense next year thanks to dugans pic.twitter.com/owNprKRkEG

— Henry (@seminole4life22) December 15, 2021

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

He hasn't buffooned his way out at Jackson State yet.

The ass kissing stage hasn't ended yet.

Getting a team to the level of 1-3 points better than Uconn isn't exactly a huge coaching achievement, the bar is obviously pretty low for getting people to fawn.

[Ksyrup]

Everything is relative. Depends where you began and what expectations are.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Myles Brennan says he'll stay at LSU after all.

Guess that fills in the blanks about which QB he was worried about competing with (Nussmeier is still there, Johnson is still in the portal)

[tarcone]

I think if Sanders found a couple good coordinators, he would do well at the D1 level because I believe he is an excellent recruiter. Plus he has won as a player at every level and he is showing he can win at a HBCU, which I dont think is as easy as one would think.

[Thomkal]

Coastal Carolina gets its bowl game today at 6pm on ESPN2. I think they match up pretty similar to Northern Illinois, so you know what that means-one team is going to blow out the other. Just hope its Coastal and they get their first Bowl win.

[albionmoonlight]

Originally Posted by tarcone

I think if Sanders found a couple good coordinators, he would do well at the D1 level because I believe he is an excellent recruiter. Plus he has won as a player at every level and he is showing he can win at a HBCU, which I dont think is as easy as one would think.

Yeah. But as several people here have alluded to, you run a risk with him that you'll be building a program with him and then he'll quit out of nowhere b/c he gets bored and decides to instead go sell "Prime Time NFTs" or whatever.

Maybe its a risk worth taking if he can get you 5* recruits in the meantime in the NIL world. But it is, IMO, a risk.

[tarcone]

Originally Posted by albionmoonlight

Yeah. But as several people here have alluded to, you run a risk with him that you'll be building a program with him and then he'll quit out of nowhere b/c he gets bored and decides to instead go sell "Prime Time NFTs" or whatever.

Maybe its a risk worth taking if he can get you 5* recruits in the meantime in the NIL world. But it is, IMO, a risk.

Yes it is, but in this day and age it seems like any coach would be a risk. How many Universities would hire Urban Meyer today? I bet there would be quite a few.

[Vegas Vic]

Originally Posted by tarcone

Yes it is, but in this day and age it seems like any coach would be a risk. How many Universities would hire Urban Meyer today? I bet there would be quite a few.

They might hire him, then in another year or two they'll be looking for another coach after he steps down for health reasons.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Texas gets Ewers from the portal, signs a 4* ... so Casey Thompson enters the portal

[JonInMiddleGA]

Jason B. Hirschhorn @by_JBH
·4m
Coastal Carolina giving an all-time please-let-this-season-end effort on defense.

{checks boxscore}

Yeah, 300 yards rushing allowed through 3 quarters, that sounds pretty accurate

[Thomkal]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Jason B. Hirschhorn @by_JBH
·4m
Coastal Carolina giving an all-time please-let-this-season-end effort on defense.

{checks boxscore}

Yeah, 300 yards rushing allowed through 3 quarters, that sounds pretty accurate

Yeah defense not showed up until the 4th Q. Got a stop on 4 and 1 and a TD on the next play and just now a fumble recovery that might win the game.

[Thomkal]

Wow time runs out on Northern Illinois after two big 4th down conversions and 4 yards away from a winning TD. Just a crazy game with no turnovers until the 4th quarter. Coastal gets its first bowl win just barely 47-41. Whew!

[Vegas Vic]

Can someone explain how the final two seconds was run off after NIU picked up the first down? I must have missed something.

The official play-by-play shows that NIU picked up a first down. The clock stopped with two seconds left. Then, the CCU players run out onto the field and the ref signals the game is over. After a first down, the clock is supposed to stop, and two seconds is plenty of time to line up and spike the ball after it's re-spotted. How did those final two seconds get run off?

[henry296]

The rule is you need 3 seconds to spike. It looks like it was put in place in 2013

Spike (gridiron football) - Wikipedia.

[Vegas Vic]

Originally Posted by henry296

The rule is you need 3 seconds to spike. It looks like it was put in place in 2013

Spike (gridiron football) - Wikipedia.

Thanks for that. I wasn't aware of that rule, but it makes sense now.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by henry296

The rule is you need 3 seconds to spike. It looks like it was put in place in 2013

Spike (gridiron football) - Wikipedia.

Never knew that. Was wondering about that at the end.

[Edward64]

Hogs at #19 in a 247 article but then #25 in their website ranking. Either way about the right range for recruiting. No homegrown 5-star talent but five 4-stars helped.

There's been some years in the 30s & 40s, but mostly in the 20s. Can't say I'm particularly excited about any individual in particular. Maybe there is a Darren McFadden breakout star in the group.

[PilotMan]

Totally forgot about the football game last night. I can't believe that. That's what the JBL will do as it was draft night. Oh well. I'll probably go back and watch it anyway.

If you missed it. The Bison beat nemesis James Madison last night to advance to the FCS National Championship game on January 8.

They nearly gave the game away, it was tight all along. Bison were up 10-0. JMU comes back to take the lead. The Bison answer in the 4th, but JMU drives into the red zone with time winding down, and NDSU makes a one handed interception over the taller reciever to seal it.

[sovereignstar v2]

That interception was sweet!

[sovereignstar v2]

#2 play in ESPN's Top 10

Destin Talbert with the big time interception! pic.twitter.com/YGCG2mPilG

— NDSU Football (@NDSUfootball) December 18, 2021

[henry296]

Originally Posted by Vegas Vic

Thanks for that. I wasn't aware of that rule, but it makes sense now.

I didn't either, but remember hearing the announcers mention it some other game this year so I googled it when I saw Vic's post.

[larrymcg421]

It happened in the Miami-FSU game. Miami was trying to get in range for a last second hail mary or FG. They completed a pass and tried to get up and spike it, but with only 2 seconds left, the refs flagged it and time ran out.

[Thomkal]

I for one am very happy about that rule

[JPhillips]

SC St. is taking Coach Prime to the woodshed.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by PilotMan

Totally forgot about the football game last night. I can't believe that. That's what the JBL will do as it was draft night. Oh well. I'll probably go back and watch it anyway.

If you missed it. The Bison beat nemesis James Madison last night to advance to the FCS National Championship game on January 8.

They nearly gave the game away, it was tight all along. Bison were up 10-0. JMU comes back to take the lead. The Bison answer in the 4th, but JMU drives into the red zone with time winding down, and NDSU makes a one handed interception over the taller reciever to seal it.

This was a really fun game. Two very good teams. Turnovers were the difference.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

SC St. is taking Coach Prime to the woodshed.

Gonna need somebody to pony up for some defenders, and maybe a QB

[miami_fan]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Gonna need somebody to pony up for some defenders, and maybe a QB

Ummm please note the name on that back of that QB's jersey.

I feel like the coach made sure he got his fair share of cash.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by miami_fan

Ummm please note the name on that back of that QB's jersey.

I feel like the coach made sure he got his fair share of cash.

Sometimes in life hard choices have to be made. 16/36 and 2 picks ain't gonna get you to FSU with me son.

[sterlingice]

Mack Brown and Shane Beamer agree to mayonnaise bath for winner of Duke's Mayo Bowl - CBSSports.com

Shouldn't the loser be punished with a mayo bath, not the winner "rewarded"?

SI

[Vegas Vic]

Looks like the controversy in the Cure Bowl hasn't died down yet. Apparently, the "3 second rule" is for having adequate time to snap and spike the ball. I think NIU was planning on lining up while the ball was being re-spotted, snapping the ball on the referee's whistle, and running a potential game winning play.

MAC commissioner: End of Cure Bowl between Northern Illinois and Coastal Carolina 'unacceptable'

[Ksyrup]

Yes, the end of that game was completely screwed up. There's no way the rules are setup for the clock to wind after being stopped while the ref is holding play and hasn't moved (or is in the process of moving) from behind center. Seriously, if they had hiked it before it hit zero, the ball would have hit the ref.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

Yes, the end of that game was completely screwed up. There's no way the rules are setup for the clock to wind after being stopped while the ref is holding play and hasn't moved (or is in the process of moving) from behind center. Seriously, if they had hiked it before it hit zero, the ball would have hit the ref.

The whole thing was weird. It seemed like the one ref called the play inbounds but wasn't really sure about his decision and the other refs panicked.

[Thomkal]

Coastal Carolina QB Grayson McCall returning for one more year after some talk he would enter the transfer portal

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Thomkal

Coastal Carolina QB Grayson McCall returning for one more year after some talk he would enter the transfer portal

And with a certain .... flair lol

Gray on Twitter: "… "

[Thomkal]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

And with a certain .... flair lol

Gray on Twitter: "… "

Yeah think that one will go up in the locker room somewhere

[bob]

Former GT RB Gibbs officially announced his transfer to Alabama.