Category: College Football

DALLAS — Josh Heupel isn’t one for showmanship or hype. Instead of his highly-touted quarterback Nico Iamaleava and potential No. 1 DE James Pearce, the Tennessee coach brought a senior offensive lineman and linebacker to SEC Media Days. 

Entering his fourth season, perhaps the greatest compliment one can pay to Heupel is that he’s made Tennessee… boring? 

“When I took this job three years ago, everybody can go back and kind of research what we were embarked on as far as challenges and how we had to navigate those,” Heupel said. “We’re at the point now where we’re almost free and clear of navigating all those things. Our roster is the deepest that it’s been by far.” 

With years of calm, it’s easy to forget the decade of turmoil Tennessee football once endured. The program fired previous coach Jeremy Pruitt amid alleged Level I NCAA violations. Numerous coaches turned the Vols job down after they fired Pruitt’s predecessor Butch Jones. Lane Kiffin abandoned the program after one year. Those messes ended not only with new football coaches but with new athletic directors, too. 

Heupel was seen by many as a bridge coach after joining his UCF athletic director Danny White in the move to Tennessee. Already, he’s well overperformed expectations. In 2022, the Vols beat Alabama and won 11 games. Perhaps most impressive, he followed it up with another nine-win campaign, giving Tennessee its most consistent two-year run since 2004. 

It comes through in interviews that Heupel is a quiet guy. He has seen the highs and lows of college football, from quarterbacking Oklahoma’s 2000 championship team to getting run off from his alma mater as an offensive coordinator in 2014. But more than anything, that calm consistency stands out to his…

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A new era of the Southeastern Conference was pushed in with the additions of the Texas Longhorns and Oklahoma Sooners, expanding the league to 16-member schools while doing away with the divisional structure that had been in place since 1992.

This week, the SEC is holding its annual media days events to allow both the conference itself as well as each respective program a chance to address the sports world ahead of the 20s4 campaign. Among the topics early on was the plan for the football conference championship game tiebreaker.

“There’s still a lot of tweaking to be done,” said Mark Womack, the SEC’s associate commissioner. “But our ADs have seen it. Our coaches have seen different versions of it as we’ve started to tweak and go through everything. So we just want to try to be sure that we’ve got all the different situations covered that could pop up so there are no surprises.”

While the final result is still quite nebulous, the conference brass seem to have a vision for what they want.

“We’ve got a pretty good idea, but we don’t want to put it out there just yet,” Womack said. “Because some of the tweaks that go through might impact (where) we might want to flip two (tiebreakers).”

That leaves a lot of leeway for what becomes the new league policy. Still, it appears that the SEC is leaving no stone unturned.

“But some of them as you go down the likelihood of everything being the same is probably not very high when you get into some of the other parameters out there,” Womack said. “To get to a coin flip or to get to a draw if you had more than two, would be possible but unlikely.”

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Story originally appeared on Gators Wire

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DALLAS — In the mad dash to replace Nick Saban as king of the SEC’s hill, an outsider leads the pack.

You know the coach and you recognize the championship resume, but he’s probably not the first name on the tip of your tongue. That man is Brian Kelly.

The LSU coach has won more games than his colleagues — seven straight 10-win seasons spread across Notre Dame and LSU leads all of college football — and is seemingly in the championship discussion year after year no matter the challenges or amount of talent on his roster. Heck, he won 10 games and led LSU to the SEC Championship Game after inheriting 39 scholarship players in his first season. The knock, of course, is the lack of national titles in a 33-year career that has included stops at Central Michigan, Cincinnati and Notre Dame.

But if there is to be a breakthrough, a changing of the tide, circle the 2024 season for LSU. History shows the third year is usually the best under Kelly’s leadership.

“Year 3 is a level of accountability in every program that I’ve taken over, that is heightened,” Kelly told CBS Sports at the SEC Media Days on Monday. “There’s a trust factor and an accountability level within our process that pops, if you will, and that’s this year.”

Much like Saban’s ballyhooed “process,” Kelly subscribes to the same path. As fans clamor for immediate turnarounds, Kelly provides success, but baked into that process is a slow build toward breakthrough in Year 3. 

For Central Michigan, it was a nine-win year and MAC title. 

For Cincinnati, it was an undefeated regular season and Big East title. 

At Notre Dame, perhaps the toughest gauge of his career, it was an undefeated regular season and trip to the BCS National Championship.

For LSU, well, continuing…

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The circus that is SEC Media Days will convene this week at the Omni Hotel in Dallas, where the Sooners and Longhorns will host a housewarming party of sorts, inviting all of their crazy new neighbors into what used to be Big 12 country.

OU and Texas leveled up, and we’re about to find out how comfortable they are in their new digs.

In SECville, there are crazy Cajuns staying up all night and Gators lurking in the neighborhood pond. Lane Kiffin egging houses and Kirby Smart pocketing HOA fees. Hogs wreaking havoc on lawns and the ghost of Nick Saban haunting enemies of old.

Other than that, it’s really a nice place!

Four teams will take the SEC Media Days stage each day from Monday through Thursday. The Sooners will take their turn Tuesday with the Longhorns following on Wednesday.

Here’s one big question for each team heading into SEC Media Days. We’ll go in order of when they’ll take their turn in Dallas.

More: What to watch for OU football at SEC Media Days: All eyes on Jackson Arnold

LSU

What is Blake Baker’s plan for fixing the defense? 

LSU had the Heisman Trophy winner in quarterback Jayden Daniels flanked by a couple of first-round NFL Draft wide receivers in Malik Nabers and Brian Thomas Jr.

But the Tigers’ supercharged offense was held back by the nation’s 108th-ranked total defense.

Coach Brian Kelly fired defensive coordinator Matt House and replaced House with Blake Baker, the former defensive coordinator at Missouri. LSU is paying Baker $2.5 million annually, making him one of the highest-paid assistants in college football.

LSU will have to remake its offense this season under quarterback Garrett Nussmeier, but as we saw, not even a Daniels-led offense could overcome LSU’s pitiful defense.

South Carolina

Can the Gamecocks’ offensive line protect quarterback LaNorris Sellers?

Last season, South…

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247Sports

Alabama landed a major commitment from five-star wide receiver Caleb Cunningham on Saturday. Cunningham, a Class of 2025 prospect from Ackerman, Mississippi, picked the Tide over Auburn, Tennessee, Florida, Ole Miss and others. 

Cunningham lists among the best recruits of the Kalen DeBoer era at Alabama. The Choctaw County High School product ranks as the No. 22 overall player and No. 3 wide receiver in the Class of 2025, according to 247Sports. His commitment adds to an already stacked No. 2 overall recruiting class in the nation that sits behind only Ohio State. 

The rising senior quickly exploded onto the scene as a potential top-tier recruit, and eventually confirmed himself as a verified five-star with a 98 overall rating in May. Cunningham caught 48 passes for 1,138 yards and 14 touchdowns as a junior and also starred as an all-area player of the year on the basketball court during a multi-sport campaign. 

When DeBoer came to Alabama from Washington, many questioned his recruiting credentials after primarily coaching at the small college level. Quickly, he has quieted all doubters. Cunningham is the fourth five-star commitment in the Class of 2025, joining quarterback Keelon Russell (No. 10) and cornerback Dijon Lee (No. 31). 

DeBoer’s Washington offense was known best for incredible production at wide receiver as the Huskies earned a trip to the College Football Playoff National Championship. Three receivers were selected in the first three rounds of the 2024 NFL Draft, including No. 9 overall draft pick Rome Odunze to the Chicago Bears. Cunningham will…

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The hype for EA Sports’ College Football ’25 has been through the roof. Football fans, as well as non-football fans, are anxious for this game to come out.

Needless to say after waiting a decade, this game will sell millions and millions of copies and downloads.

Fans have their particular teams will surely want to play out the season using their favorite teams and fans of the Oregon Ducks will have a ton of fun leading the Ducks to the digital promise land.

They’ll also play with two of the fastest players in the game as receivers Tez Johnson and Evan Stewart were given a speed rating of 96 and 95, respectively.

Game players will no doubt like to throw the bomb to Johnson and Stewart to utilize that Olympic-type speed. They’ll also be using quarterback Dillon Gabriel to throw those long passes, one of the highest-rated QBs in the game.

The newest Duck signal-caller has an overall rating of 92, the fourth-highest rating among quarterbacks in the game. His speed (81) and awareness (99) make him one of the game’s most dangerous quarterbacks and nearly impossible to defend.

For college football fans and Oregon fans, July 19, the date this game comes out, just can’t come soon enough.

Story originally appeared on Ducks Wire

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Pro Football is a funny business. While some of the game’s greatest players hail from big, history-laden college programs, many have also come from schools that you may have never heard of. It’s the classic example of how you should never judge a book by its cover. 

In that vein, I decided to compile, then rank, each of college football’s Mount Rushmores based on its most successful NFL players. As you would imagine, some of the schools that made the cut are household names, but there are more than a few surprise schools that made the cut. 

Below is the criteria used when putting the ranking together: 

Individual career records, achievements Inclusion in the Hall of Fame/NFL 100 All-Time Team Lasting impact on the game 

If a player attended multiple schools, they were considered only at the school where they made the most significant contribution. Troy Aikman, for example, was only considered for his accomplishments at UCLA and not Oklahoma, where his NCAA career started. (Note: The names listed under “honorable mentions” are Hall of Fame inductees who didn’t make the cut on the team’s Mount Rushmore.)

1. Pittsburgh

Mount Rushmore: QB Dan Marino, WR Larry Fitzgerald, DL Aaron Donald, RB Tony Dorsett 

Honorable mentions: CB Darrelle Revis, TE Mike Ditka, OL Jimbo Covert, OL Russ Grimm, LB Ricky Jackson, RB Curtis Martin, LB Joe Schmidt, DL Chris Doleman 

Marino and Donald were slam-dunk choices to make Pitt’s Mount Rushmore, with Fitzgerald being a fairly easy choice, too. It was a tough call, however, when it came to choosing the final spot that came down to Ditka, Dorsett and Doleman. 

All three players have compelling cases. Ditka was a record-setting tight end who led the Bears to the 1963 NFL title. Doleman enjoyed an incredible…

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As any college football fan will tell you, kickers at that level are particularly maddening. It really makes one appreciate how accurate NFL kicker are. College football really weeds out those who get to the next level and those who don’t.

Fortunately, Notre Dame has less of a chance of a big game being lost on a missed kick. That’s because Big Game Boomer, social media’s college football list guru, has ranked Mitch Jeter, the Irish’s transfer kicker from South Carolina, as the eighth-best player at his position:

This isn’t to say the Irish haven’t had some decent kickers in recent years. But the fact that Jeter is coming over from arguably the sport’s best conference in the SEC, and the fact that he should have the edge in most matchups this season should give Irish fans reason for optimism. You want someone with a good reputation when the game is on the line, and Jeter fits the bill.

Contact/Follow us @IrishWireND on Twitter, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Notre Dame news, notes, and opinions.

Follow Geoffrey on Twitter: @gfclark89

Story originally appeared on Fighting Irish Wire

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