Category: College Football

During fall Saturdays last year, Pac-12 official John Morton would gaze up at the stands, the sights and the sun and feel something else wash over him during the conference’s impending demise.

Sentimentality. Melancholy. A sense of loss.  

The CPA from the Pacific Northwest had spent 13 years as a Pac-12 on-field official. The 2023 season was his last in the league, mostly because it was the end of the league. It wasn’t easy having that fact play over in his mind and on the field for the entire season. 

Officials are supposed to be neutral. Morton couldn’t be. Not in this case. He and his peers were rooting for status quo.

They weren’t alone.

“You knew that very well could be the last time you ever went to that stadium,” said Morton, a veteran back judge originally from Olympia, Washington, now currently living in Dallas. “You knew all these teams were going to be in other places next year. Officials were going to be in other conferences. It was unlike anything else. It definitely made for a much different season.”

Amid the Pac-12’s dissolution, it’s easy to overlook a cohort of individuals who proudly carry with them some of the conference’s lasting legacies. The 64 Pac-12 officials who worked last season have been scattered to the winds of fate but not without memories, emotion and goodbyes.

“It was a very unceremonious end,” Morton told CBS Sports. “There were people with a lot of runway left in front of them. Good officials. But the numbers are going to be such that not everybody is going to have a chair when the music stops.”

Those 64 on-field officials (not counting replay officials) were divided into eight crews of eight for the league’s last season. The story from there is almost Darwinian. Natural selection with a whistle. Only…

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Brian Kelly gave Texas a “Welcome to the SEC” present as he and his recruiting staff have flipped a four-star defensive line commit for the 2025 recruiting class.

Brandon Brown is a 6-foot-1, 286-pound, four-star defensive lineman from Melbourne, Florida, where he plays for Eau Gallie High School. Brown committed to the Texas Longhorns on December 19, 2023, and has been locked in with them until he decided to de-commit today and flip his commitment to LSU.

Brown becomes the 14th commitment of the 2025 class and the second defensive lineman commitment as he joins Zion Williams who committed to LSU yesterday. LSU’s 2025 class is ranked as the No. 8 overall class in the country according to 247Sports but ranks fifth per On3.

Kelly has done a great job recruiting during his first two seasons at LSU as he has signed a top-ten class every season. The Tigers are still in the running for a lot of recruits so the class could get even better before it’s all said and done.

Contact/Follow us @LSUTigersWire on Twitter, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Louisiana State news, notes, and opinions.

Story originally appeared on LSU Tigers Wire

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Oregon set off Fourth of July fireworks that were felt coast to coast with the Class of 2025’s biggest recruiting shocker yet — a commitment from the No. 1 wide receiver in the 2025 cycle, Dakorien Moore.

A five-star prospect from Duncanville, Texas, Moore ranks as the No. 5 overall prospect in the class of 2025, according to 247Sports. The highest-ranked player to sign with Oregon in the modern recruiting era was Kayvon Thibodeaux, who ranked No. 6. 

Moore was previously committed to LSU but re-opened his commitment in May. What followed was heavy interest from Ohio State, Oregon and Texas as well as continued interest from LSU. If you had polled insiders 48 hours ago, they would have said in-state Texas was a slam-dunk, what with Arch Manning taking the reins in 2025 and Steve Sarkisian calling the shots. 

Not so. 

“The reason I chose Oregon is because I want to be different,” Moore told 247Sports’ Mike Roach. “I want to be a part of something legendary. I see coach (Dan) Lanning building a program that will win a national championship. I feel like (Oregon wide receivers) coach (Junior) Adams will develop me into the best wide receiver and man outside of football, and the culture Is different there most of all.”

Through three seasons at Duncanville, Moore has 130 receptions for 2,653 yards and 29 touchdowns. 

Oregon jumps from No. 7 to No. 5 in the 247Sports Composite Team Recruiting Rankings after Moore’s commitment. He’s one of two 247Sports Composite five-star wide receivers in the class and one of three total five-stars, per the industry-generated composite, including fellow Texan Dorian Brew, who committed June 29. 

In a (well-timed) article that ran July 3 on CBS Sports, recruiting experts from 247Sports rounded up the…

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Penn State may go by the nickname of Linebacker-U, but the defensive line has established a tradition of its own of sustained success up front. And the 2024 season looks to keep that tradition going with one of the best defensive line units in the Big Ten, if not the nation.

College football analyst Phil Steele ranked what he believes to be the top 25 defensive line units (subscription required) in the nation heading into the 2024 season, and Penn State is ranked right near the top of the list. Penn State has the nation’s no. 2 defensive line unit in the 2024 college football season according to Steele. The only team ranked ahead of Penn State is Big Ten foe Ohio State.

Penn State looks to be in excellent shape with the defensive line this season, as this ranking would suggest. Dani Dennis-Sutton is expected to easily move into a bigger role on the edge this season and the middle of the line will be plugged by a combination of Dvon J-Thomas, Amin Vanover, and Zane Durant. But the biggest development for the defensive line is the move of Abdul Carter to edge from the linebacker position.

Penn State took arguably its best defensive player out of the linebacker spot to hopefully get more out of him on the edge this season. The move is not one that would be made without confidence in what Penn State has to offer at linebacker but is expected to yield better results from Carter. Carter’s athleticism and burst should be evident off the edge against opposing offensive linemen and will likely better prepare him for the next level as he is going to be used more like Micah Parsons in the NFL, fittingly enough.

Other Big Ten teams with a top 25 defensive line according to Steele in 2024 include Michigan (no. 4), Nebraska (no. 5), Iowa (no. 13), Oregon (no. 23), and Indiana (no. 24). Of the Big Ten teams with a top 25…

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Last season marked a down year for freshman receivers in the SEC as Florida’s Eugene Wilson III was the only wideout from the Class of 2023 in the league to catch more than 25 passes. Just four freshman receivers totaled 15 or more grabs, and all of them played for teams that finished with losing records.

Expect a different look in 2024 in what’s shaping up to be a significant bounce-back season for freshmen receivers. It should look more like 2022 when nine true freshman receivers caught 15 or more passes for SEC teams.

That class included highly touted prospects such as Evan Stewart (Texas A&M, now at Oregon), Luther Burden (Missouri) and Barion Brown (Kentucky), all of which burst onto the scene with 40 or more catches. Others such as Alabama’s Kobe Prentice and Isaiah Bond (now at Texas) and Georgia’s Dillon Bell also made meaningful contributions as true freshmen for high-caliber teams in 2022.

So, who are the freshman receivers to watch from the conference for 2024? Here’s the rundown of the biggest names to know:

Cam Coleman, Auburn

247Sports position ranking: 2

Auburn has been desperate for a star receiver for years. It may finally have one now in Coleman, who doesn’t turn 18 until August. The Phenix City, Alabama native won offensive MVP honors in the Tigers’ spring game with four catches for 92 yards, stoking the hype surrounding what he may contribute in Year 2 of the Hugh Freeze era on The Plains. While looking ahead to the 2027 NFL Draft class, 247Sports national scouting analyst Gabe Brooks pegged…

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Although Ohio State football’s 2025 recruiting class has commitments from linebackers Tarvos Alford and Eli Lee, it is looking to add one more prospect to the group.

Riley Pettijohn, the 6-foot, 2-inch and 215-pound Texas ‘backer visited Columbus at the end of May, and has since taken other visits to his finalists. The nation’s No. 31 overall prospect and 4th ranked at his position according to the 247Sports Composite Rankings is ready to shut down his recruiting process.

This coming Saturday, July 6th, Pettijohn will choose from his final four: Texas A&M, Texas, USC and Ohio State. The 247Sports Crystal Ball leader is currently the Longhorns, but it has been wrong before.

Ohio State would love at add yet another Lone Star State star to its roster, as they have been extremely successful recruiting Texas in the recent past.

Contact/Follow @BuckeyesWire on X (formerly Twitter) and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Ohio State news, notes and opinion. Follow Michael Chen on X. 

Story originally appeared on Buckeye Wire

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USATSI

The SEC’s streak of four straight national championships was broken in 2023, but the conference enters 2024 looking stronger than ever. That’s due in large part to the additions of Texas and Oklahoma, two of college football’s premier programs that now officially call the SEC their home as of Monday. 

The Longhorns and Sooners also bolster the SEC’s litany of talented coaches. Even with Nick Saban finally hanging up the headset after an illustrious 17 years at Alabama, the SEC boasts some of the sport’s top minds and most successful helmsmen. 

Three of the top five names in CBS Sports’ Power Four college coach rankings now reside in the SEC, including Texas’ Steve Sarkisian. Kalen DeBoer’s move to Alabama gives the SEC four names in the top 10, more than any other power conference in the nation. In total, half of the SEC’s now 16 coaches made CBS Sports’ top 25. 

That coaching depth is why the SEC doesn’t look like it’s anywhere close to surrendering its position as one of college football’s preeminent conferences. The league is set to flourish with the expanded College Football Playoff; Texas and Oklahoma multiply that prestige. 

With the Longhorns and Sooners now in the fold, let’s take a look at how the SEC’s coaches stack up as voted by the CBS Sports and 247Sports college football staff. 

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The Oklahoma Sooners are still working to add defensive line depth for the 2025 recruiting class. Though they’ve earned commitments from interior defensive linemen Trent Wilson and Ka’Mori Moore and Alexander Shieldknight and C.J. Nickson at defensive end, the defensive staff had been in pursuit of other players on the edge.

After missing out on Max Granville, who chose Penn State, the Sooners turned their attention to Smith Orogbo. At the time, it looked like Oklahoma might pull off a recruiting win over Texas Tech, but on commitment day, it’s the Sooners Red River Rivals, adding the dynamic edge rusher.

On Monday, Orogbo committed to the Texas Longhorns. He’s a talented pass rusher with a lot of upside due to his fantastic athleticism.

The Sooners still have a dynamic defensive end duo in Shieldknight and Nickson to build the future of their defensive end group around and are well within the top 10 recruiting classes in the country as we enter July.

The Sooners turn their attention to securing commitments from Cortez Mills and Omarion Robinson along with priority offensive line targets Michael Fasusi, Lamont Rogers, Andrew Babalola, and Ty Haywood. Additionally, a number

Contact/Follow us @SoonersWire on X, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Oklahoma news, notes, and opinions. You can also follow John on X @john9williams.

Story originally appeared on Sooners Wire

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