Category: College Football

The Big Ten is going bi-coastal in 2024 as Oregon, UCLA, USC and Washington join the league following the Pac-12’s demise. Expansion comes after the conference produced its first national champion (Michigan) since the 2014 season, and the four new arrivals will only add difficulty to what’s already a brutal conference.

Along with the addition of the West Coast bloc, the Big Ten is eradicating divisions and granting league championship game access to the top two teams in the standings. While all four newbies boast strong football histories, their paths to the top of what is now an 18-team super conference will be treacherous.

Oregon is regarded as a plug-and-play league title contender, but there is plenty of intrigue surrounding the other three teams entering the 2024 season as well. UCLA and Washington are both led by first-year coaches, while USC is beginning a new era at defensive coordinator and quarterback following a disappointing season of regression.

The range of outcomes is vast for the Big Ten newcomers as they will crisscross the country playing unfamiliar foes up to three time zones away. As the season approaches, here’s a look at the best- and worst-case scenarios for the league’s splashy additions.

Oregon

Best case: National champions. With head coach Dan Lanning entering Year 3 and the return of quality coordinators Will Stein and Tosh Lupoi, the Ducks have the foundation to build off a 12-2 season that ended with a dominant Fiesta Bowl victory. Bo Nix is gone, but former UCF and Oklahoma star…

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Jun. 24—PULLMAN — Washington State’s defensive line and defensive back corps each added a prospect on Monday.

The Cougars landed commitments from Josiah Pratt, a three-star defensive tackle from outside Houston, and Ishmael Gibbs, a three-star defensive back who hails from the Los Angeles area, bringing their class of 2025 to 12 members.

Pratt, the second defensive lineman in the Cougs’ class of 2025, committed shortly after taking his visit, which came from Thursday to Saturday. The 6-foot, 300-pound Pratt turned down offers from one FBS school, North Texas, and FCS clubs Incarnate Word, Lamar and Texas A&M Commerce to become a Coug.

Last fall, Pratt racked up 70 total tackles, including 44 solo, 16 for loss and 7 sacks, plus 4 quarterback hurries, helping Summer Creek High reach the 6A Division II state championship game for the first time in school history. He played his freshman season at Houston Heights.

Pratt was mainly recruited by WSU defensive tackles coach Pete Kaligis, who offered Pratt back in mid-March. His offers from North Texas and Lamar followed in the next month and a half.

WSU’s class of 2025 defensive front now features four players: Pratt, three-star edge rushers Lucan Amituanai and Luke Webb and three-star Malijah Tucker, the last of whom calls Tumwater, Washington home.

Gibbs, the first cornerback and third defensive back in the Cougs’ class of 2025, passed on an array of offers on his way to WSU: Arizona, Boise State, Nevada, Fresno State, USF and James Madison, the last of which he visited earlier this month, just a day before he visited Pullman.

The speedy Gibbs, a rising senior at Chaminade High in the West Hills area of Los Angeles, totaled 48 tackles last fall, including 19 solo and 2 for loss. He snared 5 interceptions and recorded 15 passes defended, helping him earn first-team…

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Oklahoma State’s Ollie Gordon II won the 2023 Doak Walker Award as the best running back in the nation. He was the Big 12 Offensive Player of the Year (besting the likes of Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers for the honor), a unanimous All-American and he finished seventh in Heisman Trophy voting, the highest of three running backs that placed in the top 10. 

And he’s still college football’s best-kept secret; according to Las Vegas oddsmakers, that is. 

In the most recent run of Heisman Trophy futures, Gordon was tagged with +15000 odds to take home the sport’s top individual award. That put him 53rd on the list of eligible athletes, alongside the likes of Nebraska true freshman quarterback Dylan Raiola and Ohio State’s Julian Sayin, who’s expected to back up starting signal caller Will Howard in his first year with the Buckeyes.

Of course, the Heisman is a quarterback-slanted award. Seven of the last eight winners have made their name tossing the ball around the field. The only non-QB to win the Heisman in that span — former Alabama wide receiver DeVonta Smith — stood out because he was elite at catching those passes thrown by quarterbacks. 

A running back hasn’t won the Heisman since 2015, when Derrick Henry carried Alabama to a College Football Playoff National Championship. Even then he garnered just 65.7% of the vote, the lowest mark for a Heisman winner since 2011.  

Regardless of recent trends, Gordon shouldn’t just be in the Heisman conversation; he should be an early front-runner. He has the potential to follow in that Henry mold as the most important player on a team with conference championship aspirations and College Football Playoff upside. 

Because if Oklahoma State wants to reach those goals, it will follow Gordon. He…

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LSU is hoping to add to its already strong 2025 recruiting class with a legacy in four-star receiver CJ Wiley, son of former Tigers defensive end Chuck Wiley.

However, it seems LSU has some ground to make up just a couple of days before Wiley is set to commit on Tuesday. On Sunday, he received a crystal ball projection in favor of Georgia from 247Sports’ Benjamin Wolk, the second he has received for the Bulldogs so far.

UGA is also an 82.3% favorite to land him according to On3’s recruiting prediction machine. He visited Athens earlier this month followed by a trip to LSU and is set to commit coming off a visit to Florida State this past weekend.

The Milton, Georgia, native who ranks as the No. 136 player nationally and No. 15 receiver, will decide between those three teams on Tuesday.

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

Follow Tyler to continue the conversation on Twitter: @TylerNettuno

Story originally appeared on LSU Tigers Wire

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An expanded College Football Playoff adds a lot of intrigue to the regular season for Group of Five teams. After watching the four-team postseason tournament from the outside for a vast majority of its existence — Cincinnati was the only team to make it, once, in almost a decade  — the non-power conferences are guaranteed at least one spot in a 12-team format going forward.

Five automatic bids go to the highest-ranked conference champions. The Power Four conferences are virtually guaranteed one automatic spot each, but the Pac-12’s dissolution means the fifth auto-bid is open for one of the 66 teams spread across the Group of Five conferences. 

Given the CFP selection committee’s hesitancy towards ranking Group of Five teams highly in the past, that might be the only slot that these programs can lay claim to. So that adds an extra air of importance to early-season showcases against Power Four programs — where Group of Five schools can make waves with close showings or upsets — and the individual conference races. 

When looking over the 2024 college football schedule, some games stand out as potentially impactful in the race for the postseason. Here’s a look at contests featuring Group of Five teams that have a chance to influence how the 12-team College Football Playoff pans out. 

Oregon vs. Boise State (Saturday, Sept. 7) 

Oregon is already penciled into just about every College Football Playoff projection on the planet. Dan Lanning has built a machine in very short order thanks to his elite ability to amass talent and get the most out of his players. The Ducks are in great shape to compete for a Big Ten title in their first year with the conference. Getting an early win against what should be a strong Boise State squad could set the…

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When the 2024 college football season commences, Texas Tech football coach Joey McGuire fully expects Behren Morton to open as his starting quarterback, despite lingering questions about the health of Morton’s throwing shoulder. And the Red Raiders plan to incorporate newcomer Cameran Brown, who was recruited after McGuire directed his staff to find a dual-threat quarterback in the NCAA transfer portal.

No one need tell the Tech coach, however, that he has to prepare for the possibility of his first two quarterbacks missing time on account of injury. That’s happened in each of McGuire’s first two years in charge of the Red Raiders.

If the Red Raiders need to turn to a No. 3 quarterback this season, as it stands now redshirt freshman Jake Strong or true freshman Will Hammond would be next up. Which one? That depends.

“You really want the ability to redshirt Will Hammond,” McGuire said last month, a few weeks after spring practice, “although if you just go by the spring stats, he had a better spring stat-wise than Jake. I would say Jake would be 3 and Will would be 4.

“But if you got past Cam (Brown), it would be a deal where, ‘How can we win the game with who’s healthy?’ Will Hammond threw 25 touchdowns and only four interceptions during the spring on all competitive throws. He’s going to be really, really good for us.”

How the Red Raiders stack up: Texas Tech football post-spring depth chart

Recovery timelines for 13 players: Joey McGuire expects September return for Texas Tech football deep snapper Jackson Knotts

Strong stayed in the four-game redshirt window last season, but he played the second half of a 38-21 loss to Kansas State and was pressed into starting duty the next week in a 27-14 loss at Brigham Young. Against Kansas State, he threw for 173 yards and a touchdown and set up a TD with a 54-yard run. At BYU,…

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USATSI

Oklahoma and coach Brent Venables have agreed to a six-year contract extension through the 2029 season that bumps Venables’ total pay to $49.65 million, according to 247Sports. The Sooners are less than two weeks away from officially joining the SEC in all sports on July 1 ahead of the 2024 season. 

The average annual value of Venables’ new deal hovers around $8.28 million. He will make $8.15 million in 2024 after earning $7.1 million a year ago. 

Venables, a former defensive coordinator and associate head coach at Oklahoma under Bob Stoops, was in the third year of a six-year contract paying him a fully guaranteed $43.5 million. He became a hot name in the coaching market while serving as defensive coordinator at Clemson from 2012-21, and Venables finally made the jump up in 2022 by returning to the Sooners to replace Lincoln Riley. He is 16-10 through two seasons with the Sooners, including a 10-8 record in Big 12 play. 

Oklahoma struggled to a 6-7 record in Venables’ first season, its lowest win total since 1998, but bounced back in 2023 by winning 10 games and finishing No. 15 in the final AP Top 25. The Sooners are 0-2 in two bowl appearances under Venables, who was No. 34 in CBS Sports’ ranking of the Power Four coaches entering the 2024 season. 

Key to that turnaround has been Oklahoma’s continued improvement on the defensive side of the ball. The Sooners finished eighth in the Big 12 in scoring defense while allowing 29.6 points per game in 2022 but improved that figure to 22.3 in 2023, which ranked fourth among conference teams. 

Venables has emphasized…

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WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Cameron Gorin made the same pledge to Purdue football that once led his father to a memorable career.

The rising Hamilton Southeastern senior announced his commitment to Ryan Walters’ program on Thursday. The 6-5, 260-pound three-star prospect chose the Boilermakers over Louisville, among others.

Gorin’s father, Brandon, started three seasons at right tackle for Purdue under Joe Tiller. The Muncie native spent nine seasons with five NFL franchises, including two Super Bowl championships with the New England Patriots.

Along with his father, Gorin named several former Purdue greats in his announcement on X, including Leroy Keyes, Matt Light, Rosevelt Colvin, Shaun Phillips, Akin Ayodele, Drew Brees and Matt Mitrione.

“I can’t wait to continue with the Purdue football legacy and brotherhood with my future teammates,” Gorin wrote.

Cameron Gorin became the second offensive line commitment in Purdue’s 2025 class, joining Ta’Khyian Whitset of Antioch, Tenn.

Purdue’s 2025 class now includes eight commits.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Purdue football recruiting: Offensive lineman Cameron Gorin commits

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