Category: College Football

The Tennessee Volunteers are heading into their fourth season under head coach Josh Heupel, who signed a contract extension last year that will keep him in Knoxville through 2029. He led the Vols to an 8-4 regular season in 2023 and capped it off with a 35-0 win over Iowa in the Citrus Bowl to earn the No. 21 spot in the final College Football Playoff rankings. Their momentum under Heupel has led to significant Tennessee football recruiting news since the season ended, as the Vols are in the mix for multiple high-level recruits in the 2025 class. Several of the top prospects in the country were in Las Vegas for Nike’s “The Next One’s” event earlier this month and the Tennessee Vols are recruiting several of those players. 

Tennessee finished with the No. 13 recruiting class for 2024, according to the 247Sports rankings. The Vols are off to a strong start for the 2025 cycle, ranked No. 10 overall with one 5-star and one 4-star among their six commits. If you want to see the latest Tennessee recruiting news, you should join GoVols247, the 247Sports affiliate that covers the Tennessee Vols.

The GoVols247 team of Patrick Brown, Wes Rucker, Ryan Callahan and Ben McKee have decades of experience covering the Vols. Callahan has a history of breaking massive recruiting news, while Brown, Rucker and McKee are locked in on all the latest team news. Hundreds of thousands of Tennessee fans follow them on social media and their Tennessee coverage is read by millions. They’ll keep you locked in on everything happening in Tennessee athletics and provide you with premium updates you won’t find anywhere else. It’s all available at your fingertips on any device here.

The team at GoVols247 has extensive coverage of Tennessee’s recruiting efforts, including…

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The Georgia Bulldogs face three SEC contenders on the road next season in Alabama, Texas and Ole Miss. According to one writer who covers the Bulldogs, it’s the Texas Longhorns who will get the most focus this offseason.

DawgNation beat writer Mike Griffin had the following to say of the matchup between Texas and Georgia.

“Georgia doesn’t think too much, Kirby (Smart) doesn’t think too much, about Alabama. Really the Oct. 19 game at Texas is the big headache.”

Griffin’s strong take is a surprising one given Alabama’s sustained success over the last decade and a half. Whether or not it was a subtle dig at the Crimson Tide is up for debate, but the beat writer shared that Georgia faithful have a high esteem for Texas and head coach Steve Sarkisian.

“They’re looking at (Georgia vs. Texas) as probably the game that’s gonna decide the SEC in Texas next year. And, to me, that’s what I’ve heard more about, is the game in Austin.”

SEC Network host Paul Finebaum pushed back reminding Griffin of Georgia’s road battle with Alabama earlier in the season. Of course the Tide isn’t going away, and should provide a tough battle for the Bulldogs. Nevertheless, Griffin didn’t back down and further explained his reasoning.

“That’s a (Texas) staff been in place, that’s a team that beat Alabama by 10 points in Tuscaloosa last year. That’s an impressive program that Steve Sarkisian’s built and they’re a real threat to the SEC with their budget. So, to me, I think that’s the big threat right now. People talk about Texas and Georgia at the top of the SEC, and then you get into the second tiers.”

Griffin listed Alabama, Tennessee, LSU, Ole Miss and Missouri as second tier teams in 2024. Undoubtedly, that tiering with cause a stir in the southeast, but the Longhorns and Bulldogs, based on last season…

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After years of debates and multiple rounds of voting, the College Football Playoff finally approved a new, expanded 12-team format for the 2024 season. And for about eight months, the future of the sport’s postseason seemed to stabilize. Then, last summer, the Pac-12 as we knew imploded. 

The Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC all swooped in and picked at the Pac-12’s remains, swelling their numbers and drastically changing the math in the college football landscape. The result sent the CFP power brokers back to square one. Since then, we’ve seen debates on format, meetings with no votes and votes with no results. 

The CFP Board of Managers will meet again next week, and it’s expected (according to ESPN) that they will vote to move from the current 6+6 model to a new 5+7 format that will reduce the number of automatic bids for conference champions to five, adding an additional at-large bid. 

It’s not a perfect change without flaws or downside for some, but it should have a positive impact for both the regular season and the CFP’s first round.  

Why the hold up? 

Expansion to 12 teams was formally approved for the 2024 and 2025 seasons on Dec. 1, 2022. At that time, a 6+6 format provided access for champions from more than half of the FBS conferences. Any changes to the playoff format or the financial distribution model requires a unanimous vote, and to this point a change off of that 6+6 has not garnered unanimous support from the board. 

Because while the Pac-12 no longer has enough teams to hold a regular-season conference schedule or a conference championship game, it does still have a seat in the CFP meetings. Its representative, Washington State president Kirk Schulz, is reportedly the hold up. He is concerned on how the two remaining…

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On Thursday, EA Sports released their teaser trailer for EA College Football 25 set for release this Summer. This will mark the return of the beloved video game franchise. The last time we saw an EA Sports college football game was NCAA Football 14 which came out in July 2013.

Fans of college football and the NFL draft have been waiting a long time for this one to come back. The last time EA put out a college football game, former Michigan quarterback Denard Robinson was on the cover. EA promises a full reveal of the game in May.

Story originally appeared on Draft Wire

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Chip Kelly won eight games, stomped his biggest rival and won a bowl game at UCLA last season. Still, on Friday, he determined his best career move — one of the latest to rock the sport — was to take a massive pay cut to remain in the same conference and become offensive coordinator at Ohio State.

Of course, it made sense. Of course, it made no sense.

Welcome to college football in 2024. It’s a-maze-ing.

The year is only 40 days old, yet some of the game’s top programs, rosters and minds are scrambled.

Jim Harbaugh began January under NCAA investigation on two fronts while trying to figure out how to beat Washington. He’s still under investigation, but life is a lot better where investigators can’t touch him: in the NFL with the Chargers.

On the same afternoon Kelly left UCLA for Ohio State — eight weeks after the season ended — Bill O’Brien left for Boston College after serving 21 days as the Buckeyes offensive coordinator. At least that was a promotion by title.

This migration by Kelly?

The 60-year-old who had spent 14 years as a college or NFL head coach took a big pay cut (from $6 million per year) to become a coordinator for the first time since 2009. He saw a better future calling plays at Ohio State than following up on the best three-year run (25 wins) by any UCLA coach since 2015. This despite the Bruins being in the process of joining the Big Ten next season.

Coaches everywhere preach loyalty. The profession might have cornered the market lately on rental properties.

Kelly’s move was unprecedented and yet not altogether surprising. He has a relationship with Ohio State coach Ryan Day, his quarterback at New Hampshire while Kelly was the offensive coordinator. Kelly remains a respected play caller who, at his base, wants to…

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MANHATTAN — It should come as no surprise that Kansas State head football coach and Matt Wells someday would find themselves on the same staff instead of lining up across the field from one another.

The fact that it took 10 years was simply a matter of timing.

But here they are together at last, after Wells accepted Klieman’s job offer as quarterbacks coach, co-offensive coordinator and associate head coach.

Klieman often expressed his admiration for Wells, who took the head coaching job at Texas Tech for the 2019 season, the same year Klieman moved from North Dakota State to K-State. But the two of them go back farther than that.

Related: Kansas State football offensive coordinator Collin Klein headed to Texas A&M

Kansas State football associate head coach Matt Wells, left, meets with Wildcats athletics director Gene Taylor before an October 2021 game in Lubbock, Texas, when Wells was head coach at Texas Tech.

“It started in my early days at Utah State, becoming a head coach and really looking out there at potential defensive coordinators, and just studying what they did at North Dakota State and how tough they played and how they ran to the football and how they tackled,” said Wells, whose first head coaching job was at his alma mater, where he compiled a 44-34 record in six seasons before taking the Texas Tech job. “That was important to me as an offensive guy being a head coach.

“And then I was like, ‘Who’s this guy coordinating this defense?’ And then I found out and we started a relationship, and I offered him the defensive coordinator’s job there at Utah State, and he said no. So, he turned me down and I said yes to him, so you have to fast-forward 10 years later.”

Klieman turned Wells down in part because in 2014 he would get the head coaching job at North Dakota State, where he won four FCS national…

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First-year Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer already faced the gargantuan undertaking of replacing college football legend Nick Saban. Now, he is facing that task without his right-hand man following the news that Ryan Grubb won’t be the Crimson Tide’s offensive coordinator in 2024.

With Grubb instead heading to the NFL to be the offensive coordinator for the Seattle Seahawks, it leaves DeBoer without his longest-tenured confidant in the coaching ranks. The two worked together for 12 seasons across four different schools, developing a comfort level and rapport that led to Washington’s prolific offensive success the past two seasons.

Grubb called the plays for the Huskies during their 25-3 run over the past two years, which culminated with a loss to Michigan in the College Football Playoff National Championship Game. That’s the key element here. His role as offensive coordinator role wasn’t just an inflated title for the sake of increasing his pay grade, like we often see in college football.

DeBoer, a noted offensive guru himself, actually trusted Grubb with his scheme, and the results were magnificent as Washington ranked among the nation’s most prolific passing attacks each of the past two seasons. Grubb’s departure now forces DeBoer to either turn over play-calling to someone new or assume the duties himself.

There was an interesting element to the timing of Grubb’s departure from a roster management standpoint. Friday marked the end of the 30-day window for players to transfer following Saban’s retirement, meaning any Alabama players wishing to transfer as a result of Grubb’s decision will have to wait until the spring transfer window in April to enter the portal.

Where DeBoer goes from here

With ESPN reporting that Grubb will be taking…

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Curt Cignetti’s first spring at Indiana is fast approaching. With the Hoosiers’ spring game set for April 18, the schedule for the next few months is taking shape.

Cignetti and his staff spent December retooling what he called a “crisis roster situation,” and then they laid the foundation for recruits in the classes of 2025 and 2026. Now, it’s time to get to work with the current roster to prepare for the 2024 season.

So far, it appears strength and conditioning coach Derek Owings has spent more time around the current roster than Cignetti has. Owings came to Bloomington after serving in the same role under Cignetti at James Madison for the past four years. Owings — who makes $535,000 annually at IU — has been training with IU’s overhauled roster ahead of spring practice. While the rest of the staff has been on the road, Owings has stayed in Bloomington preparing players for the season.

Talking Points: Cignetti says forget what you think you know about IU football

Insider: IU’s first spring under Curt Cignetti will be different. Here’s what to watch.

“The offseason is his baby,” Cignetti said about Owings during signing day on Wednesday. “Right now and then in the summer. Now, we’ll still maintain and do things during spring ball, fall camp, during the season. I think he’s a big part of what we do. That’s why I do everything I can to keep him on the roster, pay him as well as I can because he makes a difference.”

As for getting into the spring season and preparing for the spring game, the Hoosiers will have an abbreviated stretch of training. IU will hold only 13 spring practices before the game, which will be played at night. This shorter lead-up was to ensure the game would be held the day before during Little 500 weekend in Bloomington.

Cignetti acknowledged implementing the systems of the…

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