The calendar has turned to August, and you can tell the season is almost here because this week’s mailbag is — brace yourself — almost entirely about on-the-field football.
Any issues with the just-released coaches poll? — Troy M.
Wow, I had no idea Troy was a reader. Say hi to Selma for me.
This was the first preseason coaches poll where I truly had no idea who would be No. 1. Not that Ohio State is surprising, but I would have guessed Oregon or Texas based on preseason hype.
Any of the top seven could win the national title, but it does seem a bit silly to have Indiana, last year’s 16-0 national champion, down at No. 6. Miami, which finished No. 2 last season and arguably upgraded its roster, is No. 7. But the coaches seemed to lean on more established programs, hence Georgia at No. 3.
Texas A&M at No. 8 makes me nervous. The Aggies lost a lot of production. I had them No. 13 in my June rankings, and wondered whether that was being optimistic. And Alabama seems way too high at No. 11. But of course, both teams made the Playoff last season, and the coaches included all 10 of last year’s Power 4 College Football Playoff teams in the top 12.
But the most glaring thing of all is that Clemson is ranked at all — the Tigers are No. 23. What is this based on? They went 7-6 last year, nearly all of the key players from that team got drafted and QB Christopher Vizzina (Tier 5, No. 53 in The Athletic’s QB tiers) is completely unproven. It reminds me of Miami in the post-2002 era, when the pollsters kept ranking them high long after the program began declining, under the assumption that, “Well, it’s Miami.”
We have officially entered that period with Clemson.
Which natty-or-bust program faces the most pressure to finally break through and win it all this season, Oregon or Texas? Both programs have the two best rosters in the sport and are loaded with veteran talent. — Mike J.
Apparently the coaches poll voters don’t agree with you. They had Oregon No. 2 and Texas No. 4.
I don’t believe in natty-or-bust. That’s an impossibly high bar in a 12-team Playoff. Kudos to Indiana last season for dominating start to finish, but most years we will see some randomness around who advances the farthest — matchups, timing, injuries, a bad call, etc. Case in point: Oregon’s 2024 team that started 13-0 was a machine, but got blown out in the quarterfinal by a loaded Ohio State team. The Ducks’ 2025 team was mortal by comparison, but advanced to the semifinals, beating James Madison and Texas Tech in the CFP.
But I’d say it’s reasonable to expect a preseason top-four team to at least reach the final four, be disappointed if they lose before that and be incredulous if they miss the Playoff entirely. And because that exact thing happened to preseason No. 1 Texas last year, the pressure on Steve Sarkisian seems far greater than that on Dan Lanning.
If the Ducks start No. 1 or 2 only to miss the Playoff, their fans will be frustrated but will mostly move on. If the Horns start No. 1 or 2 and lose in the quarterfinals, laptops will combust just by logging on to the message boards.
I’m not sure that’s fair, though. Sarkisian took over a program that had been stuck in the mud for more than a decade and led it to back-to-back CFP semifinals. (The first one when you had to finish in the top four.) But it’s like that was all forgotten as soon as Arch Manning went belly-up in the opener against Ohio State. The same coach who went 25-5 across 2023 and ’24 was right back to being the guy who went 5-7 and 8-5, respectively, in his first two seasons.
But in this era of $40 million-plus rosters, coaches are going to be judged relative to the price of their rosters. No one has official rankings, but Oregon and Texas are both likely near the top. Sark went big in the portal to upgrade Arch’s supporting cast. Now he has to deliver.
Who will win the Heisman Trophy this year?
Ralph D. Russo, Sam Khan Jr. and more
While I acknowledge I am a diehard Buckeyes fan, it feels like Julian Sayin is one of the most undervalued QBs in the country coming into this year. All he did as a redshirt freshman is lead the country in completion percentage (77.0) with 32 TDs and eight INTs. And yet many view him as behind Arch, CJ Carr, Dante Moore, Darian Mensah … what am I missing??? — Anonymous
I always put “please include your city” in the submission instructions, but I never thought to include, “Please tell us your name.”
I’d almost forgotten Sayin was a Heisman finalist last season. That’s how much he’s flying under the radar. And I can think of three reasons why:
No one considers him the best player on his own team. Jeremiah Smith, not Sayin, is the face of the Buckeyes, which I don’t often say about a receiver. Case in point: At Big Ten media days last week, I saw more reporters around Smith’s riser than Sayin’s.
Because of not just Smith, but Carnell Tate, it was hard to know last season how much of Sayin’s success belonged to him and how much belonged to those stud receivers. This year will be interesting with no second proven receiver (yet).
Perhaps most relevantly, Sayin did not have his finest performances in Ohio State’s two losses to end the season against Indiana and Miami, when the Buckeyes’ offense scored 10 and 14 points, respectively. He posted his lowest passer rating of the season (129.7) in the CFP game and was sacked five times.
All of which feels a little bit like C.J. Stroud all over again. Looking back, he had an absolutely ridiculous redshirt freshman season in 2021 — 72 percent completions, 4,435 yards, 44 TDs and six INTs. And yet, I remember being similarly skeptical most of the season because he was throwing to Garrett Wilson, Chris Olave and Jaxon Smith-Njigba. And then lost 42-27 to Michigan. I would go on to be proven an idiot.
It will be interesting to see how this season plays out for both Sayin and Smith. Could the season play out a little like 2020 Alabama, when receiver DeVonta Smith won the Heisman while his QB, Mac Jones, finished third? Or will Sayin get more credit? He already put up a 2019 Joe Burrow-esque completion percentage, so it’s not about the numbers. But he needs more big performances in big games.
You want to see dominance. Not, our 9-3 team is better than your 9-3 team.
Julian Sayin did not have his finest performances in the biggest games, including in a loss to Miami in the Cotton Bowl. (Jerome Miron / Imagn Images via Reuters Connect)
It’s been nice not having every other article be about Deion Sanders or Bill Belichick this offseason. The past few offseasons have been rough. Not a question, just an observation. — Tyler F.
Really? I spent part of Monday on a call listening to an aide to the Senate Commerce Committee explain procedural issues related to a bill that may or may not ever become law and that may or may not succeed in regulating the rev-share cap.
Give me Deion.
Please help me understand why schools are canceling marquee out-of-conference games. This seems so shortsighted and unwarranted. Texas is having this freakout after a year where they didn’t play at a top-25 level for half the season. Meanwhile, Miami and Texas A&M both made the CFP last year because they scheduled and beat a top-10 team (Notre Dame). — Alex W.
Why is Indiana backing out of nonconference Power 4 games and why isn’t the Big Ten demanding stronger nonconference schedules? — Martin D.
I agree that it’s shortsighted, though maybe not for the same reasons.
Indiana more than anyone knows there’s no real incentive to schedule those games, *if* you go at least 11-1. Curt Cignetti’s 2024 team played FIU, Western Illinois and Charlotte and got such a favorable conference draw that it managed to win 11 games without beating any of the four Big Ten teams that finished in the committee’s last Top 25. And yet, the Hoosiers themselves finished No. 8.
Texas A&M might have been in the same situation last season had it played Ball State instead of Notre Dame in Week 3. The Aggies finished 11-1, but that victory in South Bend ended up being their only Top 25 win of the season. But do we really think the committee would have left out an 11-1 SEC team? Maybe they wouldn’t have been the No. 7 seed, but I bet they would have stayed above at least No. 10 Miami, which was 10-2, and maybe even 10-3 Alabama at No. 9.
It gets trickier, though, if your team is squarely on the bubble. No question, 10-2 Miami doesn’t get in last year without its Notre Dame win. Meanwhile, 11-2 BYU really could have used a signature nonconference win. (The Cougars won at Stanford, which went 4-8.)
But beyond the Playoff ramifications, the trend seems really shortsighted from a business standpoint. Indiana fans will eventually grow tired of paying money and sitting through TV timeouts to see North Texas, Howard and Western Kentucky. The get-in price for USC’s Week 0 opener against San Jose State (the Trojans’ replacement for Notre Dame) is currently $26. Compare that to $530 for BYU’s home game against the Irish (which replaced ND-USC). Why are ADs willingly creating empty seats?
And what about TV? Everyone assumes the rights fees will keep going up and up, but Fox has now lost at least three Big Ten home games (ND-USC in 2026 and ’28 and ND-Indiana in 2031) that might have drawn more than 10 million viewers. That’s conservatively $60 million or more in lost ad revenue. Think that won’t get baked into the next contract?
All of this is one of the underlying cases the Big Ten is making for a 24-team Playoff. If the risks of losing a game are lower, they say, schools will be more likely to schedule tough games. But I believe that’s a fallacy. This trend will only get worse if the field grows bigger and the indignity of missing a 24-team Playoff becomes real.
Instead, the Big Ten could curb the trend right now if it followed the other P4 leagues and mandated a 10th P4 game. People in that part of the country used to endlessly complain that the SEC was gaming the system by playing “nobody” out of conference. Now, Indiana, Nebraska, Penn State, USC and Washington* — all in the Big Ten — are literally playing nobody this season.
(*I won’t knock Washington, I’m glad they’re still playing Wazzu.)
Is Kentucky really going to end up undefeated this season, as everyone is predicting? — Gary M.
This would be better directed at our college basketball mailbag.
There’s a lot of the noise coming from USC that they have a roster (specifically in the trenches and at DB) capable of competing with the elite. I tend to agree with this, but USC has five difficult games (three being brutal) this coming season. What are your early predictions for this five-game gauntlet?
• Oregon (home)
• Washington (home)
• Penn State (away)
• Ohio State (home)
• Indiana (away)
— Jay S.
Now you see why Lincoln Riley was so eager to get Notre Dame off that schedule.
The best thing USC has going for it this year is Jayden Maiava. As Riley said at Big Ten media days last week, how often does anyone have the same starting quarterback for three straight seasons these days? Last season, his completion percentage jumped from 59.8 to 65.8 percent and his yards per attempt from 7.1 to 9.2. With better protection and what should be a strong rushing attack, he could vault himself into Heisman contention.
As such, Riley needs him to deliver some of those elusive road wins. The Trojans are 3-6 in Big Ten road games the past two seasons, compared with 8-1 at home. I’m not confident they sweep all of Oregon, Ohio State and Washington at the Coliseum, but I’ll give them two of three. Not loving their chances in Bloomington. But they need to win at Penn State, White Out or not.
Do all that, and they’re 10-2, comfortably in the Playoff, unless they do their usual thing and lose a game on the road they have no business losing, like Minnesota and Maryland in ’24 and Illinois last season. Wisconsin figures to be the biggest remaining threat, but I wouldn’t put it past them to lay an egg at Rutgers in Week 4. And Riley’s first showdown with Bob Chesney-led UCLA is in Pasadena.
Of course, this could also be a year when 9-3 gets you into the Playoff. But if I’m a USC fan, I’d have mixed feelings if that happened. It’s Year 5 for Riley.
Any chance you go back and reverse your claim that USC was running from Notre Dame and admit that Jen Cohen and Lincoln Riley were only playing hardball to get the game moved from the middle of their conference schedule? — Erik W.
Indeed, that was some shrewd negotiating to punt the Irish to 2030. I’m sure they both know there’s very little chance Riley will still be there then — whether by his choice or hers.
Help me understand why there is not a modicum of recognition of Virginia as an ACC contender. Their team is the oldest in college football. Their NIL strategy focused on retaining offensive line personnel. They have six (?!) running backs to lead the offense. And my goodness, is it a weak schedule. And yet they were picked sixth in the conference? — Jeremy L.
You’re not kidding about how old that team is, as I discovered while doing research for this year’s All-Geezer Team. The offense alone could have as many as eight to 10 guys who are in at least their fifth years, plus another four to six on defense, plus the kicker, punter and punt returner.
Virginia is likely being overlooked because of our natural skepticism when it comes to out-of-nowhere teams. Tony Elliott went 3-7, 3-9 and 5-7 before last season’s 11-win breakthrough. The Cavaliers were picked sixth in the ACC for the same reason Indiana was only ranked 20th in last year’s preseason AP poll despite coming off its first Playoff appearance. A lot of people thought at the time that 2024 was a one-off.
And that’s especially pronounced for Virginia due to the not-unfounded perception that the Cavs were a deceiving 11-3 team. They played four overtime games, winning three of them (against Florida State, Louisville and North Carolina), along with a 22-20 squeaker over Washington State that was decided on a rare game-winning safety. The Cavs finished No. 16 in the AP poll but down in the 30s in most computer ratings.
While the statisticians would tell you Virginia is due to regress this season, here’s why they might be wrong.
As solid as QB Chandler Morris was last season, it’s possible Elliott upgraded with Missouri’s Beau Pribula. And as Jeremy noted, the offensive line is stacked. Elliott retained preseason All-ACC honorees McKale Boley (left tackle), Noah Josey (left guard), starting center Drake Metcalf and former Louisville/Texas Tech starter Monroe Mills (right tackle), who missed last season. All told, the O-line boasts 162 career starts. Elliott also added some veteran transfers to what already was a top-25 defense.
Is Virginia a national title contender? It is not. But can Virginia get back to the ACC championship game? Yes, absolutely. Miami should obviously be on one side of it, but you could sell me on any of about six teams emerging as its opponent.
Can you tell us what it’s like in the group chat for The Athletic college football writers? I imagine it’s something like this:
• You obviously created it and oversee it.
• Grace Raynor is the first to “like” a comment with the thumbs up, but she never responds to them.
• Scott Dochterman and Seth Emerson get feisty with each other at times, and while everyone thinks it’s all in good fun, you’re not quite sure.
• Vannini sends a lot of memes.
• Bruce doesn’t know the group chat exists.
• Ralph knows it exists, reads everything, but responds to nothing.
• Ubben has wild takes on the most ordinary things.
— Andy J.
This is so eerily accurate. It could only have come from someone who worked here. So, I assume Andy J. is actually Andy S.