College football, Leicester vs North Carolina, Bits and more

Fall is in full swing now. It’s not fall? Of course it is! We just had the first weekend this season with a full slate of college football on Saturday and a full NFL slate of games on Sunday. We have a lot to get to this week, so let’s get to it.

College Football Playoffs & NIL

If you missed the battles college basketball has gone through with one-and-done freshman and expanding the tournament, you are getting to live through something very similar now in college football.

With the recent expansion of the College Football Playoff from four to 12 teams, we are hearing the same arguments we heard each time the NCAA tournament expanded. There is a sigh of relief by some people that finally we won’t have the problems of leaving out a team that should be included. But if you have seen this take place in basketball, you know that the arguments just move down to the 12th spot instead of the fourth spot. In fact, it’s worse because more teams have an argument to be the 12th team than have an argument of being the fourth team. So, no, the complaints about teams making the playoffs won’t go down. There will be many more complaints. This will cause the tournament to eventually expand to 16 teams.

College basketball also has had to deal with players playing one year in college before moving on to the NBA for some time now. And although college football players can’t go pro until after their junior season, or more technically accurate to say after they have been out of high school for three seasons, the transfer portal often puts teams in a similar situation as one-and-done players. Teams that take portal transfers, that’s everyone except Clemson and the military academies, will often get a player entering their junior or senior season with an eye toward going to the NFL after just one year with their new school.

This all leads up to the discussions that are taking place with Florida State getting off to an 0-2 start this season. While Clemson’s Dabo Swinney gets a lot of grief for not accepting any transfers, Mike Norvell is considered the king of the transfer portal. People loved Norvell’s use of the portal to quickly rebuild the roster. But after their 0-2 start this season, those same people are saying that you cannot only use portal players.

To relate this to college basketball, consider the ups and downs the Kentucky Wildcats went through when John Calipari was their coach. Calipari was one of the best at bringing in the top freshmen players. He often assembled rosters featuring five freshman starters. And while Kentucky was usually a tough team to beat in those seasons, he had seasons when the team struggled, relatively speaking.  Now, it’s never a bad idea to take the most talented players, but adding players only in the system for one season doesn’t give a coach much of a chance to teach the player his way of playing, and almost as soon as the player arrives, he is gone again.

So, can you have success as a transactional college football program?  Well, if college basketball has taught us anything, the answer is yes, but maybe not every year. Kentucky had huge success doing this but had seasons they weren’t happy with. Kansas has done this as well, but Bill Self’s best teams have come with not just having one-and-done players, but also having a roster with a large number of upperclassmen who have been in the program several years. And maybe it’s easier to be transactional in basketball where you only need five starters instead of 22.

Regardless, those who only pay attention to college football, have missed an opportunity to learn from what college basketball has gone through. And if we are paying attention, it’s clear that teams need to acquire talented players through all available channels.

Mike Gundy works the salary cap

Ok, so there is no salary cap in college football. Quotes like this are still a little strange to hear. We aren’t used to hearing college coaches talk openly about paying for players.

EPL’s Leicester City Pulls a Fast One

Premier League soccer club Leicester City found a loophole in the Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR), which is somewhat like the salary cap system we are used to in the United States, that allowed them to spend whatever they wanted on players without penalty. It all started when Leicester was being relegated as a bottom-three finisher of the EPL after the 2022-23 season.

At a high level, when being relegated from the EPL to the English Football League or EFL, Leicester transferred its shares in the Premier League (EPL) to Luton Town, who was being promoted for the following season, before the date of Leicester’s financial review. The timing of this transaction is important because transferring their shares meant that Leicester was technically no longer in the EPL. And if Leicester wasn’t in the league, the EPL would potentially have no jurisdiction to punish Leicester for violating the PSR. This is the approach Leicester took. After initially being found guilty of violating the rules, Leicester successfully argued that at the time of their financial review they were no longer in the EPL and therefore the EPL had no jurisdiction to punish them.

The EFL then tried to punish Leicester since they were in their league last season. But the EFL ran into similar timeline issues as the EPL in their prosecution.

Consider Leicester fortunate in a way similar to what North Carolina experienced in their battle with the NCAA in 2017. The NCAA claimed that UNC had enrolled student athletes in fraudulent “paper classes” for 18 years to keep them eligible to participate in their sport. However, since the fraudulent classes were provided to regular students in addition to athletes, the NCAA ruled that the practice was not an extra benefit for being an athlete and therefore not against NCAA rules. This has to be one of the greatest victories a school has ever had over the NCAA.

Bits

• Florida State and Clemson are suing the ACC to get out of their grant of rights deals so they can move to another conference. Those schools started the season 0-3. Coincidence? Florida State lost its first two. Clemson lost its opener against Georgia, but did finally put the two schools in the win column at home against Appalachian State.

• Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark announced that discussions with Connecticut joining the conference have paused.

• Players are learning new ways to make guaranteed money.  Recently, Denver Broncos linebacker Baron Browning worked out a deal in which he receives $500,000 in exchange for 1% of his future earnings. The deal was done with a company named Vestible. Vestible runs what it calls a player investment platform in which people can invest money in a player in hopes of earning back more money from the player’s future earnings.

• Notre Dame paid Northern Illinois $1.4 million to play in South Bend this past weekend. The Fighting Irish never thought they would paying that much money for a loss.

• Texas destroyed Michigan from the opening kick on their way to a 31-12 win in Ann Arbor. While the season is not over for Michigan because of the expanded playoff, there is concern. I have never seen that stadium empty out so much during a game.

• How good is USC’s defense? We know Lincoln Riley can coach offense, but his teams have historically been really bad on defense both at USC and Oklahoma. In Week 1, USC held LSU to 20 points. In Week 2, they shutout Utah State in a 48-0 win. The Aggies scored over 30 points in eight games last season and put up 36 in their first game this season, so they can score. USC is off next weekend but visits Michigan the following week. We will keep an eye on this.

• Speaking of Oklahoma. What is going on with them? After defeating Temple 51-3, they just got by a poor Houston team this weekend 16-12. The Sooners host Tulane next weekend. That should give us a better idea of just what Oklahoma is this season.

• The NFL season started last Thursday and if you are tired of watching the Chiefs win, you might not like this season. The Chiefs’ offense looks almost as good as ever in their win over one of last season’s best defenses, and they didn’t even have their fast free agent signing of the offseason: WR Marquise Brown. Xavier Worthy, the team’s first round draft pick touched the ball twice and had two touchdowns.

• In a surprising and somewhat awkward moment on the ESPN NFL Countdown show Sunday, Drew Bledsoe made some very candid remarks. Bledsoe was replaced by both Tom Brady and Tony Romo when he was with the Patriots and Cowboys respectively. Bledsoe said that when Tom Brady became a starting quarterback, he continued to ask questions to learn as much as possible. However, Tony Romo stopped asking questions and thought he knew everything. Wow! Bledsoe is not a fan of Tony Romo.

Fun Video of the Week

Someone is always thinking. If the opposing team thinks you punted the ball, maybe you can convert on fourth down without the pass being challenged.

Thanks for reading.