Last Saturday was a big one for trainwreck enthusiasts. Over a seven-hour window you could watch a previously woeful Clemson offense name its score against a six-time Super Bowl champion; a previously winless UCLA team knock off the preseason No. 2 team; and a previously 1-3 team decapitate the preseason Heisman favorite.
Where to begin?
Should North Carolina cut ties with Bill Belichick? I never liked the hire. The university’s Board of Trustees should have never stuck its nose where it didn’t belong. — Kerwin P.
Even the people at UNC who were most excited to land Chapel Bill must surely recognize by now it was a terrible mistake, but man, I have no idea how they could unwind it.
This isn’t the pros, where the owners hold all the power and most of the coaches are considered easily dispensable. If Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones decides he’s done with a coach, he pulls a few million dollars out of the couch cushions on his yacht and moves on to the next guy. It’s a lot more complicated in college, and especially here. UNC is believed to be spending at least $25 million on salaries this year for Belichick and his staff. Who knows how much more on top of that went into increased recruiting budgets, marketing, social media, etc. All that to flush and start over a year later?
And if they do cut ties, well, Belichick’s contract is fully guaranteed for the first three years, so it would cost at least $20 million to fire him. Mike Lombardi, college football’s highest-paid general manager, would have $3 million remaining on his three-year contract. Defensive coordinator Steve Belichick would be owed his remaining $1.4 million, and the other assistants would be owed money as well. So now you’re essentially paying double the cost for one lousy season.
If you’re UNC, you’re hoping Belichick reads the room and voluntarily throws in the towel, which seems highly unlikely for a proud and notoriously stubborn individual. And I can’t imagine an NFL franchise will throw him a lifeline at this point. He’s also tied at the hip to Lombardi, his Patriots buddy, who last week sent a letter to UNC donors laying out their grand rebuilding plan. (He starts the letter talking about former Philadelphia 76ers GM Sam Hinkie’s infamous “Trust the Process” tagline as a means to assure everyone they’re not tanking.) If there’s going to be a fall guy, it’s probably not him.
More realistically, Belichick fires a bunch of his staff (though presumably not his two sons), does some sort of front-office restructuring and runs it back in 2026. Unless the UNC brass says, “We absolutely cannot let this guy do even one more day of damage to our brand, we’ll suck it up and pay whatever it takes.”
The whole thing is a staggering window into the degree of financial malpractice these universities enter into when they’re desperate to be better at football.
Here’s another one.
I know James Franklin will not get fired anytime soon at Penn State. I figure there is a decent chance that with his buyout, he could lose out between now and December 2026 and still coach Penn State in 2027. What do you think it would take for James Franklin to get fired, and who would you recommend as good candidates to coach Penn State if that were to happen? — D.J.
I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Before last week, I would have said the same thing: Penn State is not going to spend $56 million ($48 million after Jan. 1) to fire a coach who wins 10-11 games a year, no matter how frustrating it is to keep losing to top-10 teams. But UCLA was a game changer. Last weekend feels to me like the moment everyone gravitated from, “Is he ever going to lead us to glory?” to, “Oh. Clearly not.”
Obviously, much will depend on how the rest of this season plays out. What if they go 8-4 but he finally beats Ohio State? What if they go 9-3 with a win over top-10 Indiana, and UCLA ends up finishing 5-7, so it’s not seen as such a terrible loss by the committee, and Penn State still sneaks into the College Football Playoff? Either scenario might be enough for everyone to back.
But it’s a much different story if this season that began with national championship aspirations completely implodes.
It’s becoming increasingly difficult to see how this marriage continues. It’s not like Franklin is beloved by the Penn State fan base — see his testy interactions with jeering fans, most recently at this year’s spring game. It’s more that they appreciate him for rescuing that program post-NCAA sanctions and so begrudgingly accepted him. Even that $50 million-plus buyout originated during an awkward period in 2021, when Penn State started the season hot, reaching the top five, but lost five of its last seven regular-season games. Amidst that slide, Sandy Barbour, the athletic director at the time, gave him a massive 10-year, $85 million contract, nearly all of it guaranteed.
So, it may well be that Penn State is stuck with him. But what about Franklin himself? How much longer does he want to be trapped in this cycle of winning big, but not big enough, everyone getting mad at him, him getting mad at them for being mad at him, etc.? Might he and his family be better off with a change of scenery to a less-stressful environment? And if so, could the two parties negotiate an amicable divorce that’s less expensive for the school?
Because it’s going to take a 2024 Ryan Day-esque rise from the dead to salvage this relationship.
Three of the four playoff semifinalists — Texas, Penn State and Notre Dame — have already lost two games and badly underperformed high expectations. Could the long playoffs be having a hangover effect because of less time for recovery and transfer evaluation? Or was it just a mistake in the transfer portal era to assume the same teams would be good again? — Melissa B.
Your theory has validity. I’m just not sure how we could prove it, especially since Ohio State appears to be feeling no effects at all.
But this kind of year-over-year volatility is going to become the norm. It’s much harder for the top teams to consistently reload than it was before every player in the country became an annual free agent. From 2021 to ’25, how many programs have managed to maintain the same level of success throughout? It’s basically Ohio State, Oregon and Georgia, and the Bulldogs may fall from that group by year’s end. Everyone else — Michigan, Alabama, Texas, Oklahoma, LSU, Florida State — has experienced ebbs and flows.
But I’d also say that each of those three CFP semifinalists, the Longhorns, Nittany Lions and Irish, followed a different path to two losses.
Texas seems the most straightforward. It turns out Sark did not yet have the program at a place where it could lose 12 NFL draft picks, including a three-year starting quarterback (Quinn Ewers), a Thorpe Award winner (Jahdae Barron) and four starting offensive linemen, plug in a few portal guys and carry on unscathed. Penn State brought back plenty, but it may be the first of the NIL “super teams” (2023 Michigan, 2024 Ohio State, possibly 2025 Texas Tech) that is struggling to meet the moment.
As for Notre Dame, I happen to think the Irish are fine. They lost close games to two teams, Miami and Texas A&M, now ranked No. 2 and No. 5 in the country. I would not be surprised if they’re right back in the Playoff.
Who do you like in the Friday night South Florida at North Texas game? — Jon
Give me the Mean Green. National coming-out party for Drew Mestemaker.
Putting aside its well-publicized spending spree, how good is Texas Tech compared to the rest of the Playoff contenders based on what you’ve seen on the field? They appear to have an SEC-esque defensive line playing against a Big 12 schedule. If they do make the Playoff, how worried should potential Big Ten or SEC opponents be about that matchup? — Benjamin D.
Texas Tech looks legit to me. I realize Utah and Houston are not Georgia and Alabama, but the Red Raiders went on the road and thumped both of them, and it’s hard not to notice the athleticism all over the field. But it’s particularly evident on the defensive front, with guys such as Stanford transfer David Bailey (5.5 sacks). Texas Tech ranks 10th nationally in pressure rate (41.2 percent), with only the 114th-highest blitz frequency (20.3 percent). That’s impressive.
But for all the attention on the guys Cody Campbell and company brought in, the Red Raiders’ biggest revelation so far is someone they had all along: QB Behren Morton. The previously injury-prone veteran was good before, but he’s taken a massive leap this season. His yards per pass have increased from 7.2 to 10.1 (No. 6 nationally), his passer rating from 139.1 to 177.9 (No. 8).
Unfortunately, we don’t have a great sense of how Joey McGuire’s team stacks up with the top SEC/Big Ten/ACC contenders because its non-conference slate was Arkansas-Pine Bluff, Kent State and 0-6 Oregon State. All I know is Tech looks like the class of the Big 12, a league that itself lacked any signature non-conference wins. (Arguably, its best was Iowa State over 3-2 Iowa.) Because of that, the Red Raiders will almost certainly have to win the conference to even make the Playoff.
How they would do after that is anyone’s guess, but remember that last year’s conference champion, Arizona State, came as close as humanly possible to knocking off SEC runner-up Texas in the quarterfinals, losing in double overtime.
Texas Tech doesn’t have a transcendent superstar like Cam Skattebo, who nearly single-handedly led Arizona State back in that game with his 242 yards of offense. But the Red Raiders are much stronger on both lines and likely more talented across the board, and could advance with the right matchup.
After an offseason full of spending, Texas Tech’s starting lineup is clearly awash in talent. (Thomas Shea / Imagn Images)
How many games would Texas Tech lose in the SEC this season? —Robert S.
Fewer than Texas.
Am I wrong for thinking that losses like Penn State suffered on Saturday are going to become more of a norm with these cross-country leagues? They played a highly emotional game on Saturday, then had to take a cross-country flight the next week to play an opponent they have no natural reason to “get up” for. Situations like that could arise every year. — John L.
My editor, Jill Thaw, and I have a standing debate about this topic. She scoffs at any mention of travel as an excuse for any team’s performance, whereas I think the travel effect is real and noticeable. I’m not in any way saying that’s the main reason Penn State lost last week, and it’s frankly embarrassing that James Franklin even brought it up. But I’m sure it contributed.
Big Ten teams went 8-20 when crossing multiple time zones last season and underperformed the point spread by an average of 2.2 points, per Scott Dochterman.
And this season, we are seeing a whole lot of traveling teams have slow starts and fall behind by a considerable margin. Last week alone, Penn State fell behind 27-7 at UCLA; Washington fell behind 20-0 at Maryland before rallying to win 24-20; and Duke fell behind Cal 21-7, then scored 38 unanswered points to win 45-21.
Earlier, USC fell behind 31-17 at Illinois in a 9 a.m. body clock game before rallying to briefly pull ahead in a 34-32 loss; Cal fell behind 14-0 within the first seven minutes at Boston College before rallying to win 28-24; and UCLA fell behind 17-0 at Northwestern, with the Wildcats scoring on their first three possessions, then rallied to lose 17-14.
I’d need a sleep science expert to explain why the jet lag affects them more at the beginning of the game than the end, but c’mon, this can’t be a coincidence. The only team that seems immune to it is Oregon, 4-0 in the Eastern and Central time zones since the Ducks joined the conference. I assume Nike developed some sort of jet lag-resistant helmet for them.
So, among the many reasons I believe the Big Ten will rue the day it went to four time zones, yes, at some point, one of its teams will miss the Playoff because it lost on the road to a 4-8 West Coast team in a Friday night game that kicked off at 11 p.m. their time.
Let’s assume Ohio State and Oregon both finish undefeated and meet up in the conference championship game. Does the winner get the Rose Bowl berth? And furthermore, with conference champions no longer guaranteed a top-four spot, what is the process for determining their quarterfinal bowl spot? — Dan
For this season only (the last year before the new CFP contract), those top-four seeds will still be assigned to their conference’s traditional partner if available, or by geography if it’s not. The four quarterfinals this year are Rose, Sugar, Orange and Cotton. That Ohio State-Oregon winner would definitely go to the Rose Bowl, the SEC champ to Sugar, the ACC to Orange. It will get a little trickier if, say, a second SEC team is No. 3 and the ACC champ — and let’s say it’s Miami — is No. 4. If that second SEC team is closer to Miami than Dallas, it would likely get placed there rather than the Canes.
When the new contract kicks in next year, the traditional partnerships are going bye-bye, and it will be based solely on geography. Because even the selection committee agrees that long travel is hard. Right, Jill?
Was that Penn State debacle a worse loss than Michigan losing to Appalachian State in 2007? App State was at least a dominant FCS program with a couple NFL players. This UCLA team hadn’t had a lead all year and got dominated by New Mexico. — Vincent V.
It’s hard to overstate how unfathomable App State over Michigan was at the time. It didn’t matter that the Mountaineers were defending national champs; they were an FCS team (still referred to primarily as I-AA then), playing the No. 3 team in the country, and one of the bluest of blue bloods at that. There’s more respect for the FCS level today. If North Dakota State had opened the season by upsetting No. 3 Ohio State, it would no doubt be shocking, but not beyond the realm of comprehension. Heck, there probably would have been a few of you who wrote in during the summer and predicted it.
So, with that as context — yes, I think it’s a worse loss. Before last week, UCLA would have lost not just to North Dakota State but at least the top 6-to-12 FCS teams. Technically, NIU over Notre Dame (28-point spread) was a bigger upset than this one (24.5), but this one still feels worse to me because UCLA already had four games to demonstrate how awful it was.
With time, we may see this wasn’t a one-off, and that UCLA just needed a coaching shakeup to become a more competitive team. But Penn State still should have beaten the Bruins handily. It felt like a watered-down version of Stanford’s famous upset of No. 2 USC in Jim Harbaugh’s first season in 2007, also played the first Saturday in October. The Trojans hadn’t yet lost a game like Penn State had this year, but it had a similar “how is that even possible?” vibe. It made no sense that day, and it made even less sense come season’s end when USC finished 11-2, Stanford 4-8.
But let it be another friendly reminder — these are college kids. They’re wildly unpredictable from one week to the next, which is just great.
Bill Belichick has made Carolina football nationally relevant! As an alum, how should I celebrate this newfound relevance? — Jonathan, Fletcher, N.C.
If I were you, the thing I’d celebrate most is them dropping out of the Hulu docuseries. The games themselves are embarrassing enough to watch.
Speaking of which, if anyone out there has the footage the crew had filmed to this point, please email [email protected].