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David, David, DAVID! Thanks for checking these changes out and giving us a layman's view of them. Usually these articles are so boring, but you really summarized the changes in an easy reading style and gave us some excellent ponder points. My thoughts? I agree with you about the targeting rule change--it is mostly accidental, and I'm glad that players do not have to miss the first half of the next game if the offense was in the second half. Fair Catch Kick: It is OK, and I could see it adding potential points before halftime...once a year. Taunting: You make great points here as well. This one will impact games the most, and yet is a cluster to define. In the end...it is going to be entirely subjective by a particular referee, which can hurt on the road. (In Columbus?) The other issue I see with it is the how most of these young men are "full-of-themselves" which gets validated on social media as well. There were many times this last year when our defender went too far with jabbering at the WR after the play was finished, and I thought we were lucky to not get a penalty.

Great post on this topic from Gat. Thank you, Gator! SEC football is terrific, as is men's basketball and the non-revenue sports. Instead of the brickbats, how about we come together and go to a 24-team playoff that will provide more money for the ACC and the B12 and at least slow further consolidation of college football. FBS football should leave the NCAA. Agree on eligibility rules, reasonable restrictions on tampering and transfers, restrictions on tampering with another program's coaches before the end of the season, consolidation of the season with a special time slot for the Army-Navy game that does not add another week to the season, uniform penalties for breaking the rules, and enforcement of the rules after a reasonable investigatory period by the commissioner's office that does not take years. Adjust the rules as needed between the P4 and the G6. Eligibility. If a player is not eligible under clear and concise eligibility rules and the player goes to court to seek an injunction, unless an injunction is issued by a federal court and sustained on appeal, ignore state court judgments and do not reinstate the player. What's Judge Billy Bob going to do? Shut down the program? He'll be run out of his state on a rail. But this would take everyone following the rules, no more pre-puberty-like whining about everyone else is doing it so we have to do it too inanity. (Is this the message Pete Golding and his spouse are teaching their children?) Name a commissioner of the FBS and give the commissioner the authority to enforce the agreed-upon rules. Stop the fiction; call people being paid to play directly by their school and third-party businesses what they are: employees. Bargain with a 'players union,' so management and the workforce are in agreement, and the lawyers are kept at bay. Consider creating a Consolidated College Sports Network and selling the product directly to advertisers without media middlemen. There would be different strata of media revenue distribution as is the case now, but no existing FBS program and its fans would be left behind. And once Notre Dame and UConn are required to join a conference, why the need for any further conference expansion? Maintain control of the inventory and control of game times. For revenue sports, after agreement on a base amount for G6 teams and P4 teams, split the proceeds determined by success and viewership. No games, especially postseason games, should be starting as late in the day as they do today. Teams should have uniform bye weeks; a team that played the week before should not have to travel and play a team that was off the week before. For football, have half of the teams off in Week 7 and half off in Week 8. No football team should play more than seven weeks without having a week off. Stop the billionaire CFB battles. "My conference is better than your conference! Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah!" A team or teams in your conference will be better than teams from another conference from time to time. Who cares. Let's crawl out of the sandbox and stop slinging mud pies, sticks, and stones at one another. If the adults act as adults, it will perhaps be a better example for the athletes. What's Pete Golding going to say to a player who plagiarized and is disciplined by the university and says: "But coach, everybody else is doing it!" But in fairness to Pete, when this hypothetical happened at North Carolina, the NCAA gave the school a pass because everyone, not just athletes, was cheating. Rant over. I'll now return to the 'real world' of win-at-all-costs college sports.

Wow. This is brutal for both sides...coaches have to get the best talent, and players need to be stars to be paid a justifiable NIL, or to be retained. Looking more and more like the NFL every day...

Brilliant post Gat, but the rest of the SEC fans?

SOME LOSSES HURT MOREBrayden Parks was the latest disappointment, but Oregon’s more consequential defensive-line misses may have happened much closer to home.Parks was always going to be difficult to pull away from home. Notre Dame offered him a nationally recognized program, a strong defensive identity, and the ability to remain close to his family and community. Oregon was asking him to leave the Midwest and travel nearly 1,800 miles to Eugene. That does not make the loss meaningless. Oregon recruits nationally because it has championship expectations, and national recruiting requires winning difficult battles outside the program’s traditional footprint. It does, however, provide important context. The Ducks were trying to take an elite defensive lineman away from a major program located almost in his backyard. That would have been an outstanding recruiting win. Failing to complete it was disappointing, but it was not necessarily the most damaging development of Oregon’s defensive-line cycle. The more important losses may have come earlier. Flock Talk: Some Losses Hurt MoreOregon Ducks football, Dan Lanning, Oregon recruiting, college football, NIL, Big Ten, Pac-12, Scott Reed, Duck Sports Central, recruiting news

Hi everyone, I have a bonus article this week as I look over the new rules for college football for this upcoming season... And rate them. Enjoy! https://open.substack.com/pub/marshduck/p/2026-new-rules-review?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=8foswi

Missed on Parks, but still a flip target plus four others. Five Oregon Flip Targets to Watch After Brayden Parks Recruiting Miss

Texas let four players go, including two WRs to sign transfers including WR Cam Coleman. Sarkisian: Longhorns 'let go' big-name players to create cap space

Iffy is primed to have a great season. The experience he gained last year will help along with this being his third season. Oregon Ducks On SIOne Returning Player Ready to Become a Star for Oregon DucksThe Oregon Ducks enter the season with rising expectations, as they will be looking to land themselves back in a national championship game for the first time s

The family pressured him to go to Notre Dame. Close to where he lives. Easy for family to go to home games. Can understand that. Oregon and Notre Dame were both chasing elite 4-star DL Brayden Parks. He chose the Irish and the Ducks still have one major target on the board for 2027. On today's episode of Locked On Ducks, Spencer McLaughlin discusses how productive the Oregon offense should be this year. Dante Moore and the Ducks' receiving corps should be fully unleashed. Oregon's offensive line has a couple key returners and a few questions as well. Will that group prove to be a major hurdle to winning a national title? 00:00 Oregon Ducks football recruiting analysis 03:48 Oregon's interior defensive line recruits 13:14 Oregon passing game potential 16:27 Projecting Jamari Johnson's Season 19:47 Comparing Oregon's 2026 offensive line 21:43 Discussing Oregon's left guard lineup 24:25 Discussing Oregon vs. Ohio State football

The old SEC motto--WE were great when we brought the $$$$ in from the back door.😃

These media days are just a circus. From Pat Narduzzi trying to get Manny Diaz to do a wrestling promo on transfer tampering, and LSU of all people saying no conference mate should ever take from a fellow conference mate.... Yeah that happened. Didn't Kiffin try to pilfer Ole Miss during their playoff run?!!!! You had Kirby Smart calling Kiffin Adonis, which led podcaster RJ Young into grading how beautiful head coaches are..... Not in my bingo card🤣. Pete Golding said he would have no issues in moral ambiguity when it comes to player acquisition, because everyone is doing it. An obvious shout out to old Lane. That brought the silliloquoy of brilliance, that Kiffin responded with today.... Eli Drinkowitz complained about the nine game schedule. Will Stein said Kentucky was going to win, and win big because of himself. That's right, Will Stein pulled the old Ric Flair promo out. "To be the man...Woooooo!!!" Jon Sumrall spoke on how his situation was nothing like Lane Kiffins. Despite Kiffin insisting it was during the season. Sumrall plainly told Lane the leaving Tulane for an SEC school was not the same as leaving an SEC school for another SEC school. Imagine a B1G coach leaving for another B1G job and telling the Chesney, who left James Madison for UCLA, that it was the same situation. What do I gather from all this? A bunch of bluster, and press clippings. The SEC isn't going to breakaway from the NCAA, it's all for show. All the other sports would be dead if that happened, including men's basketball, which also makes a pretty nickel ( pennies are discontinued). Nick Saban is an Alabama spokesman, so of course he'll always be a spokesman for what they want to hear. In Chicago, we'll get to hear some more promos. Except this time it will be from the B1G side. If you enjoy this stuff, that's cool. I just wouldn't expect to learn much.

I don't believe author RJ Young and Lane are Kiffin cousins. 🤬 https://www.foxsports.com/stories/college-football/lane-kiffin-lsu-ole-miss-contract-salary

You lose me.

"Facts are inconvenient things." John Adams. If the SEC is the top football conference, how did Bama defeat all of those ranked SEC teams in a row, make the PO with three losses, win a 1st-round PO game at SEC behemoth Oklahoma, and lose 38-3 to Indiana? At SEC media days, Kirby Smart reminded everyone that Georgia's 2nd-round loss in the Sugar Bowl last season was to SEC opponent Mississippi. Apparently, Kirby doesn't recall losing the 2024-25 Sugar Bowl to Notre Dame? Understandable. I don't like to recall the 2024-25 Rose Bowl or the 2025-26 Peach Bowl; however, OBD lost to Big Ten teams, Big Ten teams that won championships. In 2025, PO home game 1st-round loser Texas A&M played six of the SEC's seven bottom teams. A&M did not defeat an SEC team that won more than six games. Overranked throughout the season, Missouri did not defeat a P4 opponent that won more than six games. As was the case in the ACC, B12, and Big Ten in 2026, six SEC teams did not win more than five games. That's 33.33% of the Big Ten and 37.50% of the SEC. In a year where the B1G played nine conference games and the SEC played eight. When you obfuscate, even in Tampa, Florida, you are skating on thin ice.

Notre Dame edges out Oregon in Brayden Parks sweepstakes https://duckswire.usatoday.com/story/sports/college/ducks/recruiting/2026/07/23/oregon-football-recruiting-brayden-parks-commitment-notre-dame/91028018007/

If we're talking plurality in which the conference has the most competition from top to bottom the Old Pac-12 was the best conference as anyone could win in any given week. Now it would be the Big 12 as they have the most competition from a game-to-game and week-to-week basis. But we don't count those conferences because they didn't or can't win a national championship because they don't have a team that could win it all.

Obstructed view for the faint of heart?

Per St. Nick: “First of all, whoever wins the national championship doesn’t define who has the best conference. I think the best conference gets defined by how many good teams you have from top to bottom." Facts to ignore: But to suggest that the Big Ten is solely winning national championships and getting lucky with one team the last few years conveniently ignores that the depth argument about the SEC also doesn’t hold up, at least at the top of the league. The Big Ten was 11-5 in bowl games last year, the SEC was 4-10. In fact, the Big Ten has a combined 8-2 record against the SEC in bowl games over the last two seasons and a 3-0 record in the College Football Playoff.

Florida, the beneficiary of the SEC-bump, is in many of the preseason top 25 rankings. Florida has not bowled since 2024, and Coach Sumrall has never coached in the P4. QB Aaron Philo and his OC Buster Faulkner are coming to Florida from Georgia Tech, but ... In 2025, Philo was the backup QB at GT. Georgia Tech, behind guts ball QB Haynes King, did finish 17th in 2025 Total Offense. But this was against ACC defenses, not what Philo and Faulkner will see in the SEC. CFB guru Phil Steele ranks Florida's 2026 schedule the 10th most difficult in the nation. Sumrall was hired after Florida failed to win the Lane Kiffin sweepstakes. The 7.5 2026 win total for Florida is a good number; I think the Gators will win 7 or 8 games. For Forum friend Gat's sake, I hope the Gators win at least nine games.

Can Dan get this young man's commitment when he lives 'next door' to a Notre Dame team with deep NIL pockets? Choosing Oregon will be an upset.

One of the last remaining uncommitted blue chips, 6-3 and 305 DT Brayden Parks out of Chicago, is set to announce today at 2pm Pacific between Oregon and Notre Dame. ND listed as the favorite (close to home plus family ties) but Ducks still with a punchers chance. https://247sports.com/article/top247-dl-brayden-parks-commitment-thursday-cbs-288417604/ Go to CBS Sports College Football YouTube Channel link in story and click, and then find the Live button on the channel site.

1st round 2025 16-team field games: 1. Indiana vs. 16 Tulane 8. Oklahoma vs. 9. Alabama 4. Texas Tech vs. 13. Texas 5. Oregon vs. 12. BYU 2. Ohio State vs. 15. Utah 7. Texas A+M vs. 10. Miami 3. Georgia vs. 14. Vanderbilt 6. Mississippi vs. 11. Notre Dame Georgia had a bye and lost to Mississippi in the Sugar Bowl; Oklahoma and Texas A+M lost home games. Texas did defeat a dysfunctional Michigan team in its bowl game; Vanderbilt lost its bowl game to 4-loss Iowa. And as a side note, 3-loss Illinois defeated 3-loss Tennessee in Nashville. Five SEC teams in the 12-team field; none played for a championship. The PO committee thinks the SEC is the top football conference; Tony Petitti, speaking softly and carrying a B1G stick, disagrees. Bill Parcells: "Your record says what you are".