Jon Joseph

The Big Ten does not conduct its own media poll. For years, and just before Media Days begin, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, now Cleveland.com, has released the go-to conference preseason football poll. O and O - Ohio State and Oregon are ranked 1st and 2nd but it is close to neck-and-neck. On3Preseason Big Ten Football Poll released by Cleveland.com.

Michigan Blog: Maize and Brew with a look at B1G Flex-Protect Football Scheduling with the focus on Michigan - Maize n BrewChecking in on the Big Ten’s Flex Protect XVIII schedulin...The Big Ten football schedule is 40% through its rotation, and there are plenty of tough games left for Michigan:

Gimme 5! 54,000-seat Autzen is rated the 5th best college stadium in the nation. Other B1G teams with a top 25 stadium - 2 Ohio State/ 3 Penn State/ 12 Michigan/ 14 Washington/ 17 Wisconsin/ 21 Iowa/ 23 UCLA/ 24 Nebraska https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaaf/2026/07/27/college-football-stadiums-rankings-top-25-lsu/91047134007/?utm_source=usatoday-sports-strada&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=usatbaseline&utm_term=Content%20List%20-%20Sta

I have a great idea! We'll hire Bill Belichick and become the 33rd NFL team! On3North Carolina general manager Michael Lombardi placed on...In a surprising twist, North Carolina football is facing an unexpected development just weeks before the start of the 2026 season. Tar Heels general manager Michael Lombardi has been placed on paid a

Will the Buckeyes' D reload? A lot of D players are off to the NFL, but there's plenty of talent in Columbus. https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/matt-patricia-pull-off-rebuild-133100460.html

FanDuel has Penn State and UCLA moving on up. And with Colton Joseph at QB, Wisconsin is also predicted to improve, of course. 😁 https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/college-footballs-rebound-teams-florida-penn-state-among-squads-poised-to-improve-win-totals-in-2026/ Gat's Gators are on the list, and look out for OK State in Week 2.

FanDuel predicts Ohio State to regress. OBD did not make the Fall back list, which is nice. 😍 https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/college-football-regression-candidates-2026-ohio-state-texas-a-m/

A Recruiting Review from SI - Oregon Ducks On SIHow Oregon's Recruiting Class Shapes Up Compared to Footb...The Oregon Ducks have been doing an impressive job on the recruiting trail when it comes to the class of 2027, as they have been on a mission to land the best r

Finishing School in Eugene Pays Off - 🤑- Good on you, Gonzo! AP NewsChristian Gonzalez has been offered highest contract in t...New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft says Christian Gonzalez has been offered the highest contract in team history.

It was a two-eyed, no-horn, grounded purple people eater; what a blob to see. 😁 Not sure that he can still coach, but he's a B1G man at the training table.

Watch out for Bob Chesney at UCLA. He is the best recruiter in Westwood since Jim Mora was let go by a Bruins AD who put UCLA solidly in the red. He doesn't have as easy a schedule as Matt Campbell has in his first season in the Big Ten with Penn State, but UCLA's 2026 schedule is one of the easiest in the conference. Chesney brought 10 quality players with him from JMU, has a QB with terrific potential in Iamaleava, and he will put a far different and better roster on the field than we saw in 2025. Chesney has been praised for delivering pizzas to UCLA fraternities and sororities and firing the students up for football season. UCLA is +1.5 in Week 1 in a very interesting opening game at Cal. 7:30 PM Pacific kickoff on ESPN. I think UCLA goes over the 6.5 win total.

Moore dreams like these, please. Oregon Ducks On SINFL Insiders Share Eye-Opening Dante Moore Intel Before O...Oregon quarterback Dante Moore elected to forgo the 2026 NFL Draft, where he was a top-5 projected pick, and return for another season of Ducks football. Moore'

Great post, Gat. Thank you for the objectivity. Man, I miss the Ole Ball Coach and his sense of humor. Sankey, of course, has the right to do things his way. But three years ago, he was on a pedestal as the man who would save college football by calling Tony Petitti's PO format bluff. Today? His own ADs and coaches are questioning his judgment. Hats off to Jon Sumrall for calling out Kiffin when Kiffin tried to compare his leaving playoff-bound Ole Miss for LSU to Jon Sumrall, when Jon was leaving Tulane for Florida and was allowed to coach Tulane in a first-round playoff game against Ole Miss. Jon was quick to point out the apples-and-oranges comparison. With the blessing of the Tulane administration, Jon was moving up from the G5 to the Power 2 while Kiffin was slithering his way from Ole Miss to LSU, a move that slightly perturbed the Mississippi administration on down. Mark your football calendars for September 19, 2026, when Lane returns to Oxford. 7:30 PM Eastern/ 6:30 Central local time kickoff. Take the Over on Herbie, Rece, and Saint Nick being in Oxford. I imagine all of the Ole Miss fans will be as sober as the judge who handed Trinidad Chambliss another year of eligibility and will treat Lame with the same respect he received in Knoxville when he returned with Ole Miss after bolting on the Vols for USC. Golf balls, anyone? Kiffin also has a return engagement in Knoxville this season. Gat, as you well know, AAU member Florida has sterling academics. LSU paid $54 million to jettison Bryan Kelly. LSU is paying Lame $91 million over seven years, a $13 million a year base salary. But Kiffin did win two conference championships at FAU, the team the Gators open against this season. 🙃 How many Nobel Prize-winning profs could LSU have hired for approximately $150 million? Lame brings LSU to the Swamp on September 26th, the Saturday after the LSU game at Ole Miss. Should be very interesting to watch the welcoming Florida fans extend to Lame, who stiff-armed the Gators before taking the LSU job. 😁 Thank you for being such a good Friend of the Forum. Best of luck to Coach Sumrall and your Gators in 2026. BEAT LSU! Please!

Interesting hires by NW coach Braun. NW brought in Chip as OC and Jerry Neuheisel as the QB coach. Chip and Jerry have their work cut out coaching QB Aiden Chiles, who started at Oregon State, followed John Smith to Michigan State, and lost his starting job last season to jersey-stitcher nightmare Alessio Milivojevic. Chip flamed out with the Raiders, but he was not working with a top NFL roster, and Pete Carroll was past his prime. Chip has his construction uniform on in honor of the renovated Ryan Field, scheduled to open in early October. 35,000 capacity in a state-of-the-art, wired to the max, stadium. https://nusports.com/facilities/ryan-field NW plays a cruel and unusual 11 straight games in 2026 without a week off. A Halloween visit to Eugene and Autzen on October 31st will be NW's 7th game in a row. The only break in the schedule is that one of the 11 games is at home vs G6 Ball State. The week before the game at Ohio State on a spooky evening could be a trap game for OBD. Ohio State pays a Halloween visit to USC. Colorado is NW's P4 OOC opponent. The game will be played at Martin Stadium, where OBD played NW last season. I think NW will go over 5.5 wins with six or seven victories and again, go bowling. David, great call on Nick A. No defense shut down Cam Newton like the Oregon D shut him down in the BCS title game. Nick's D came through. Chip's O?

I'm with you. That's why I noted using the NFL postseason rules, where each team gets possession. No coin toss, score, and you win the game without the opponent having a chance to score. The 40-yard line as the college starting spot is a good idea. Although with kickers routinely making 50 yard FGs today? Please, keep the articles coming.

Terrific comment. But it comes out of rugby more than soccer. It's long been a rule in Australian Rules Football and is akin to a free kick in soccer. In the regular season, I'm all in favor of getting rid of overtime. And in the postseason, I'm in favor of adopting the NFL postseason OT rules. IMO, starting from the 25-yard line is chicken spit.

Yahoo Grades for New Coach Hires - Take these grades with a grain of salt and tears in your beer - Lane Kiffin, whose conference championships have come at G6 FAU, gets an A+. Big Ten - Bob Chesney, UCLA - A/ Matt Campbell, Penn State - B/ Pat Fitzgerald, Michigan State -B+ And the grade that brings the entire exercise into question - Kyle Whittingham, Michigan - C- 🤪 HUH? The only certain future Hall of Fame coach on the list is given one of the lowest grades because 'he has to win right away?' Others of interest - Will Stein, Kentucky, B/ Tosh Lupoi, Cal B+/ Eric Morris, Oklahoma State - A- Much respect for Will, but a B for a guy who has never been a head coach, let alone a P4 head coach, and a C- for the winningest coach in Utah history, Whit? This grade doesn't fit, and I give the grader a grade of Nitwit.

OBD is in ESPN's recruiting top tier - https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/49427877/2026-college-football-recruiting-tiers-notre-dame-ohio-state

On3 previews the B12 - Lots of love for that school in Lubbock, right? At least the schedule says so. On32026 Big 12 College Football Preview: CFP favorites, powe...Dive into On3's full Big 12 preview ahead of the 2026 college football season, looking at CFP favorites, power rankings, and more.

The media poll 2026 SEC champion - I like Georgia on top and ahead of a Texas team that is talented but has a more difficult schedule than the Dawgs. Georgia's schedule is ranked the easiest in the SEC, but it's still an absolute witch. On3College football rankings: Preseason SEC Poll releasedTexas and Georgia headline the SEC preseason poll, released by the league following SEC Media Days this week.

As Texas coach Steve Sarkisian noted at SEC Media Days, college football is an unregulated multi-billion-dollar business. Hats off to Sark for not obfuscating; for recognizing today's world of college sports for what it is. The vast majority of college athletes are at a given program today for transactional reasons, not just for the love of U or State. Why is anyone surprised that, like the NFL, where players are paid, salary considerations are the principal part of roster management? How many NFL transfers stay with their current team because of loyalty to their team? That's a rhetorical question. Loyalty, fraternity, fidelity? Do players want this over being paid to perform? Every guy Texas let go to clear 'cap space' was signed by another program and continues to be paid. I doubt that these players, and their agents, took this as a personal affront. The Texas players now on the Oklahoma roster will have the chance for payback. If you want a uniform salary cap that is not ignored, like the House settlement cap is ignored, call the athletes what they are, 'employees,' and enter into a collective bargaining agreement with the athletes. The vestiges of 'tradition' need to go, including having a true FBS playoff and not a bowl extravaganza. This is happening at Texas, with the wealthiest athletic department in college sports. It also happened at Oregon, where the money was not available to retain many young DL players off to Alabama, Notre Dame, and other greener pastures. There is a silver lining. Salary cap issues are the reason the SEC lost its college football hegemony, and a program like Indiana can win a national championship.

David, Friday with Marsh is an unexpected treat. Please keep the articles coming. Rules? After listening to Mississippi coach Pete Golding, I wasn't sure that college football has any rules. 🤑 🤪Looking at the lead-in photo, do college football games now start with a tip-off?

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.

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

"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.