ACC reveals the 2025 Duke football schedule, including a Tulane rematch for Darian Mensah
Duke opens the second campaign of the Manny Diaz era with an August 30 game against Elon, exactly one year to the day after the 2024 opener against that same Phoenix team. The Blue Devils won 26-3 in Diaz's first game thanks to a pair of Maalik Murphy touchdown passses.
The Blue Devils play another Big Ten team in Week 2, this time hosting the Illinois Fighting Illini, before traveling for their first road game on September 13. The team? The Tulane Green Wave, Mensah's former program. The new Duke quarterback announced his decision to transfer after leading Tulane to nine wins and an American Athletic Conference Championship appearance as a redshirt freshman.
Duke's first ACC game comes against the NC State Wolfpack in Durham on September 20, and it closes the season with back-to-back rivalry battles against the North Carolina Tar Heels (Nov. 22) and Wake Forest Demon Deacons (Nov. 29).
Check out the full schedule below:
2025 Duke football schedule
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New York Times
20 hours ago
- New York Times
The 2025 College Football Playoff chase will be impacted by these 20 players
There weren't many college football fans outside of the Dallas-Fort Worth area who knew much about Kevin Jennings this time last year. The former three-star recruit began the 2024 season as a backup quarterback but replaced starter Preston Stone a month into the season and led SMU to an ACC title game appearance and the College Football Playoff. Advertisement Indiana was picked to finish 17th in the Big Ten preseason poll a year ago, but went 11-1 in the regular season and crashed the CFP with a bunch of transfers from James Madison. The point? There is so much we don't know about who will impact the race for the 12 spots in the Playoff. That won't stop us from speculating. Here are 20 players — or in some cases, position groups — on contending teams who could go a long way in determining which teams will have an opportunity to play for a national championship. We're focusing on players who have yet to see significant snaps for their current team or are new to the Power 4 level. We will start with the non-quarterbacks. 1. Penn State's receivers: The Nittany Lions' national title hopes will likely hinge on whether Kyron Hudson (USC), Trebor Pena (Syracuse) and Devonte Ross (Troy) can provide reliable pass-catching options for senior QB Drew Allar. 2. Ohio State left tackle Ethan Onianwa: Onianwa, ranked 10th on our top-100 transfers list, has lost more than 20 pounds since arriving on campus in January. He's leveling up in competition after starting 34 games at left tackle in his career at Rice. 3. Oregon running back Makhi Hughes: Hughes is a proven commodity from the Group of 5 ranks after rushing for 2,779 yards and 22 touchdowns in the last two seasons at Tulane. That said, the Ducks are counting on four new starters on the offensive line — including three transfers — to open holes for their new lead back. 4. LSU's offensive line: We told you why the Tigers won the transfer portal in the offseason. Ultimately, the success of star quarterback Garrett Nussmeier will come down to whether transfers Braelin Moore (Virginia Tech) and Josh Thompson (Northwestern) — who have a combined 45 starts — are as good as the guys they're replacing. LSU had four offensive linemen drafted off last season's 9-4 team. Advertisement 5. Miami safety Zechariah Poyser: Mario Cristobal signed six defensive backs in the portal and hired defensive coordinator Corey Hetherman to patch up the holes that cost the Hurricanes a trip to the ACC title game. Poyser, a redshirt sophomore from Conference USA champion Jacksonville State, wore the green dot on his helmet during the spring and will be the new maestro on the revamped back end for the Canes. 6. Texas A&M receiver KC Concepcion: The Aggies came close to reaching the SEC Championship Game in Mike Elko's first season. Quarterback Marcel Reed, five starters on the offensive line and the entire backfield return. What's needed is a dynamic playmaker at receiver, and Concepcion, the 2023 ACC Rookie of the Year, has the talent and experience to fill the void. 7. Clemson defensive end Will Heldt: It's easy to forget Clemson's defense wasn't very good last season — especially against the run. Peter Woods and T.J. Parker are arguably the best tackle-edge combo in college football, but they need help. Heldt arrives from Purdue and should be even more productive (he had five sacks in 2024) now that he is playing with far more talent. 8. Arizona State running back Kanye Udoh: Cam Skattebo's impact on the Sun Devils last season didn't become evident on a large scale until late in the season. Udoh, who is bigger than Skattebo at 6-1, 220 pounds, enters the lead back role with a stronger resume than his predecessor. Udoh ran for 1,117 yards and 10 touchdowns last season at Army. 🗣️Here are the Runner-ups for #CFB's 5 Fastest Players of Week 6️⃣! 7. @ArmyWP_Football's Kanye Udoh Second 60 yarder on this list 🤯 20.9 MPH@KanyeUdoh6 #GoArmy #BEATnavy — Reel Analytics (@RAanalytics) October 11, 2024 9. SMU's defensive line: The Mustangs have put together back-to-back 11-win seasons — the first in the American and the second in their ACC debut. Still, many are expecting Rhett Lashlee's squad to take a step back after losing nine starters from the league's top defense. Jeffrey M'Ba (Purdue), Terry Webb (Texas State) and Aakil Washington (South Alabama) are the proven trio among nine new additions on the D-line. Advertisement 10. Illinois receiver Hudson Clement: Illinois is 12th in both the AP and Coaches poll, the highest preseason rank for the program since it was 11th in 1990. The Illini welcome back quarterback Luke Altmyer and five starters on the offensive line, but they must replace the top two receivers, including third-round pick Pat Bryant. Clement, a former walk-on at West Virginia, caught 51 passes for 741 yards for the Mountaineers in 2024. 1. Texas' Arch Manning: The preseason Heisman Trophy favorite has played only 260 offensive snaps since arriving in Austin as the No. 1 recruit in the 2023 class. He won both of his starts last season in place of the injured Quinn Ewers — at home against Louisiana-Monroe and at Mississippi State — and ended the year with 939 yards passing with nine touchdowns and two interceptions. But now, it's his show entirely and he will be operating an offense that has four new starters on the line. The path to stardom doesn't start easy — on the road against the defending national champions. 2. Ohio State's starting quarterback: Ryan Day has yet to name a starter in the competition between Julian Sayin and Lincoln Kienholz. Either way, all eyes will be on the player tasked with throwing passes to Jeremiah Smith this fall. Sayin, the top quarterback recruit in the 2024 cycle, played 27 snaps last season as a true freshman. Kienholz, a 2023 four-star recruit from South Dakota, has played a total of 68 snaps in his career. 3. Georgia's Gunner Stockton: By the time Carson Beck pulled his name out of the NFL Draft and instead took a big payday at Miami, the defending SEC champions had already moved on and invested their financial resources elsewhere. That's not to say Georgia didn't look for QB help after the season. Kirby Smart's team kicked the tires on former Cal starter Fernando Mendoza before he ended up at Indiana. Stockton made his only start in the 23-10 Playoff loss to Notre Dame. 4. Notre Dame's starting quarterback: Marcus Freeman has yet to announce if redshirt freshman CJ Carr (four career snaps) or redshirt sophomore Kenny Minchey (17 career snaps) will start the opener at 10th-ranked Miami. Neither has played much to this point. That's a different approach after Notre Dame went with seasoned transfers in the last two seasons — Riley Leonard (Duke) and Sam Hartman (Wake Forest). 5. Oregon's Dante Moore: The redshirt sophomore and former five-star recruit from Detroit started five games as a true freshman at UCLA two seasons ago. His 461 career snaps at the Power 4 level are valuable for the defending Big Ten champions as they look to replace Heisman finalist Dillon Gabriel and eight other starters on offense. 6. Alabama's Ty Simpson: Kalen DeBoer named Simpson, a former five-star recruit who is in his fourth year in Tuscaloosa, as the starter over 2024 Washington transfer Austin Mack and five-star freshman Keelon Russell. Simpson played 71 snaps last season behind Jalen Milroe, but saw his most meaningful action two years ago off the bench when he led Alabama to a 17-3 come-from-behind win at South Florida. Advertisement 7. Michigan's Bryce Underwood: Michgian coach Sherrone Moore said he'll announce the starter the week of the opener against New Mexico. Underwood, the No. 1 overall recruit in the Class of 2025, is the favorite. Either way, the 2023 national champions will have an upgrade at the position after an abysmal offensive season in 2024. Fresno State transfer Mikey Keene has started 34 games in his career and completed 70.5 percent of his passes last season for 2,892 yards and 18 touchdowns, but he hasn't been taking a lot of reps as he recovers from injury. 8. Oklahoma's John Mateer: Matteer, the top player in The Athletic's transfer portal rankings, was in the news earlier this week after some screenshots taken from his Venmo account indicated that he had bet on college football games during his time at Washington State. Assuming nothing comes of this — he has denied any wrongdoing — Mateer is expected to revive the Sooners' offense after putting up huge numbers with the Cougars last season. To help ease the transition, Ben Arbuckle, his OC with the Cougars last season, is now calling plays for Oklahoma. 9. Ole Miss' Austin Simmons: As our Justin Williams wrote this summer, Simmons flashed when he came off the bench to replace Jaxson Dart in a win over Georgia last season. Now a redshirt sophomore, Simmons will lead a Lane Kiffin offense that includes nine new starters. He's played a total of 81 snaps in his career. 10. Utah's Devon Dampier: The Utes are a strong candidate to bounce back after stumbling to a 5-7 mark last season. The optimism centers around the arrival of Dampier and the return of all five starters on the offensive line. Dampier ran for 1,166 yards and threw for 2,768 and 12 touchdowns last season at New Mexico. (Photo of Makhi Hughes: Matthew Dobbins / Imagn Images) Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Play today's puzzle
New York Times
20 hours ago
- New York Times
Need a College Football Playoff expansion plan that makes sense? Look to the FCS format
In case you haven't heard, the latest crackpot College Football Playoff expansion idea was presented to Big Ten athletic directors recently. It goes something like this (you're forgiven if you lose track): Either 24 or 28 teams, with the Big Ten and SEC receiving six or seven automatic bids, the Big 12 and ACC receiving two fewer and four slots designated for non-automatic qualifiers. Advertisement Come again? In recent months, CFP expansion has flooded the discourse, with the SEC and Big Ten's standoff over whether there should be a 16-team bracket with five conference champions and 11 at-larges or Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti's plan, which includes four autobids each for his league and the SEC, two each for the Big 12 and ACC, and one for the Group of 5. This is all nonsense. Codifying favored status for a conference into a postseason format is now a four-decade college football tradition, dating back to the Bowl Alliance and Bowl Championship Series days, but that doesn't make it right. Let's course correct, starting with the next iteration of the CFP. There's one Playoff format that has proven to work and would appease almost everyone in the sport. It can be found in the FCS ranks. And it's pretty simple. Twenty-four teams qualify. Ten of them are conference champions. The rest are at-large entrants selected by a committee. The top eight seeds receive a first-round bye, the other 16 play each other, and off we go. Sounds a lot simpler than 4-4-2-2-1-3 or 7-7-5-5-4 or whatever the heck else is floating around. Before you poo-poo the idea and decry an even bigger role for the selection committee, consider the upside. This format provides a path to the Playoff for virtually every team in the FBS. Win your league, and you're in. It's right. It's fair. And it would work. Also, it allows the two wealthiest conferences — the Big Ten and SEC — more teams into the field, via at-large selection. Upset that 9-3 Alabama didn't make it last year? South Carolina, Ole Miss, Missouri and Illinois — also all 9-3 last year — would have made it in such a format. So would Miami from the ACC and BYU from the Big 12, a team that somehow wasn't even in the conversation despite an impressive 10-2 campaign and a road win over a team that made the Playoff last year, SMU. At the end of the day, chances are the SEC and Big Ten would gobble up a large chunk of those 14 at-larges, and the Big 12 and ACC would get a few extras, too. Everybody wins. Advertisement But the FCS format would also create opportunities for schools in other conferences as well. Instead of having 68 teams outside the Power 4 vie for one berth, the American, Conference USA, MAC, Mountain West, Pac-12 (once it has eight teams again in 2026) and Sun Belt would each get one team in the field. Though having a true Cinderella in the CFP is much less likely to develop than it is in the NCAA basketball tournament or other sports because of football's physical nature and the role depth plays, it's still fairer than what we have now. The fact that we have allowed college football as a sport to predetermine which conferences get autobids and which don't without any officially stated objective criteria never sat right with me. If you purport to all be in the same subdivision — the FBS — then every league's champion deserves respect and a seat at the table. 'People have been grandfathered in over the course of time and some have a seat at the table and some don't and they're deemed Autonomous Four and everyone else is not, and here's your one seat at the table to get to the CFP,' Boise State athletic director Jeramiah Dickey told The Athletic in May. 'That just doesn't feel right.' A system like this works in other sports as well, most notably in basketball every March. It works in the NFL — division champions get an auto bid, then wild-card teams get the rest of the berths (via records, not a committee, of course). The biggest sport that has a system similar to what the Big Ten is proposing is European soccer, via the Champions League. Some leagues, like the Premier League, get more bids to the tournament each year than others. It's wildly popular — I'm a fan and I watch it annually — and some may argue that something akin to the Big Ten's proposals makes sense because college football operates more like European soccer than it does the NFL. They have a point, but I still say, why not create a system that gives both equal access to each conference and still allows the 'big dogs' the added opportunities they desire? Advertisement A 24-team field, using the FCS format, would have looked like this last year, using the final CFP rankings and a straight seeding format. For the unranked G5 champs, I used Chris Vannini's final 134 to order them. Byes: Remaining seeds: Now, I know what you might be thinking. The Big Ten isn't doing this for fairness — it's doing it for money. It's true. The idea of installing multiple automatic bids for conferences is a money play. I don't see hordes of fans calling for conferences to get multiple bids. Only conference commissioners — or their coaches, who follow their lead — are advocating for a bigger piece of the financial pie, which, by the way, the Big Ten and SEC already get. When is enough enough? An expanded Playoff is going to mean more money, no matter what format it is, autobids or not. That's not to say the FCS format is necessarily the best solution available. There are other alternatives, like keeping the 12-team format (nothing wrong with that! We're only one year in!) or eliminating autobids, taking the top 12/16/24 teams regardless of conference affiliation. But that increases subjectivity even more. And if you're concerned about going to 24 teams creating a precedent that we're always going to look to expand further, I'm sorry to inform you: We got on that path as soon as we established a Playoff. There will always be advocacy for expansion as long as expanding the postseason equates to more dollars. Even the FCS format has undergone expansion multiple times, from four in 1978 (sound familiar?) to eight in 1981, 12 in 1982, 16 in 1986, 20 in 2010 and the current 24-team format in 2013. If we're going to change the College Football Playoff format, let's do it in a way that doesn't perpetuate an inherently unfair postseason system through multiple conference autobids. Let's use something that has proven to work. It's right there if the power brokers are willing to just open their eyes and ears and, for once, consider the greater good of the sport. (Photo of Cam Miller: George Walker / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images) Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Play today's puzzle
Fox News
a day ago
- Fox News
Big Ten Reportedly Proposing 24- or 28-Team College Football Playoff Format
An essential two-team College Football Playoff was exclusive. Making it four teams in 2014 added some flavor. Giving out 12 playoff berths in 2024 made it exciting. How about getting wild and having a 28-team CFP? Well, that's what the Big Ten has in mind. Conference commissioner Tony Petitti has formed proposals that would expand the CFP to 24, if not 28, teams, ESPN reported. The format proposal would eliminate conference championship games, while granting the Big Ten and the SEC seven automatic playoff bids apiece, with the ACC and Big 12 each getting five automatic bids. There would also be two automatic bids for non-power-conference schools and two other at-large teams. In all, there would be 20 CFP games on college campuses. Last season, college football debuted the 12-team CFP, which granted four conference title winners an automatic first-round bye and had four first-round playoff games played on college campuses. Neutral-site matchups began in the quarterfinal round. The Big Ten led the way with four teams in the CFP, followed by the SEC with three. [MORE: How 2024-25 CFP Would've Looked Under Proposed Expansion Formats] As for the 2025 season, the 12-team CFP format remains intact but with some tweaks, such as the top four overall ranked teams receiving a first-round bye as opposed to the top-four ranked conference champions receiving a bye (e.g. independent Notre Dame can get a first-round bye, whereas it previously couldn't because it's not part of a power-four conference). While still being one of the top-five ranked conference champions ensures a playoff berth, it no longer locks in a first-round bye for the top-four ranked conference winners. In the wake of each of the four teams that received first-round byes in last year's CFP losing in the quarterfinal round (Oregon, Georgia, Boise State and Clemson), there has been rampant speculation throughout this offseason about altering the format again; a potential 16-team format has been a topic of discussion. Last season, Ohio State defeated Notre Dame in the national championship tilt; both teams were at-large bids. Want great stories delivered right to your inbox? Create or log in to your FOX Sports account, and follow leagues, teams and players to receive a personalized newsletter daily!
