College football Re-Rank: Texas leads NCAA 1-136 after spring practice
Rounding out the top six are Clemson, Penn State, Georgia, Notre Dame and Ohio State. The Buckeyes have to rebuild on both lines while settling the ongoing quarterback competition between Lincoln Kienholz and Julian Sayin.
This group is followed by No. 7 LSU, No. 8 Oregon, No. 9 Miami, No. 10 Alabama, No. 11 Illinois and No. 12 Tennessee. The Illini are poised to make a playoff run with one of the most experienced rosters in the country.
COACHES RANKINGS: SEC | Big Ten | Big 12 | ACC
LOOKING AHEAD: Big Ten leads too-early Top 25 after spring
As expected, the Top 25 is dominated by the Big Ten and the SEC. The two power conferences combine for 11 of the top 15 teams and 13 of the top 21.
Teams predicted to rise in this year's re-rank are No. 17 TCU, No. 18 Nebraska, No. 22 Texas Tech, No. 25 Oklahoma and No. 35 Auburn. Farther down the re-rank, look for No. 50 Florida State to rebound after a miserable 2024 and teams such as No. 45 Kansas and No. 59 UCLA to reach the postseason after coming up one win shy last season.
One thing hasn't changed since the end of last year: Kent State continues to sit last in the Bowl Subdivision. The Golden Flashes went winless last season and recently made a coaching change, dismissing Kenni Burns and promoting offensive coordinator Mark Carney on an interim basis for the 2025 season.
But Kent State now sits at No. 136 with the addition of two newcomers to the FBS. Delaware and Missouri State will join Conference USA this season but not be eligible for the conference championship or the postseason while transitioning from the Championship Subdivision.
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The Herald Scotland
6 hours ago
- The Herald Scotland
SEC wants College Football Playoff respect? Stop playing cupcakes
When the scheduling debate resurfaced two years ago, some SEC members expressed reluctance to add another conference game without additional compensation from its media partner. ESPN didn't sweeten the pot. The SEC stayed at eight. The latest excuse? Many SEC coaches feel loath to welcome a ninth conference game without first knowing the College Football Playoff format for 2026 and beyond. What's next, no ninth SEC game until there's peace in the Middle East? I'm losing my appetite for this eight-or-nine debate. The number should be 10 - as in, every power-conference team should play a minimum of 10 games against Power Four opponents. MAN WITH PLAN: Lane Kiffin pushes promising 16-team playoff model BIG DECISION: SEC's Greg Sankey can be hero or villain in playoff debate SEC craves more CFP respect while playing cupcake games The SEC routinely insists it should gain preference from the playoff selection committee because of its run of national championship dominance the past 20 years, plus its strength of schedule. I won't argue that the SEC often boasts the strongest top-to-bottom conference. The SEC's pandering to the playoff committee, though, plays weak considering how the conference structures its schedule. Teams only play half the other members of their 16-team conference, and most only play one Power Four non-conference opponent, while supplementing the schedule with a few layup games. In this era of the ever-expanding playoff, it is time for the SEC to curtail its feast of cupcake games. Either stay at eight conference games, or go to nine - so long as it adds up to 10 games against real competition. Power Four teams playing more games against legitimate opponents - and fewer games against directional schools - would provide clarity to the playoff's at-large selection process. Alabama, Florida and South Carolina will play 10 regular-season games against Power Four opponents. The SEC's other teams will play eight or nine games against power foes. By comparison, TCU and Baylor will play a nation-leading 11 games against Power Four competition. Let's not spare the ACC, either. The ACC joins the SEC in playing eight conference games, while their Big Ten and Big 12 peers play nine. Most ACC schools, at least, will play 10 games against power-conference opponents, if you include Notre Dame as a power foe. Alternative to a ninth SEC game? Play another Power Four school Prominent SEC voices continue to trumpet that the committee erred by rejecting three 9-3 teams from the inaugural 12-team playoff, and that the committee does not sufficiently reward the SEC's schedule. "I have a hard time seeing Ole Miss, Alabama, and South Carolina not being in the best teams last year," Georgia coach Kirby Smart said, in reference to 9-3 teams that didn't make the playoff. I maintain the committee flubbed by selecting two-loss SMU, which beat nobody of substance and lost its two games against Top 25 opponents. Mississippi, which smashed Georgia after suffering a resume-staining loss to Kentucky, would have been a better choice. And yet, the SEC's three-loss also-rans could have tempted the committee more if they'd played and won another conference game or at least played and won an additional game against a Power Four opponent, instead of creaming a Championship Subdivision school. We don't know how the committee would view a 9-3 SEC team that played 10 games against Power Four competition. We do know what the committee thought of the SEC's 9-3 teams that played only nine games against power-conference foes. They thought them undeserving of a playoff bid. If Florida, which plays Miami and Florida State, goes 9-3 this season, it likely would have a stronger case for an at-large bid than the SEC's three-loss teams last season. The same is true of South Carolina, which plays Virginia Tech and Clemson for 10 Power Four games. Alabama's games against Wisconsin and Florida State give the Tide 10 games at the big-boy table, too. Those teams stand in exception to the SEC's majority that choose a path of lesser non-conference resistance. The SEC keeps floating the myth that the playoff committee does not respect strength of schedule. That's untrue. Indiana won 11 games last season, but the Hoosiers' soft schedule meant Indiana ranked behind four other at-large playoff qualifiers that won fewer games. Also, the SEC's three-loss teams reached the playoff's doorstep largely because of their strength of schedule. Another marquee victory could help get a three-loss team across the playoff's threshold. I can understand the SEC's reluctance to add a ninth conference game. Another league game would guarantee another loss to half the conference. Those additional losses would hinder playoff pursuits across half the league. The alternative to a ninth SEC game, though, should not be a game against Weasel Tech or Seventh-Grade State. Schedule another opponent from the big leagues. Non-conference scheduling includes the hurdle of needing two to tango. Not every power-conference team wants to play an SEC foe. Nebraska ducked out of its series with Tennessee. Wake Forest canceled on Ole Miss. Still, the SEC cannot relent. SEC coaches would be wise to keep the pedal down on this blue-sky idea of a Big Ten-SEC challenge. The SEC insists it wields the nation's strongest conference and that the committee should honor it as such. That argument holds merit, but the case would become easier to prove if SEC teams scheduled fewer games against Coastal Cupcake and more games against power-conference peers. Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network's national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@ and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.
Reuters
3 days ago
- Reuters
Wake Forest coach apologizes for apparent anti-gay slur
June 3 - Wake Forest baseball coach Tom Walter issued an apology on Tuesday after television cameras caught an apparent homophobic slur during an NCAA regional loss to Tennessee on Monday night. "I am very sorry for my outburst in frustration last night and I recognize the hurt and disappointment it has caused," Walter said in a statement issued by the school. "I own the consequences and I apologize to the University of Tennessee, to Wake Forest University, and the SEC & ACC." Walter, who has coached the Demon Deacons since 2010, added that the "language doesn't reflect my values or the standards of this program." Wake Forest athletic director John Currie said he was "surprised and deeply disappointed" by the incident, which occurred during an 11-5 victory by the Volunteers to win the Knoxville Regional. "I feel badly for those most hurt by such words," Currie said, per ESPN. "This incident ... is completely out of character for him and does not meet the standards of Wake Forest Athletics, Wake Forest University or the Atlantic Coast Conference." Wake Forest finished its season with a 39-22 record. Walter, the 2023 ACC Coach of the Year, has guided the team to a 495-383-1 record. --Field Level Media
The Herald Scotland
5 days ago
- The Herald Scotland
CFP, March Madness don't need to expand. Why are leaders pushing it?
But after months of debate on both fronts, what's become clear is that expansion is going to happen for no reason other than a vapid sense of inertia sprung from the bruised egos of sports executives - who subconsciously understand their own fundamental weakness and ineffectiveness are to blame for the spiral of chaos that college sports can't seem to escape. At least when they push a button to expand a postseason, it feels like they're doing something. That's an explanation. It's not a reason. When the NFL expanded its playoffs from 12 to 14 in 2020, changing its format for the first time in three decades, the obvious factor was an influx of money: Hundreds of millions of dollars, in fact, half of which gets split with players. When the NBA shook up its postseason and created the play-in tournament, the primary motivation was to keep more teams competitive late in the season and discourage tanking. Those are sensible reasons everyone can understand. But neither Baker nor one of the prominent conference commissioners like the SEC's Greg Sankey or the Big Ten's Tony Petitti have been able to articulate a clear and concise mission statement for what expansion of either tournament is supposed to accomplish. They just want to do it. Here's how thin the rationale is regarding March Madness: Speaking with reporters in Orlando, Baker cited the committee snubbing Missouri Valley Conference regular-season champion Indiana State in 2024 despite a 32-7 record, suggesting an expansion would get the NCAA tournament closer to including the "best" 68 teams. Of course, the NCAA tournament has always worked this way. Excellent mid-major teams that lose in their conference tournament often don't get in. And as the track record of the tournament clearly shows, the vast majority of bids in an expanded field would go to power conference teams with questionable records. The push to expand March Madness precedes Baker's tenure, which began in March 2023. In fact, you can trace the momentum back to March of 2022 when Texas A&M was left out despite a late-season surge to the championship game of the SEC tournament, converting Sankey into a public proponent of expansion. But the idea that tournament spots are being filled by automatic qualifiers from mid-major conferences with less chance to do damage in the tournament than Texas A&M's 2022 team, for instance, isn't new. It's part of the deal, and there's no real demand to move the cut line other than from those who are inconvenienced by it. In fact, one of the big obstacles to March Madness expansion - and the reason it didn't happen years ago - is that there's not a huge pot of television money out there for a few more games between mediocre basketball teams on Tuesday and Wednesday of tournament week. Not only is expansion unlikely to boost profits in a significant way, it's an open question whether the NCAA can expand the tournament without diluting the shares of its revenue distribution model, which are worth about $2 million per team per round. A similar dynamic is at play in the CFP debate. 12-team CFP worked; trashing it makes no sense There were clear incentives for the conference commissioners when they first floated expanding the football tournament from four to 12 teams back in 2021. Not only had TV ratings leveled off, perhaps due to many of the same programs populating the field year after year, but going to 12 would both guarantee access for all the power conference champions and set the table for a $1.3 billion per year contract with ABC/ESPN beginning in 2026 - nearly triple the original 12-year deal that established the CFP. But that's where things get murky. Even before the first 12-team playoff last year, conference commissioners were *already* batting around a 14-team model for 2026. That has now morphed into a likely 16-team bracket. The financial terms of the TV deal, however, will not change in a significant way, whether they land at 12, 14 or 16. So why do it? Not because it's a great business proposition - in fact, there's a legitimate concern about playoff oversaturation and potential second-order effects - but because the more you expand access, the more access everyone wants. That's what we have seen over the last week, especially from the SEC meetings as Sankey and others in the league launched a breathtaking, shameless propaganda effort attempting to rewrite recent history. Getting a mere three teams into last year's 12-team playoff while the Big Ten won its second straight title seems to have done a psychological number on those folks. Rather than admit the truth - the SEC didn't have an amazing year in 2024 and the playing field nationally has been leveled to some extent by NIL and the transfer portal - they are arguing to shape the next CFP format based on a level of conference strength that certainly existed in the past but hasn't in the NIL/transfer portal era. One prominent athletics director, Florida's Scott Stricklin, questioned whether the football bracket should be chosen by committee. Another unnamed administrator went so far as to muse that the SEC and Big Ten should think about just holding their own playoff, according to Yahoo! Sports. If you take a step back and look at what's happening from a 30,000-foot view, it smacks of famed political scientist Francis Fukuyama's "The End of History," where he writes about how the triumph of Western liberalism and consumerism has unwittingly created this kind of regressive condition that shows up in so many facets of life and culture. "If men cannot struggle on behalf of a just cause because that just cause was victorious in an earlier generation," he wrote, "then they will struggle against the just cause. They will struggle for the sake of struggle. They will struggle, in other words, out of a certain boredom: for they cannot imagine living in a world without struggle." That kind of feels like what's going on here. Aside from a small adjustment in how it was seeded, nothing about the 12-team playoff seemed problematic. If anything, it was widely praised for delivering what the original expansion proponents wanted: Geographic diversity, representation for the four power conferences and the Group of Five, first-round playoff games in college venues and a lot of interesting games from the quarterfinals on. In other words, it worked. And there is no obvious reason - financial or otherwise - to have chucked it in the trash already while the four power conferences launch a war amongst themselves about how much access gets allocated to each conference, and by whom. The angst is especially confusing from the SEC, which just got a record 14 bids to the men's basketball tournament (including national champion Florida), has eight of the 16 national seeds for the baseball tournament and five of the eight teams in the Women's College World Series. They're doing just fine, and there is a long track record of being justly rewarded when their teams perform at the highest level. There's little doubt that will happen again in football regardless of which playoff system gets implemented. It just didn't happen last year because the SEC, for once, did not deserve it. But the Big Ten and the SEC are, as Fukuyama wrote, struggling for the sake of struggle. The more power they have amassed by reshaping the landscape through realignment, the more they claim the system is broken. Some believe their end game is a separation from the NCAA, creating a world where they don't have to share a business partnership with conferences and schools they believe aren't bringing as much value to the table. The reality, though, is that any such move would draw a level of scrutiny - legal and political - they are not currently prepared to handle, not to mention the arduous work of building out the infrastructure for all kinds of unglamorous stuff the NCAA already provides. So instead, they wage war against problems that don't really exist, reach for solutions that create actual problems and then fail to solve the problems right in front of their face. The push to expand the NCAA tournament and the CFP are merely symptoms of an affluenza swallowing the highest levels of college sports. Knowing they've failed miserably to execute on the important issues they truly need to solve to ensure the long-term health of their business, the likes of Sankey and Petitti and many others have elevated tedium to a crisis. So a crisis is what they shall have.
