A big reason I’ve long chafed against the seemingly inevitable homegenization of major college football into a closed shop where 30ish teams are allowed to compete as a functional NFL minor league while everyone else gets to fight with their neighbors over scraps is that it presumes that what makes college football special is the football.

If that were the case, the interesting bits would only be the big matchups between teams full of future professionals. If you read this blog, you know how antithetical that is to how I think about the sport.

College football is a dumb sport that exists wholly unto itself. We’ve never had a uniform set of rules, a formal way to determine a sole champion or even a coherent way to split up divisions. Hell, this week two ACC teams are playing a non-conference game against each other, because it’s not supposed to make sense.

The most interesting game of any given year is usually held on Black Friday between two 6-6 teams who will file a FOIA request on their head coach’s phone records if he doesn’t win, or win by enough. Hate, pride, envy and lust power this sport more than inside zone or pattern matching coverages.

Casual fans, and certainly average NFL fans, don’t see it this way. They think the sport is merely a lesser, simpler version of what they watch on Sundays, that the quarterbacks just run more here because they aren’t good enough at finding the right read in their passing progression. They think that you could drop a big brained guy who used to wear a polo with the right logo on it and dominate the sport, because how different could it be?

They don’t get it. And it’s clear that the greatest coach in NFL history doesn’t get it either.

Bringing Bill Belichick to North Carolina wasn’t doomed to fail from the start. When he fired the people who knew things like how to book hotel rooms for recruits, and brought along his entire crew of flunkies, the writing was on the wall.

New GM Michael Lombardi, who wasn’t very good at the same role in the NFL, declared that the Tar Heels would be the 33rd NFL franchise. Anyone willing to make that statement in 2025 hasn’t paid a modicum of attention to the sport in the last twenty years – Alabama, Ohio State and Georgia long ago filled those expansion slots.

This was different than when Arizona State tried the “new leadership model” with Herm Edwards, and certainly different than the whole Deion Sanders thing normalizing bringing in 70+ new players to a program struggling for momentum.

This was arrogant. Arrogant in the same way that a former Belichick protege was when he made a famous declaration after being hired as Notre Dame’s head coach. 27 losses in five years later, his decided schematic advantage didn’t mean much.

College football is hard. It’s hard to get eleven 18-24-year-olds on each side of the ball to play perfect team ball with only a fraction of the practice time pros get. It’s hard to forge relationships with the high school coaches who provide talent. It’s hard to get the local car dealership owners to buy into what you’re doing so they’ll write the checks for another new weight room addition.

Maybe things will get better in Chapel Hill. Maybe that opening loss was humbling enough to get a room full of (probably) very smart people to realize they need to buy in or get left behind. Or maybe this will be a four-month sideshow the way we always thought it might be, and we’ll get a few more opportunities to watch Kirk Herbstreit’s dog broadcast the fourth quarter of a UNC game.

LISTEN:

Produced by former Georgia kicker Billy Bennett in Athens, the first album from The Whigs still hits incredibly hard in an inescapable way even as the band has slowed production and touring to a crawl.

EAT:

The Turnip Greens and Tortillas cookbook from chef Eddie Hernandez of our favorite Atlanta restaurant is full of fantastic recipes. Try Tacqueria del Sol’s beef brisket tacos this weekend and pair with a spicy margarita.

Saturday Early

No. 7 Texas vs San Jose St

Get right game for Arch Manning and the Longhorns, or at least it better be.

No. 19 Texas A&M vs Utah St

The Aggies need to get the defense sorted out, and quickly. Playing a Bronco Mendenhall team should pressure test the run fits, if nothing else.

Saturday Afternoon

No. 4 Georgia vs Austin Peay

Clear mission for the Dawgs: avoid any more injuries.

No. 20 Ole Miss at Kentucky

Kentucky won this game last year. Does anyone else remember that, because it was kind of a surprise to me.

No. 22 Tennessee vs ETSU

Good on the Volunteers for boosting the athletic budgets of a few in-state programs this year.

Missouri vs Kansas

An extremely underrated rivalry, and it’s a shame it happens in Week Two, but these are two potentially fun teams to watch this year.

No. 13 Florida vs South Florida

USF quarterback Byrum Brown is fun as hell to watch, and former Tennessee OC Alex Golesh has just the batshit crazy offense needed to unlock him. After the Bulls unseated Boise State in Week 1, this quickly became a game to keep a close eye on.

Arkansas vs Arkansas St

Very cool that these in-state neighbors are playing for the first time. More of this regional spite, please. Also Butch Jones is going to be at Taylor Swift’s wedding, and it’s important to me that everyone reading this knows that.

Saturday Evening

No. 10 South Carolina vs SC State

An early opportunity for LaNorris Sellers to build his Heisman case.

No. 3 LSU vs Louisiana Tech

Great job winning an opener for the first time in the Brian Kelly era. Would be a real shame if you blew all that goodwill with an uninspired performance against the Bulldogs.

Mississippi State at No. 12 Arizona State

I have no idea why this has become an annual game, but I love it. Did the two athletic directors get introduced by their shared Maroon pantone sales rep?

No. 18 Oklahoma vs No. 15 Michigan

With a suddenly competent-seeming offense, the attention turns to seeing what kind of torture rack Brent Venables can put freshman quarterback Bryce Underwood in for his first road start.

Auburn vs Ball State

This would be the game to actually try out all three quarterbacks on the roster, Hugh.

Vanderbilt vs Virginia Tech

No outcome in this game would be surprising, but a win would go a long way to getting the Commodores to back-to-back bowls.

No. 21 Alabama vs UL Monroe

The biggest existential crisis Alabama fans have had in twenty years, followed immediately by a visit from the team that almost ended the Saban dynasty before it started? Sometimes, these things are too prescient to be a coincidence.

Hey, it’s easy to get lost in the shuffle of everything, but Mike Vick is now an FCS head coach and that rocks. Here’s his new school’s halftime show from last week.

Look, some of the best uniforms are classics that stand the test of time, some are homages to a notable team of the past, some are high concept artwork, and some just have “Fightin’ Taters” scrawled on the helmets in a cool font. These are the latter.

Saturday Early

Iowa at No. 16 Iowa State

Both of these teams might be extremely fun this year? Even Iowa? That feels wrong, but early returns say you’ll actually want to watch this game and maybe a few more from each program this year.

Matt Levine’s excellent newsletter Money Stuff (Free to subscribe, $ to read on web) had an interesting read on sports owners, salary caps, and how they get around them. Action Cookbook on back to school and kid pizza. Bitter Southerner with a beautiful profile on former (and maybe current?) Alabama Shakes singer Brittany Howard.