Ron Chenoy/USA TODAY Sports
Deion Sanders Headlines the Top 10 Offseason Story Lines in College Football
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With the latest window of entry into the transfer portal closing Sunday, college football is in the final stages of sorting out rosters during this dizzying spring. Now it’s time to look at the story lines that will take over the headlines for the next few months, until preseason camps begin. Here are the top 10:
1. Colorado and Deion Sanders push the envelope
With a nontraditional hire comes nontraditional methods of rebuilding a moribund program. Sanders is personifying program mascot Ralphie, stampeding through the status quo and riling everyone up.
Since being hired in December, Sanders has done almost nothing in a conventional manner, which has both captivated the public and irritated a segment of the college football establishment. (Some people seem surprised that one of the brashest and cockiest players in the history of the sport is also a brash and cocky coach. Were they expecting that to change now that Coach Prime has a Power 5 job? That new cowboy hat sits atop the same old ego.)
Sanders arrived in Boulder promising change, and boy, has he delivered. The level of excitement surrounding the new era is off the charts for laid-back Boulder, where the Buffaloes nearly packed 50,000-seat Folsom Field in a snow storm for the spring game and delivered a robust TV audience. But the scale and pace of player turnover altered the narrative last week.
It has been without precedent: At least 46 players have transferred out of Colorado, half of them as of Tuesday this week, and most of that number were pushed out, according to The Athletic. Cutting players from the roster has been a dirty semi-secret in college sports for years, and it usually happens when a new coach arrives. Sanders has simply been more open and aggressive about it than his peers—starting with his initial team meeting in December. He told everyone what was coming after inheriting a 1–11 team, and here it is.
The more problematic elements of the Athletic story for Sanders were player anecdotes about the coach playing favorites with the recruits he brought in and ignoring some of the holdovers from the Karl Dorrell era. This, again, is part of how the real world works in college football, just more quietly in most places. But Sanders will have these anecdotes thrown in his face on the recruiting trail, where every parent has the same concern: Is the coach going to care about my kid? Or at least convincingly fake it? If he cares about only the star players and has no regard for the backups and role players, it will be difficult to cultivate depth and develop culture—which is the biggest buzzword in college sports for a reason.
In a lot of ways, the Pro Football Hall of Famer has brought an NFL way of doing business to a college campus. And while the transfer numbers and blunt approach may be jarring, this is a logical extension of what college sports has wrought with its current level of player free agency. If the players are empowered to come and go with greater frequency, the coaches will feel empowered to push them out with fewer misgivings. Colorado and Coach Prime are testing the sport’s bounds in that area as we speak.
2. Michigan’s momentum
Coach Jim Harbaugh got everyone’s attention in early April when he declared, “I think this team is the best version that we’ve had of ourselves. The phrase ‘strike while the iron is hot’ is at the forefront of our minds. We want to keep the ground that we have, plus we want to take some more ground.” The only ground left to take is to make the College Football Playoff national championship—and win it.
The two-time reigning Big Ten champion Wolverines look great on paper. They have the nation’s best running back tandem in Blake Corum and Donovan Edwards; an experienced and talented quarterback in J.J. McCarthy; a veteran offensive line and receiving corps; their top five tacklers returning on defense; and a rising star in sophomore cornerback in Will Johnson. They also have a low-stress schedule until November.
Now, here is the question: Can Michigan close the still-substantial gap between itself and a national championship? Can it beat, say, Georgia? The Wolverines have made the last two playoffs, but they were also routed by the Bulldogs in 2021 and then beaten by the team (TCU) that was routed by the Bulldogs in ’22. Michigan has never led for a second in a CFP game and has spent 91 minutes and 57 seconds out of a possible 120 minutes trailing by double digits.
Ohio State remains the only Big Ten team that has played for (or won) a national championship in the last 26 years. Maybe Michigan is ready to change that embarrassing statistic for the conference, but it does indeed need to take a lot of ground to make it happen.
3. Is Alabama’s championship window closing?
Some incredible streaks are on the line for the Crimson Tide in 2023. They’re trying to avoid the first three-year national title drought of the 16-season Nick Saban era, and the first two-year absence from the Southeastern Conference championship game since 2010–11. To win the SEC West and win it all, some important things have to fall into place.
That starts with the quarterback position, where it appears there finally is some drop-off after a remarkable succession of Jalen Hurts, Tua Tagovailoa, Mac Jones and Bryce Young. The quarterback play in the Alabama spring game was uninspiring, and concerns at that position were made clear when the Tide landed Notre Dame transfer Tyler Buchner for a reunion with former Fighting Irish offensive coordinator Tommy Rees. (Notre Dame fans were not overly smitten with Buchner or Rees at varying points last year, so this is hardly a slam-dunk upgrade. Buchner has six touchdown passes and eight interceptions in his college career.)
Saban also has two new coordinators in Rees and DC Kevin Steele, the latter of whom will largely run what the greatest defensive coach in college history wants him to run. But Bama will also run it without edge rusher Will Anderson Jr., the No. 3 pick of the 2023 NFL draft who had more than 60 tackles for loss in three college seasons. There is always more talent on the way at Alabama, but is it difference-making talent that can adequately replace Young and Anderson?
At some point in every coaching tenure, there is an inevitable beginning of an inevitable end. At age 71, Nick Saban might have reached that point. He’s now chasing Kirby Smart, and maybe others within the profession he’s dominated like no other. This season could go a long way toward establishing whether he has more glory left in him.
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4. Florida State’s path back to the top of the ACC
Clemson is wobbling. The Seminoles are rising. Do those trajectories intersect in a way that could result in FSU winning its first ACC championship since 2014? That could all be decided Sept. 23 in Death Valley. Or perhaps in early December.
The Seminoles are coming off a breakthrough season, winning 10 games for the first time since 2016. They retained most of the key contributors from that team—including sixth-year quarterback Jordan Travis—and have been big winners in the transfer portal. The chronic talent and depth deficiencies on the lines have at last been adequately addressed.
FSU is a well-built team, having led the ACC in total yards per game and per play on both offense and defense last season. Make some improvements in special teams, reduce penalties and generate more turnovers, and the ’Noles could win a couple of the close games that kept it from playing for the 2022 ACC title. With the league having done away with divisions, Florida State and Clemson could tangle twice in the upcoming season.
5. The biggest Big 12 ever, for one season at least
We are finally ready to start putting the real in Power 5 realignment. BYU, Central Florida, Cincinnati and Houston officially join the Big 12, which will puff up to 14 members for 2023 before Texas and Oklahoma depart next year for the SEC. (The dominoes fall further from there this fall, in a realigned American Athletic Conference and Conference USA.)
Last season was a great one for the league’s long-term health. New commissioner Brett Yormark quickly secured a media-rights deal that exceeded many expectations, and the conference does not appear to be immediately susceptible to additional poaching. TCU became the first Big 12 team to play in the CFP title game (we won’t talk about what happened there). The Horned Frogs and Kansas State played an epic title game, which followed an epic 2021 title game between Baylor and Oklahoma State. The key commonality there: Neither of the defecting kingpins, Texas or Oklahoma, was needed at the top to make the league compelling.
The Big 12 did miss an opportunity to give its four new members a grand opening at home, though. Cincinnati gets the best inaugural game, hosting Oklahoma on Sept. 23, and Houston’s first league contest is at home against TCU Sept. 16. But both BYU (at Kansas) and UCF (at Kansas State) open in their new league on the road Sept. 23.
6. The Big Ten West coaching makeover
Nebraska and Wisconsin both made big scores in the job market, hiring Matt Rhule and Luke Fickell, respectively. Purdue suffered a major loss when Jeff Brohm went home to Louisville but might have grabbed the most upwardly mobile coordinator to replace him in Illinois DC Ryan Walters. A division that has produced four different winners in the last four years looks wide open again.
Rhule and Fickell could be positioned to make immediate upgrades: Rhule because he’s taking over an underachieving Cornhuskers program that should simply be better coached and more competently run; Fickell because of his work in the transfer portal and putting together a quality staff at what has been the best program in the division. That said, the expectation should be progress, not overnight miracles. (Wisconsin transfer QB Tanner Mordecai’s throwing five interceptions in the spring game should pour some cold water on the Badgers’ offensive makeover hype.)
Bottom line: The Big Ten champion should again come from the loaded East division. But the West has a chance to get significantly better this fall and improve from there in subsequent seasons.
7. What will the Pac-12 look like in a couple of months?
The media-rights vigil continues, as commissioner George Kliavkoff seeks to finalize an all-important deal that keeps the conference together while attracting new members. The length of the deal, financial terms and the mix of media partners all will be heavily scrutinized as vital signs of the league’s overall health.
How deep will the Pac-12 dive into the realm of streaming? How much will the new deal appeal to Oregon and Washington, not to mention the Four Corners schools? How long does it take to bring San Diego State (and presumably at least one more school, like SMU) into the fold? Where does Gonzaga stand as a potential nonfootball member?
Heading into the final season with USC and UCLA, no commissioner is currently under more pressure than Kliavkoff. He and the Pac-12 campus leadership could go a long way toward stabilizing the FBS landscape (for a few years at least), or the tectonic plates can start to shift again.
8. No, seriously, is Texas back?
It’s time to take the training wheels off the Steve Sarkisian–Quinn Ewers partnership. Either the Longhorns win the Big 12 or make the title game, or it’s time to reappraise the direction of the program heading into the SEC in 2024. That shouldn’t be too high an expectation in Year 3 of the Sark era, given what Texas thinks of itself.
Sarkisian has recruited well, with a few key transfer additions on top of gifted high school classes. He has a returning starter and potential star at QB in Ewers, with quality depth behind him (megarecruit Arch Manning is third string and does not need to be hustled into action prematurely). He has an elite receiving corps. He has beefed up both lines. He has several key returnees from the best Texas defense in at least five years.
The first yardstick game is Sept. 9 at Alabama, but that was something of a false flag last year when the Longhorns nearly pulled the upset in Austin. The bigger measurement is likely to come in Fort Worth on Nov. 11, against a TCU program that has beaten Texas seven of the last nine meetings. The Horns probably aren’t “back” until they can beat the Horned Frogs—and a bunch of other Big 12 opponents.
9. Notre Dame’s reconstituted offense
There have been a lot of moving parts on that side of the ball this offseason. Coordinator Tommy Rees left for Alabama. Presumptive replacement Andy Ludwig wound up never leaving Utah, after a contract wrinkle scuttled the move. Instead, Marcus Freeman elevated tight ends coach Gerad Parker to OC while also bringing in former Cincinnati OC Gino Guidugli as quarterbacks coach.
As for the players: Quarterback Sam Hartman arrives from Wake Forest after five hugely productive seasons, eager to prove that he’s not just a product of Dave Clawson’s esoteric system. But experienced depth behind Hartman is now a concern, with Tyler Buchner (Alabama) and Drew Pyne (Arizona State) having transferred. Receiver Lorenzo Styles dabbled at cornerback in the spring and then jumped into the portal rather unexpectedly. Then 2022 No. 2 rusher Logan Diggs followed suit. Running back Chris Tyree has been shifted to slot receiver. Tight end is a perennial strength, but replacing a guy who caught 180 passes in three seasons (Michael Mayer) isn’t automatic.
New faces, new places, new schemes. The good news: Notre Dame doesn’t open with Ohio State this year (that’s Sept. 23). The bad news: The opener is Aug. 26 in Ireland, which accelerates the timetable to get everyone on the same page.
10. Georgia tries to make history
Since the Associated Press started naming college football national champions in 1936, nobody has ever won three in a row. Many repeats, zero threepeats. The Bulldogs figure to have a legitimate chance to be the first.
The talent drain to the NFL should not be understated—with 25 draft picks in the last two years, the Bulldogs have set a new record for the common draft era (1966 to present). There is a void left by quarterback Stetson Bennett, offensive coordinator Todd Monken, some key transfers and another flotilla of defensive draft choices. And the hangover from this most recent championship was tragically real, with a deadly street race claiming two lives and other reckless driving issues casting a pall over the program. It has not been a pleasant offseason in Athens.
But the machine is still humming, with elite talent stacked deep and Kirby Smart relentlessly pushing the program to be the dominant brand in the sport. And the schedule is lenient: four straight at home to start; a nonconference slate of UT-Martin, Ball State, UAB and Georgia Tech; and just one road game against a team that had a winning record in 2022.
It would be a surprise if Georgia isn’t 10–0 going to Knoxville to play Tennessee on Nov. 18. Come out of Neyland Stadium with a victory and a playoff bid will once again be within sight.
