College football has commenced in earnest with the renewal of the storied rivalries (see Pitt-West Virginia this Thursday), preseason top-25 teams looking to stay at the top, and for our local programs – a clean slate.
So break out the pompoms and cue up the band, 50 things to know about the season is rolling through. Ax Man Jr. is opening eyes in Clemson, dig the sharp wheels the Texas kid is riding around in, and put away those bibles, we’re going to Vegas, baby.
1. Baylor, which went from 2-7 in 2020 to 12-2 last season, has plenty of returning talent. The biggest, literally, is 6-7, 302-pound left tackle Connon Galvin, who was the Big 12 offensive lineman of the year in 2021. The Bears’ biggest game figures to be Nov. 5 at Oklahoma.
2. Not only is reigning Heisman winner Bryce Young not favored to repeat, but the Alabama quarterback wasn’t even selected as his league’s preseason player of the year. Ohio State quarterback C.J. Stroud’s Heisman odds are around 2-1, compared to Young’s 7-2; and Alabama linebacker Will Anderson Jr. was named SEC preseason POY in a media poll over the summer. He’s at 30-1 to become the first defensive player to win the Heisman in 25 years.
3. Stroud, who finished fourth in last year’s Heisman voting, likes to bring teammates to his apartment for dinner. “He makes a pretty good mac and cheese,” wide receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba told the Columbus Dispatch. “I’m not gonna lie.”
4. Stroud’s backup is Kyle McCord, a St. Joe’s Prep product who started one game for the Buckeyes last season. Marvin Harrison Jr., who also played at The Prep, will look to build on his monster Rose Bowl (six catches, three touchdowns) as the Ohio State wide receiver factory rolls on.
5. High expectations abound at North Carolina State after junior quarterback Devin Leary (Timber Creek) posted a school-record 35 touchdowns and just five interceptions last year. Leary could be a first-round pick next year.
6. The Wolfpack (No. 13) are ranked in the preseason for the first time in 19 years. Their nonconference schedule is soft, and they don’t play Miami or defending ACC champ Pittsburgh. But they do play at Clemson (Oct. 1) and finish at Louisville (Nov. 19) and at North Carolina (Nov. 25). They beat Clemson in overtime last year (Leary had four TD passes, two in overtime), so the fourth-ranked Tigers should be extra ornery.
» READ MORE: Penn State backed by sportsbooks in Week 1 matchup vs. Purdue
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7. One of the early marquee games is No. 5 Notre Dame at No. 2 Ohio State on Saturday at 7:30 (6ABC). Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman is entering his first full season after leading the Irish in the Fiesta Bowl loss to Oklahoma State when Brian Kelly bolted for LSU. Freeman played at Ohio State from 2004-08 and earned his master’s in sports management from there in 2011.
8. “Every game’s a Super Bowl. That’s how you look at it in college football,” Freeman told ESPN. “It’s one game, and every game’s a Super Bowl, and so it starts Sept. 3, and after that game’s over, we’ll refocus and get ready for the next week.” For Notre Dame, the next week after Ohio State is a visit from Marshall.
9. Jihaad Campbell, a freshman linebacker who played his first three high school years at Timber Creek, flipped his commitment from Clemson to Alabama. Playing time might be hard to come by, but being in the same meeting room as starters Anderson, Henry To’o To’o and Jaylen Moody will only help Campbell’s development.
10. Penn State will play Auburn for the second year in a row on Sept. 17 (3:30 p.m. ABC). And for the second year in a row the matchup will be the Nittany Lions’ third – and arguably its biggest – game of the season. Last year, PSU improved to 3-0 and gave the Tigers their first loss following a 28-21 win in Happy Valley.
11. Former Temple coach Al Golden is Notre Dame’s defensive coordinator. He had been coaching linebackers for the Cincinnati Bengals the last two seasons.
12. The Fiesta and Peach bowls will be the playoff semifinals on New Year’s Eve. The championship is Monday, Jan. 9 at SoFi Stadium just outside of Los Angeles.
13. Utah, coming off its first Pac-12 championship, opens at Florida on Saturday. Even if the Gators are unranked, Utah sees this as a key opportunity. It’ll be the first time the Utes play an SEC team since the 2008 season when they beat Alabama in the Sugar Bowl to finish 13-0. The only time Utah has played at the Swamp was in 1977 when the big headline of that day was Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s historic visit to Jerusalem.
14. The Utes return first-team all-conference quarterback Cameron Rising and running back Tavion Thomas and, at No. 7, have their highest preseason ranking ever. They’re also coming off their first Rose Bowl appearance, losing a wonderful 48-45 slugfest to Ohio State. “If you want to gain respect, gain national attention, you got to come out and win some of those games,” Utah coach Kyle Whittingham said. “Hopefully, we can go down [to Florida] and play like we’re capable of.
» READ MORE: Temple reveals D’wan Mathis will start at QB and teases other depth chart spots
15. Associated Press college football writer Ralph Russo points out that each year from 2010-20, about 10 of the preseason Top 25 were unranked by season’s end. Last year was especially brutal as seven of the AP’s preseason Top 15 (6-Texas A&M, 7-Iowa State, 10-North Carolina, 12-Wisconsin, 13-Florida, 14-Miami, 15-USC) flamed out and were not ranked at the end of the season. Bottom line: With open transferring and the extra eligibility because of the 2020 COVID year, preseason rankings are more precarious than ever.
16. Case in point: Central Michigan’s Lew Nichols III, who led the nation in rushing (1,848 yards), is going into his fourth season with the Chippewas but is listed as a sophomore. CMU, which surprised Washington State in the Sun Bowl, plays at Penn State on Sept. 24.
17. Wake Forest quarterback Sam Hartman went down during training camp and is out indefinitely. It’s been described as a non-football-related medical condition, but coach Dave Clawson said Hartman will play this season. Hartman was fifth in the nation with 39 touchdown passes last season. The Deacons host fourth-ranked Clemson on Sept. 24.
18. Jermal Martin Jr., a Division II All-American d-back at California (Pa.) last season, is playing at Wake this year. He grew up at 20th & Dickinson and 28th & Jackson in South Philly and went to Academy Park in Delco. He said the family culture of head coach Dave Clawson, former Villanova assistant, is what brought him to Winston-Salem, N.C.
19. Excellent column by J. Brady McCollough of the Los Angeles Times following the decision by UCLA and USC to join the Big Ten starting in 2024-25. “[University of California] and many other schools nationwide who won’t get the invite to the Big Ten or Southeastern Conference will have big decisions to make about whether they want to go along with the model of college sports as pro sports when they simply won’t have the revenue or the conference standings to compete at the highest level anymore,” he wrote. “So much of this is sad, but there’s no way around it because capitalism is doing its thing. USC and UCLA got their chance to stay in the game and took it the way any other Pac-12 school would.”
20. New USC coach Lincoln Riley was so successful in luring transfers that he proclaimed that this is the “most unique roster in USC football history.” The Trojans were 4-8 last year, their most losses in 30 years. They are ranked No. 14 this preseason thanks largely to quarterback Caleb Williams who, like Riley, left Oklahoma for the brighter lights of Los Angeles.
21. Another new face is Eric Gentry, a 6-6 linebacker from Neumann Goretti who played for Arizona State last season. “When he first came in, I was like, ‘Who the hell is this tall dude?’ " teammate Tuli Tuipulotu told the L.A. Daily News. “He’s athletic for a guy with that type of body and I like him a lot. He’s a hitter, too. He’ll come down on the line. I like EG a lot.”
22. USC and Pittsburgh had a virtual transfer trade when Pitt star wide receiver Jordan Addison went to USC, and Trojans quarterback Kedon Slovis came east to play for the Panthers. Slovis had 30 TD passes and nine interceptions in 12 games as a freshman in 2019. He tossed 28 scores with 15 picks in 15 games in 2020-21.
23. Pitt will be playing West Virginia for the first time since 2011 when they meet Thursday. It’s a renewal of the “Backyard Brawl” rivalry that started in 1895 and has taken place 104 times. The Panthers, 11-3 last year, haven’t had back-to-back 10-win seasons since Dan Marino was the quarterback 40 years ago.
24. Name, image and likeness collectives have popped up across the country. At Penn State, there’s one called “Success With Honor.” Indiana has “Hoosiers For Good.” And at USC, there’s “Student Body Right.” These organizations help filter money to athletes. Some of it is for philanthropic work, some for traditional endorsement deals.
25. “Universities, they would obviously prefer to have collectives run by people they have a good relationship with and that they can collaborate with and that they feel comfortable with, especially people they’re comfortable are going to adhere to NCAA rules,” Mit Winter, a sports law attorney told the L.A. Times. “But the interesting thing about the NIL world right now is that anybody can start a collective that’s built to support their favorite university, and there’s nothing the university can do about it.”
26. Texas running back Bijan Robinson (1,127 yards in 2021) drives a Lamborghini, a sweet little benefit of his NIL deal with a local auto dealer. Another seven-loss season like Texas had in 2021 and Robinson might be driving a bicycle.
» READ MORE: Nick Singleton’s unrelenting ability to put in the work a key piece in Penn State’s football puzzle
27. The unranked Longhorns host Alabama in Week 2. Assuming the Tide get by Utah State on Saturday, this will be just the third time Texas plays the No. 1-ranked team on campus. In 2006, they lost to Ohio State. In 1950, they beat SMU.
28. Arkansas was 9-4 last year after winning seven games total from 2018-20. It opens at home with No. 23 Cincinnati, and plays No. 6 Texas A&M (at Arlington, Texas) and hosts Alabama in consecutive weeks starting Sept. 24.
29. Nebraska coach Scott Frost took some heat for bragging that his offensive linemen were working so hard during camp that they were puking regularly. Frost, in 2018, completed a hiking trip through the Grand Canyon that covered 24 miles and 13 hours. He joked at the time that the trip made him vomit a few times.
30. Georgia must replace six of its front seven defenders from last year’s national championship squad (which included current Eagles Jordan Davis and Nakobe Dean). The Bulldogs still are ranked No. 3 in the preseason.
31. Good to see Tykee Smith back on the field. The Georgia safety and Imhotep Charter product was limited to just one game last season after breaking his foot, and then tearing his ACL. Smith was a third-team AP All-America in 2020 at West Virginia and is on this year’s Nagurski watch list for top defensive player.
32. Smith’s position coach at UGA is Fran Brown, who played quarterback at Camden High and was a cornerback at Western Carolina. Brown has coached at Temple, Baylor and most recently at Rutgers.
33. Quarterback Stetson Bennett has been at Georgia for six years, starting with his redshirt season in 2017. The Bulldogs open with Oregon in Atlanta on Sept. 3. Oregon has had four head coaches since 2017 (Willie Taggart, Mario Cristobol, interim Bryan McClendon and now Dan Lanning).
34. Clemson has a new defensive coordinator after longtime DC Brent Venables left to become head coach at Oklahoma. The Tigers, who by their standards were a disappointing 10-3 last season, will rely on two Philly guys at linebacker: Keith Maguire (Malvern Prep) and Jeremiah Trotter Jr. (SJ Prep).
35. “I feel like [Trotter] came in like an old man from a knowledge standpoint, with his dad being a longtime NFL player,” Clemson defensive coordinator Wes Goodwin told the Greenville (S.C.) News. “He’s really smart beyond his years.”
36. Texas A&M is ranked sixth in the preseason. Three of its first six games are against ranked opponents, including Oct. 8 at Alabama, whis it beat last year. But that will only be half of the story.
37. “We were second in recruiting last year,” Alabama coach Nick Saban said in May. “A&M was first. A&M bought every player on their team. Made a deal for name, image and likeness. We didn’t buy one player.”
38. “Some people think they’re God,” A&M coach Jimbo Fisher replied the following day. “Go dig into how God did his deal. You might find out about a guy, a lot of things you don’t want to know. We build him up to be this czar of football. Go dig into his past or anybody who has ever coached with him. You can find out anything you want to know about what he does and how he does it. It’s despicable.”
39. Fisher, who was Saban’s offensive coordinator at LSU in the early 2000s, said the two have moved on from the disruption. The Oct. 8 game against Alabama is the day before his 57th birthday.
40. Also that day, Notre Dame will face BYU at Allegiant Stadium. Or, to put it another way, a Catholic school will play a Mormon school in Vegas. Welcome to 2022.
41. James Madison is now a former rival of Villanova. The Dukes have transitioned to FBS, playing in the Sun Belt Conference. They will not play the Wildcats for the first time in 30 years (not counting 2020).
42. LSU, which will be led by former Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly and his hokey Louisiana accent, is unranked in the AP preseason poll for the first time since 2000. That also happened to be Nick Saban’s first year in Baton Rouge.
43. Cincinnati, at No. 23, is the highest-ranked team from a non-Power 5 conference. Houston is next at No. 24. (Notre Dame, an independent, is fifth.)
44. Temple might not be very good this year (its over/under for wins is 2.5), but it could have a say in who wins the American Athletic Conference. The Owls are at Houston on Nov. 12 and host Cincinnati on Nov. 19.
45. Cincinnati parlayed last year’s historic College Football Playoff into a spiffy new locker room that added another 2,000 square feet at a cost of $4 million.
46. Missouri’s Harrison Mavis made 23 of 25 field goals (including a 56-yarder) and made all 41 of his PATs last season when he was listed at 236 pounds. He’s at 254 this year, just solidifying his terrific nickname of the “thicker kicker.”
47. Feel free to buy merchandise at Oklahoma backup quarterback General Booty’s website MTJN.org, an abbreviation for More Than Just a Name. He’s donating some of his proceeds to charity. “My family has been a really good example to me my whole life, and we talked about the importance of giving back,” Booty told The Oklahoman. “I have a special place in my heart for kids, so after my visit there, I knew Oklahoma Children’s Hospital would be where my support would go.”
48. Notre Dame’s offensive linemen made a NIL deal with popular campus restaurant Jet’s Pizza that also was fulfilling. “We tagged them on social media and they fed us pretty good,” guard Jarrett Patterson told the school’s website. “The Detroit deep-dish pizzas, [are] really good.”
49. The pick: Donated $50 to FanDuel last year with Oklahoma, so this surely is for entertainment purposes only. Alabama is less than 2-1, so there’s no fun in rolling with the Tide. Same with Ohio State and Georgia (around 3-1). So Clemson, at 8-1, is the call. The biggest hurdle in getting back to the playoffs is Nov. 5 when the Tigers visit Notre Dame.