Colin Cowherd predicts LSU vs. Michigan in 2023 national championship game

With talking season coming to a close, picks for this year’s national championship are starting to roll in. That included Colin Cowherd this week as the host of ‘The Herd’ called his shot with Greg McElroy.

In an appearance on ‘Always College Football’ on Wednesday, Cowherd predicted that the Michigan Wolverines and LSU Tigers would meet in the title game in the final year of the four-team College Football Playoff.

“I have Michigan facing LSU in the championship,” Cowherd said.

Cowherd’s projection came with a lot of love for the Tigers specifically. In a season where he thinks several teams will be vying for the playoff spots, he says he’s a fan of what Brian Kelly is doing down in Baton Rouge. He also thinks a competitive win by a Southeastern Conference school with the national title on the line is always good for the sport as well.

“I don’t think LSU is the best SEC team, I don’t think they’re the deepest,” said Cowherd. “But I love the coach, I love the quarterback, and I looked at their schedule and I think LSU? It’s going to be a lot of people knocking each other off. I like LSU a lot.”

“I think it would be a real story because Brian Kelly was at Notre Dame and Notre Dame has resonance (in Los Angeles). And I think if they beat a Michigan and it was a competitive game? It’d be a win for college football,” said Cowherd. “The SEC winning is not bad. The SEC beating Michigan State in the playoff by 40 is bad. So if it’s LSU 35-33? I’ve got no problem with that.”

Michigan and LSU will be two of the favorites, in their leagues and in the country, to be one of the teams in the playoff’s final quartet this year. While he didn’t make an official call, though, it sounds as though Cowherd is in on the idea of a fourth national title for the Tigers in the 2000s and yet another for the school just in the last year.

Brian Kelly explains how he’s using fight during practice as a teaching moment

Things got testy at LSU‘s fall camp practice on Monday as multiple reports revealed a fight broke out between the offense and defense during the 11-on-11 period of practice. Wide receivers Malik Nabers and Kyren Lacy were reportedly sent to the locker room following the brawl while star linebacker Harold Perkins did not partake in another snap of practice following the incident.

On Tuesday, Kelly did open up shortly after about the incident and the lessons that can be learned from it.

“Everything that happens out there are teaching moments. That’s so far behind me, yesterday, because they’re 18 to 21-year-olds. So, this morning, there were so many teaching moments down here in this hallway, in this locker room that I forgot about yesterday,” Kelly explained. “So you deal with what happens in front of you. You try to bring everything back to what your process is and what you’re trying to develop in your program.”

Fights at practices are bound to happen given the physical and competitive nature of football. Kelly even admitted that a similar altercation can likely still happen again in the future during fall camp. But according to Kelly, the key is using those moments, and all moments, as a moment for himself and his staff to teach and for his players to learn.

“They’ll be moments like that similarly in a couple of days that I’ll have to deal with. But every day in my life as a coach is a teaching experience,” Kelly said. “And so you better take your chance to teach while that happens, and so we made it a teaching moment.”