Welcome to a college football season unlike any other
Imagine the person who turned off their television as confetti fell on Jim Harbaugh and the Michigan Wolverines in Houston on Jan. 8 and said “It’s been fun, college football. I’ll see you again Labor Day weekend.”
That person — and there are quite a few out there who probably did exactly this — is in for a shock. The last time the sport changed this much in one offseason was when they legalized the forward pass, but even then it took a few years for teams to actually start throwing. This time, everyone will dive in head-first.
The result will be a college football season unlike any other.
Let’s go back to the last game of last season. Harbaugh’s Michigan team beat Kalen DeBoer’s Washington team to close out a College Football Playoff that consisted of a semifinal round and a title game. Harbaugh is now the head coach of the Los Angeles Chargers — and would have been suspended all season by the NCAA had he stayed in college. DeBoer is now Alabama’s head coach because Nick Saban, the best to ever do it, retired and joined ESPN as a commentator.
“If you turned off the [national title] game and then haven’t turned on again, you’re not going to know one guy,” Jedd Fisch said last month when discussing his Washington team.
His Washington team? Yes, Fisch left Arizona and replaced DeBoer in Seattle. The GOAT only retires once, and we haven’t seen a coach win a national title and then leave for another job since Howard Schnellenberger left Miami after winning the 1983 national title. But compared to the rest of the changes we’re about to see, these are just garden-variety moves.
This year will bring a radically different postseason that also will change the way we interact with the regular season. It will bring super-sized conferences with unfamiliar scheduling as all the leagues now try to match No. 1 and No. 2 in their championship games with the hopes of getting both teams into the 12-team bracket. In the Core Four — remember, there is no Power 5 anymore — those conference title games will be for first-round byes. Depending on the teams’ records, they may also be winner-is-in, loser-is-out propositions.
Instead of about six fanbases worrying about the College Football Playoff in November, the number could be between 20 and 30. And those schools will be connected in ways they haven’t yet realized. What happens in Stillwater may matter a great deal to the people in State College and Oxford.
We’ll have a football Bubble Watch, and the title races in the Mountain West, Sun Belt and American Athletic Conference will matter as we try to guess who will claim the spot reserved for the highest ranked Group of 5 champ.
Meanwhile, Michigan and Washington won’t have to wait until the CFP for their rematch. It’s happening Oct. 5 at Husky Stadium. Only this time it’ll be a conference game.
The Pac-12 as we knew it is dead. There still is a conference called the Pac-12, but it contains only Oregon State and Washington State, and they’re basically playing Mountain West schedules. Meanwhile, Washington and Oregon joined UCLA and USC, which had already planned to join the Big Ten in 2024. Colorado, Arizona, Arizona State and Utah have joined the Big 12, and the Wildcats and Utes enter the league expecting to win it.
Oregon feels the same way in the new Big Ten, and Oklahoma and Texas each have massive expectations as they enter the SEC. Remember, they were the first bomb of this wave of realignment. Back in 2021 when the news broke, the Sooners’ and Longhorns’ actual entry to the league seemed far away. They’re now wearing SEC patches on their jerseys and bragging how additionally meaningful everything feels.
That’s not the only addition to the uniform. Quarterbacks and certain defensive players will be wearing helmets that allow for direct communication from the coaching staff. The NFL has done this since the 1990s, but college football instead allowed play-signaling to devolve into a circus of wacky signs, pastel polo shirts and bedsheets. “A clown show,” West Virginia coach Neal Brown said.
That particular show likely will go on at some programs in spite of the change. Because college offenses often move at faster paces than their NFL counterparts, the polo-shirt brigade may still have to signal info to perimeter players. But several coaching staffs are considering huddling more to take advantage of the radio in the QBs helmet. And for certain see-the-Matrix playcalling head coaches — we’re looking at you Lane Kiffin and Hugh Freeze — the offense could run much more smoothly with the QB whisperer literally whispering (OK, it’s probably more yelling because of crowd noise) into the QB’s ear.
Not every big change is happening on the field. This fall, a federal judge will decide whether to approve the House v. NCAA settlement. That would allow schools to share millions in revenue with athletes. Oklahoma has hired a cap-ologist. Florida is seeking a general manager whose job wouldn’t look that different from an NFL general manager. Meanwhile, schools are negotiating with class of 2025 recruits under the assumption that they’ll be paying directly when those players begin their freshman seasons.
Speaking of those class of 2025 players, they’re going to sign a few weeks earlier this year because the people who run the sport can’t seem to figure out they need to go back to a single signing date in February. This year, National Signing Day is Dec. 4, the Wednesday after the final weekend of regular-season play. This newest change will make the back half of the season an adventure for non-CFP reasons. The schools that want to fire their coaches likely will do it earlier so they can have their ducks in a row and hire their new coach moments after he steps off the field in his team’s final regular-season game. Of course, if the targeted coach is playing in a conference title game (possibly with a CFP berth on the line), it’s going to make things quite awkward.
And the teams that do lose coaches on that Saturday night after Thanksgiving? They’re probably not going to have head coaches on National Signing Day.
Hopefully they’ll get someone hired by the time the transfer portal opens the following Monday.
The rest of us will be filling out brackets on that day.
Welcome to college football 2024. It starts Saturday, and it’s going to get weird.