Jon Joseph

Dan wants a New Year's Day PO Championship game. Oregon's Dan Lanning seeks College Football Playoff schedule changes, favors Jan. 1 national championship - CBSSports.com

Number 1 on this list of the best college mascots. ESPN.comMcGee's Mascot Power Rankings: The best of the fun and fu...From giant red blobs and 1,700-pound steer to coonskin caps and bears riding Harleys, these are the sport's top merrymakers.

Drew Allar knows that Penn State needs to get over the loss to quality teams' hump. OK, Drew, but not in Week 5 por favor. 😁 YardbarkerPenn State QB Drew Allar gets candid about team's struggl...It is no secret that Penn State has struggled to win big games under head coach James Franklin.

Welcome to the Mighty Ducks! On3QUAAACK: Top-50 WR Kesean Bowman Commits to Oregon2027 Nashville (Tenn.) Brentwood Academy wide receiver Kesean Bowman has committed to Dan Lanning and the Oregon Ducks.

OD, thanks for your thoughts. I see the three B1G 10.5 win teams, OBD, Ohio State, and Penn State, finishing no worse than 10-2. Penn State plays both OBD and Ohio State. TOSU and OBD miss one another. These three teams have a Blue Chip Roster advantage (along with SC and Michigan) and the schedules to advance to the PO. Wisconsin, Purdue, Northwestern, and Rutgers have more difficult schedules than the B1G 3. In addition to the B1G 3, I see one of Illinois, Indiana, or Michigan advancing to the PO. All three of these teams have favorable schedules. If the B1G only sends its champion to the PO, what other teams do you see making the 12-team field? Again, thanks for the comment. Minnesota, being a Friday night game after OBD plays at Iowa the week before, and the Gophers being off the week before, is a potential trap game.

Thank you for the post and thanks to all of the terrific comments. 30 Duck has posted the learned SEC 'journalists' not-surprising knee-jerk reaction to Rhett Lashlee's comments about the SEC being top-heavy. Rhett is an SEC homeboy. Before he took the head coaching job at SMU, he played QB at Arkansas and coached in the SEC. Of course, Paul et al went ballistic over Rhett's comments. But facts are stubborn things. Paul, what pray tell does SMU getting the NCAA death penalty way back when have to do with college football in 2025? I guess Tennessee recently being sanctioned for running a pre-NIL pay-for-play program just means less? Lashlee correctly noted that six SEC teams have won titles since 1964. One heck of an achievement. Bama captured 15 of the championships. Paul guessed Bama had won 11 since 1964. Before Paul attacked Lashlee, he might have done a brief amount of research on the issue. Bama has won 15 titles since 1964. Lashlee's statement is factual. As others have noted on the Forum, many SEC fans ride the success of Bama and other SEC football champs, which is fine. There's nothing wrong with evidencing regional pride in the SEC, especially in a region with more college fans than pro sports fans. But the numbers don't lie; like the B1G and the majority of conferences, the SEC is top-heavy. Not every SEC team plays a gauntlet like no other. In 2025, Wisconsin, Northwestern, Purdue, and Rutgers have more difficult conference schedules than Missouri, Tennessee, and Ole Miss. If you use the FPI preseason ranking that has 13 of the 16 SEC teams ranked in the top 25, every conference game will be a top 25 versus top 25 contest except when Arkansas, Mississippi State, and Vanderbilt play one another. The majority of 'sports journalists' don't question Sankey's use of the biased FPI to justify the eight-game schedule. Sankey is a hero for supporting a 5-11 format, and Petitti is a greedy SOB for wanting a format with automatic qualifiers, a format that reflects the state of today's game, and a format that limits the power of a committee that does its business in the dark. A committee that SEC folks and ESPN talking heads vilified in 2024 for excluding 3-loss SEC teams. With a 5-11 format, the committee would be deciding on 11 and not seven at large participants. Is the committee roasted by Sankey roasted in 2024 now trustworthy? Why? The attacks on Tony Petitti are vile and viral. No other conference commissioner has Petitti's educational and business background. Tony and the B12's Brett Yormark (another inconvenient fact that is rarely reported) want teams competing for the same prize to play the same number of conference games. This is 'radical?' This is 'unfair?' When it comes to the bottom line, as it does in every business, the B1G is in the lead. Despite all of the populist support for the 5-11 format, the 'little guy' will never win a title. Despite the pounding Petitti is taking, the B1G is in the financial driver's seat. The SEC's deal with ESPN runs through the 2033-34 season. The B1G will have negotiated a new media deal in 2030, which will only increase the B1G's bottom-line advantage. If Sankey wants to stay with an 8-game conference schedule and a 12-team playoff, that's just fine. 🤑

Give Me a B1G 5+ 😎 Of course, OBD at Penn State made the list. YardbarkerFive Big Ten games that will shape the CFPThe Big Ten is the big dog in college football right now, boasting the last two national champions and eight playoff teams in the last three seasons.

CBS examines Tony Petitti's ideas for a revised PO format. https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/8-4-teams-in-the-cfp-big-ten-commissioner-tony-petitti-explains-vision-for-college-football-postseason/

ESPN sees the OBD at Penn State White Out game being the swing game (no, it's not about golf) for both teams in 2025. ESPN.comRed River, Farmageddon and more: Swing games for every To...We look at the key game that could determine whether each team's season is a success or a dud.

SMU Coach Lashes Out at the SEC. 😁 Where's the depth? On3Rhett Lashlee takes shot at SEC in defense of strength of...SMU head football coach Rhett Lashlee took a direct shot at the SEC's depth as a conference during the 2025 ACC Media Days in Charlotte.

When You Have It Coming - 😁 - Don't Whine. Cig said it, you can Google it! On3Curt Cignetti takes massive shot at SEC in defense of can...Curt Cignetti took a shot at the SEC while defending Indiana's decision to cancel its home-and-home series with Virginia.

Charles, thanks for another great editing job. Looking at schedules and the odds, I think OBD, Ohio State, and Penn State will all return to the playoff, with at least one of the three having a 1st round bye and a good chance for the other two to host 1st round games. Many PO projections have No. 10 Miami playing No. 7 Oregon in Autzen. 😁 The B1G multi-million dollar question is whether the B1G will repeat with four teams in the PO field? Illinois returns 16 and not 18 (my bad) starters. Indiana has plugged its personnel losses through the portal. We may witness an unofficial playoff play-in game when Illinois travels to Bloomington in Week 4. The Illini will have played a tough out-of-conference game at Duke. Indiana will have chomped down on three cupcakes. Two things stood out to me from the first day of B1G media days. Cignetti justifying dropping a home-and-home series vs. UVA and replacing the Cavaliers with a G5 donut hole as being 'SEC-like scheduling.' CFB still relies on humans to determine the at-large playoff participants, no? The playoff committee last season was dumped on by the SEC and the SEC's buddy, ESPN, for giving a spot to an Indiana team that had a weak SOS. Do Cig's comments help the Hoosiers' playoff 2025-26 cause? Illinois in 2024 was the antithesis of USC, going 5-1 in one-score games. Will the ball bounce Illinois' way back-to-back? The schedule helps. Illinois plays Purdue, Rutgers, Maryland, and rival Northwestern, a B1G scheduling Superfecta, and plays USC and Ohio State at home. No OBD, Penn State, Michigan on the schedule. In addition to the game at Indiana, road games at Duke and UW will not be easy wins. Illinois does have an off week before traveling to Seattle, while UW plays at Michigan the week before. This does not thrill UW coach Jedd Fisch. (The other coach whose comments were not in line with preseason coach-speak was Maryland's Mike Locksley, repeatedly admitting that he 'lost the locker room in 2025.' Lost it because there was friction between the NIL Haves and Have Nots. WOW!) If Michigan can figure out the QB position, the Blue (fitting) Chip Roster Wolverines have a schedule to make the playoffs. Michigan has a Week 2 marquee OOC game at Oklahoma. Win this game, and the nation will notice a Wolverines team that would be 3-0 in its last three games against SEC opponents. In the conference, Michigan draws Purdue, Northwestern, and Maryland, and misses OBD, Penn State, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa. The Blue play UW, Wisconsin, and Ohio State in Ann Arbor. Games at Michigan State, Nebraska, and USC could be challenging. It would be something for OBD to join the three B1G brand names in the 2025-26 playoffs.

If you boil down all of Petitti's and Sankey's PO discussion, this is about the Big Ten playing nine conference games and the SEC and ACC playing eight conference games. Petitti has all but said that if the SEC plays nine conference games, the B1G will support the 5-11 model in some fashion. In addition to the SEC playing nine, I think Tony wants significant changes to the selection and seeding process. With huge money at stake, I imagine we will see some compromise between the Power 2. But 16 teams in 2026? It will be difficult for the SEC to unwind current out-of-conference schedules by 2026. Sankey is more likely to back the B1G AQ model than Petitti is to go 5-11 without the SEC at nine conference games. I thought that Game of Thrones had no new episodes? 😁

Great point. Riley was also shored up by having one of two Blue Chip rosters in the B12, and Texas not having its Sierra together. On the other hand, and I don't like giving Riley another hand, last season USC went 1-5 in one-score games. Conversely, 10-win Illinois went 5-1 in one-score games. I think SC has a good shot at going 9-3 this season and possibly 10-2. Michigan, Michigan State, and Iowa play SC in LA. SC is odds-on to lose in South Bend and Eugene, but has a shot of winning road games at Illinois and Nebraska. SC will be odds-on to win games vs. Missouri State, Georgia Southern, Purdue, Michigan State, Northwestern, and UCLA. SC was 4-2 at home last season, with a loss in OT to Penn State and two late in the 4th quarter 90+ yards pick-sixes versus Notre Dame. SC put up more yards against Notre Dame in 2024 than any other Irish opponent. The bowl win over an A&M team that had a 17-point lead late in the 3rd quarter was a terrific comeback victory that will help with QB Jayden Maiava's confidence coming into 2025. Last season, Riley too often went away from a very good run game, but did not do so versus A&M. In 2025, SC plays three teams: Michigan, Notre Dame, and OBD, with rosters equal to or better than the Trojans Blue Chip roster. In the penultimate game in the 2025 regular season, SC could be coming into Eugene in contention for a PO spot.

Thanks, 30. The valuation of a team's worth included a separate valuation for football revenue. One B1G problem is that the folks who put this together included the 2023 COVID season, a season when the B1G only played six games. Thus, the revenue numbers for football are skewed in favor of the SEC. An interesting exercise by amateurs and not by a private equity group.

No surprise that Tony Petitti's opening statement today mirrored his interview with Yahoo Sports that NJ Duck was good enough to post. I missed a call from Brother Charles, who left a message questioning, in particular, why fans would support PO play-in games when their team could have already secured one of The B1G's four automatic PO qualifying bids. Would fans support a system where a team could play the same conference opponent four times in a season? Both are excellent questions that I will try to answer. First, some context. College football (CFB) has seen more change in the last five years than in the prior 100 CFB seasons. The biggest change to the 'student-amateur-athlete' paradigm came recently when the House settlement was approved, with schools now able to pay athletes directly. The cap on direct revenue sharing in year one post-settlement is $20.5 million. OBD is blessed to be one of the very few schools to have an athletic department in the black. The majority of athletic departments, if they were stand-alone businesses, would be functionally insolvent. So, the most pressing question for college athletic departments is 'how do we bring in more dough?' In theory, the B1G's 4-4-2-2-1-3 16-team PO format (B1G format) would provide three additional sources of football revenue. The media, in this case Disney/ESPN, will pay more for a 16-team PO inventory than for the current 12-team inventory. With AQs in place, Petitti believes schools will schedule more challenging out-of-conference games, which in turn would mean more media income. No doubt a Football Challenge between the B1G and the SEC would generate significant revenue. Teams would not be penalized for scheduling and losing games such as Texas vs. Ohio State, Oklahoma vs. Michigan, and Alabama vs. Wisconsin, scheduled in 2025. Play-in games would be decided only on in-conference game results. Rivalry games would be played in the penultimate game of the regular season. In my earlier example of what the play-in games would have been in 2024, I erred in using 12-game regular-season records and not the standings after the 8th conference games were played. The conference schedules in 2024, after eight conference games were played, would have had No.1 Oregon vs. No. 2 Penn State, with both teams automatically qualifying for the PO regardless of the score of the Conference Championship game. The first-place and second-place teams would be in the PO. The champ game result could affect seeding but not PO participation. No. 6 Iowa would have played No. 3 Indiana. No. 5 Illinois would have played No. 4 Ohio State. The winner of these two games would advance to the PO. These three games would not have included a rematch. It's possible but unlikely that teams would play one another three let alone four times. The PO committee would determine the PO seeding, but the B1G would decide on the four AQ teams and their B1G seeding. This would be the case for the other three power conferences. The PO committee would not be able to change the order in which B1G teams were seeded by the conference, but of course, could change where teams are seeded one through sixteen. Three impactful flex-scheduled games played on the final week of the regular season would generate far more dollars than one championship game played a week after the conclusion of the regular season. Four teams would be in the mix for the final two AQ PO spots. In addition to the increased media revenue, play-in games would help level the in-conference scheduling in a given season. In 2025, a sixth-place Wisconsin, with the most difficult conference schedule, would have a shot at the PO. Nebraska and OBD's relatively easy 2025 conference schedules will be more difficult down the road. Not sold? I get it! A 12-team PO in 2025-26, this time with teams seeded as ranked by the committee, is just as likely as expanding the field to 14 or 16 teams. Petitti, in his opening remarks today, made it clear that a 16-team 5-11 format is not going to happen unless all of the Power conferences play nine conference games.

Thanks, NJ, for posting Tony Petitti's thoughts on the future PO format. Tony is being skewered for his 'radical' format, but IMO, he makes perfect sense. Also, he is not opposed to, for example, a 5-11 format if the Power 4 conferences all play nine conference games—an entirely reasonable condition. In the NFL, every team plays 17 conference games; half of the league does not play a USFL opponent in the penultimate week of the regular season. This is the case for NFL teams currently playing in a weaker division, as well as the teams playing in the toughest division. In 2025, one SEC team, Florida, plays 11 Power 4 opponents. Two SEC teams, Alabama and South Carolina, play 10 P4 teams. 13 B1G teams play 10 P4 opponents. At least the 16-team SEC has title success to support its staying at eight, the 17-team ACC has Clemson in the PO era, and that's it. I know that many on the OBD Forum do not like the idea of PO play-in games. Allow me to explain why I think play-in games make sense. 1st - Teams in 1st and second place, the penultimate week of the regular season, are in the PO no matter the winner of the game in the flex-scheduled final game of the regular season, the conference champ game. The winners of six versus three and five versus four receive the other two automatic PO bids. 2nd - Using the play-in flex-scheduled format allows the conference championship game to be played a week earlier, which moves the first round of the PO up a week, meaning fewer games going against NFL competition. 3rd - Mega-conference schedules are far from equal. Compare Florida's schedule in 2025 with that of Missouri. Compare Wisconsin's schedule to OBD's schedule. Teams competing for the same title do not face the same gauntlet of competition. In 2025, OBD plays two teams, Penn State and Indiana, ranked in the preseason top 25. Two of the four conference road games in 2025 are against Northwestern and Rutgers. In 2027, OBD plays at Michigan, Nebraska, and UW, and plays Ohio State, Penn State, and Iowa in Autzen. In 2027, a 4th-place Oregon could be 9-3 through 11 games, but better than an OBD team that could finish with two or fewer losses in 2025. 4th - Whether I like it or not, today, money matters more in college athletics than ever before. As a result of revenue sharing with athletes, we've witnessed schools dropping sports and cutting athletic department staff. (I acknowledge that this is also the result of poor management of athletic departments.) Three impactful games in the final week of the regular season, one for seeding purposes and two for PO participation, will bring in more money than a standalone conference champion game. Rivalry games would be played in the 11th game. In 2024, we would have seen 6 Iowa at 3 Penn State, 5 Illinois at 4 Ohio State, and 2 Indiana at 1 Oregon. There would be rematches in a given season, but not in 2024. These three games would draw multi-millions of viewers. 5th - I believe Tony Petitti is correct that with automatic qualifiers, we would see better out-of-conference games. The B1G/SEC (Show Me the Money) Football Challenge could come to fruition with fans watching Oklahoma and Texas in Autzen instead of Oklahoma State and Baylor. 6th - Paying no attention to history, which seems to be the norm these days, allows for seeing Petitti's AQ PO format proposal being 'radical.' If you go back to 1998, the first season with a BCS 'One True Champion', and use the final regular season rankings through the 2024 season, the B1G and the SEC would have placed four teams each in a 16-team PO field in almost every season. Why leave PO participation to a committee whose processes are opaque and last season ranked a G5 team the ninth best in the nation. I agree with Tony Petitti, if the B1G and the SEC cannot agree on a revised format, stay at 12 teams. If three-loss SEC teams are not included in the field, and millions more dollars are not generated by expanding the field, that's on Greg Sankey. The B1G is the undisputed No. 1 bottom-line conference, and staying with 12 teams will not alter this fact.

GUTSY! Along with LaBron, how many Clevelanders are Pennciling Out their subscription? 😁 OBD, Number 3! 🤬

Echoing My Bellagio Call. YES!

Media Days B1G Questions - https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/burning-questions-for-2025-big-ten-media-days-can-ohio-state-reload-is-penn-state-ready-to-be-the-hunted/

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👍👌❤️ I smell Bobcat poontang! 😁Gopher is also on the menu. 😊

Now, Wait a Minute! Urban Meyer is not sold on PSU's new group of WRs. Saturday BlitzUrban Meyer casts serious doubt on Penn State's wide rece...One of the biggest stories of the 2024 College Football season was the wide receiver room at Penn State. While the Nittany Lions had a potential first round pic