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We dropped down to 35 degrees overnight here in southwest AZ. Highs got into the 70's. But , from experience from living in Tennessee, Ohio, and having visited family in Michigan, Indiana, Colorado, and northern California. I can tell you freezing rain is the worst. When there's a heavy wind chill sweeping through, that cold will cut through you, no matter how many layers you have on. I've driven through hurricanes, sandstorms, severe thunderstorms with hail and tornado breeding cover. But the one accident I got into was due to a car cutting me off, and I hit my brakes, but spun out as the offender drove off. Luckily all it cost me was my car. But a close second was during a nasty winter storm where my defrosters weren't working, and I had to drive and scrape to just have fifteen percent visibility. I couldn't pull over either. I had winding two lanes with concrete barriers on each side. I thanked God for getting me home that night. Be safe out there.

We're just over a week from the 2025 season wrapping up. But in this day and age, there really isn't an off-season. The ACC released it's schedule yesterday. Today the B1G is set to do the same. What games are you looking forward to most? What's your expectation for this upcoming season? Last year, most thought the Oregon vs Penn State game was going to be one of the greatest, and it was. But it was a couple weeks later, that we got the real playoff primer. With the 2025 National champion Indiana Hoosiers handing Oregon their first , and up to this date only B1G conference game loss. (Ohio State was a playoff game, as was the Indiana rematch) https://goducks.com/news/2026/1/24/football-schedule-to-be-announced-tuesday-as-season-ticket-deadlines-for-2026-approach

He's a legacy Duck, that might carry the weight to keep him there long enough to start. My point was more inline with the fact that a player like Akili might be poached before Lanning feels comfortable enough to start him. I imagine Moore is starting this upcoming year, and Raiola the year after. A similar thing happened at Georgia Tech. Aaron Philo was being groomed to be the incumbent, but he transferred out to Florida. Now that's a unique situation, because his offensive coordinator moved on to Florida. But, I can see situations like this continue to happen as assistants and coaches move from job to job. Duke , Vanderbilt, and Kentucky are now paying QBs north of four million a year. It's pure madness right now. An established power like Oregon will have their pick in the transfer portal. Every year is win now, especially with Phil Knight in his 80's. Will Oregon pay seven million to a guy like Mendoza, Mensah, Beck, Leavitt, Sorsby, or Simpson, or five million to keep an unproven guy with heaps of potential and hype like Smith Jr. ? If things were like it is now in 2007, I could see Tebow getting passed over. So I really hope I'm wrong. Winning a championship with homegrown players just feels better. But winning a championship feels great regardless.

Why recruit and pay young guys you have to develop, when you can pay dudes that others already have and can play right away? Cignetti just proved that right there. In the old system, there was no way Indiana would've done what they just did. Do we need rules, and enforce them? Absolutely!!!! Tampering needs to be enforced, there needs to be a no contact period for players and coaches. Contracts need to mean something again. You sign for two years, you stay for two years. When you sign a deal to get paid, you have to honor the length of said contract. Williams ultimately had to, LSU ultimately still got Leavitt. But you know Kiffin had to up the dollar amount after telling Leavitt to kick rocks at the basketball game. Now you have Dabo calling out Ole Miss, who is calling out LSU. You have Miami potentially getting taken to court for the second straight year over taking a player under contract. But ultimately they will just pay the fine, and get what they want. What happens when Notre Dame, Michigan, Ohio State, USC, Georgia, Oregon, and Florida start taking the handcuffs off their own initiatives? You're going to see twenty million dollar running backs. Fifty million dollar Quarterbacks, and roster turnover at a rate unlike any other sport in history. Just look at Texas Tech. Indiana, Miami, and Ole Miss made it to the final four using the transfer portal more aggressively than Alabama, Georgia, or Ohio State. Clemson has become an afterthought despite top ten classes, and a blue chip ratio that is higher than any of the three semifinal participants I mentioned. Oregon has two transfer QBs in tow, both former five stars. When are we going to see a high school recruited QB under Dan Lanning? Why should we? Just go get somebody from the G6, or even lower like Ferris State. Let them be your farm system. Indiana, Ole Miss, Texas Tech, and Miami have been. Worked out well for them. Rules? Michigan proved how much they matter.

Good luck to your Hoosiers. First 16-0 team ever. First Heisman winner to go along with it. As a fellow transient living in the Phoenix area (San Tan Valley), but from an area filled with about ten other fanbases as loud as Ohio State(in the SEC). It did my heart good to see Alabama get taken down in the fashion they did. The SEC arrogance and delusion, need to die. Now as a Florida fan, it would be great to see the U get dismantled in their own home stadium.

Just as long as there wasn't a caveat to hire his dad, uncle, grandpa, or third cousin to the coaching staff. You should be good to go.

Can we just get 12, 16, or the 18 best teams? Have the first two rounds be held on campus, and pair the lowest seed against the highest seed in each round, on both sides of the bracket. Make the postseason start the week after the CCG weekend. Also, no transfer portal business till the off-season. Same goes for coaching hires. If you are being payed to coach, or play for a team, for a season. You finish that out. No other profession allows you to just leave in the middle of your working shift because somebody came up and offered you another gig. Imagine a pilot, surgeon, chef, postal worker, welder, construction worker, ride operator, or ice cream distributor, and you just up and leave in the middle of what you were doing because you wanted to go somewhere else. "Sorry Mr. Kiffin, your daughter is going to hold off on having her first child. Doctor Rouge just got offered a better opportunity at another hospital. He had to do what was best for his family."

Remember this about Indiana. They have a sixty five year old head coach, a fifth year senior QB, a senior laden transfer portal class led team, and a staff that has had no defections. They are a great team, built to win now. But, they haven't had to deal with the expectations, coaching losses, or other teams poaching their players yet. They've had an extremely easy regular season schedule. Before we crown them the next dynasty, and question everything that has made Oregon great the past two decades. Let's see if Indiana can sustain this level. Yes, they will likely get a national title, and yes it will be the greatest two year turnaround in the history of the sport. But sometimes timing is the thing. Think about Clemson, and Dabo in the 2010's. There was a word called Clemsoning being thrown around. It described falling apart on the biggest stages. It happened to them in the 2016 title game against Alabama. But they came back, the ACC turned into a walkthrough after Florida State collapsed. Clemson got into the playoff and finally won it all. The next year Alabama smoked them in the semis, people forget that result, because the year after that, Clemson smoke Alabama in the championship. To win their second ever title, and second in three years over Alabama. Dabo was a genius. Clemson was the next dynasty. The Alabama killer, destined to do dominate as long as Dabo stuck around. But then, the Tigers got handled by LSU the next year, and Ohio State the year after that. The next thing you know, you have a coach losing coaches like Venables to Oklahoma, and Morris to Arkansas. The Tigers have made one playoff appearance since that Buckeye beat down, and it was with three losses. Suddenly Dabo can't handle the transfer portal, and he can't hire a staff that's able to win the mighty ACC. Oregon is humming along, with a third head coach that has gotten them to either the National Title Game, or semifinal playoff appearance. The fourth coach that they had wasn't fired, he left for his alma mater, and is in the National Title game. A shot he only got because of him being successfull at Oregon. Let's give Indiana their flowers, it's an incredible team. But I am still waiting to see how they follow this up. It's only going to get tougher, now Indiana is about to face the other side of the aisle. Getting to the top for the first time feels great. But everybody is coming for you, Michigan is coming for your players, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Penn State. Pretty big poachers with deep pockets.

There's rumor of an intellectual property called 'Field of Broken Dreams'. Apparently it's being greenlit by the CW. Canzano is writing the script as we speak.

The Big Twelve is called the truck stop conference by all those intellectuals in Stanford, Cal, Washington State, or Oregon State. But one genius has to ask, with conference payouts being equal between the ACC & Big Twelve, isn't the travel cost half as much from the Pacific to the plains, as opposed to the Pacific to the Atlantic? Isn't 35 million more than 7 million? Isn't a guaranteed playoff spot better than having to be better than about six other conferences? UCLA would have to Defund most of their Olympic programs without the B1G membership. These academic elites sure lack common sense sometimes.

The Midwest has notoriously bad winters. January and February are the worst months, by far. Snow isn't even the worst. It's the rainy, 38 degree days. That turns to freezing rain, and black ice. The wind chill rolls through you, no matter how layered you think you are sufficiently, you're not. Huge alumni bases everywhere. Trust me, I've seen them in Florida, Texas, California, Arizona, North Carolina. From Iowa, to Michigan, to Ohio State, Penn State, and now Indiana in football. Anywhere you go, you probably have a midwestern B1G alumnus or fan as a neighbor.

Three of the Canes titles have come in their home stadium. Of course those being at the old Orange Bowl. That place actually had an atmosphere, the stadium they play at now has no aura to it at all. It's just a huge NFL stadium. Hurricane fans have never filled that place, there are plans for an on campus stadium. It sticks in their crawl that USF is going to have an on campus stadium, before them.

Indiana is continuing the trend, their next QB is Hoover from TCU. Source: X https://share.google/u6RuhqsXj7BLXqt8j

Why pay a guy to sit on your bench, when he'll just demand more money after you've developed him? You get proven guys that weren't highly touted, but they proved themselves to be above that. That's what Cignetti has done. Fernando Mendoza or Nico Iamaleava were miles apart in hype. Mendoza got a couple million from Indiana, which was a raise. Iamaleava was making 2.4 and left Tennessee because he wanted that doubled.