by Patrick Zier | Jan 15, 2026 |
Indiana 38, Alabama 3. If the SEC needed a wake-up call, this was it. Alabama, once the gold standard for a league that was considered the gold standard of college football, totally embarrassed by an upstart Indiana team that has used NIL, revenue sharing and a total dismantling of the sport’s system of governance to rise to the top.
Alabama doesn’t lose like this. In fact for 17 years under Nick Saban, it barely lost at all. The last time an Alabama team was beaten this badly was in 1998, pre-Saban, when it was taken down by Arkansas, 42-6.
And during Saban’s 17-year run, outside of his first year when he was 7-6 in 2007 and when he lost three games in 2010, Saban’s teams never lost more than two games in a single season.
That laid the foundation for the SEC to become the best league in the country, with Alabama, Georgia and LSU generally leading the way. But it wasn’t only the big three.
Florida was a powerhouse. Auburn could beat anybody on a given Saturday. So could Tennessee. And, as the league continued to grow, adding teams like Missouri, Texas A&M, Oklahoma and Texas, you had to clear even more hurdles to stay of top. And that’s what made the SEC so good. It had depth.
Other conferences, particularly the Big Ten, could pretty much stand toe-to-toe with the SEC when it came to squaring off at the highest level, but the Big Ten had no answer for teams like Florida, Auburn, Tennessee and some others who could come out of the pack and hold their own against anybody.
Once Congress and the courts said anything goes, though, everything changed. There was no one in control anymore, not the NCAA, not the conferences, not anybody. Players could move freely from school to school. They could make money off NIL. And now, beginning in 2026, revenue-sharing, outright cash payments to players for their services, takes effect.
College football has become a mini-NFL and, as a general rule, the more money you spend the better your team will be. The best example of this is Texas Tech, which poured cash into the transfer portal to get the players it needed to win and made the playoffs this year.
These changes have hit the SEC hard. Good players who, in the Saban era, would have stayed on at SEC schools now started going to other places where they could play immediately and make more money, and the depth wasn’t there anymore.
That was apparent this year when the SEC posted a 4-10 record in postseason competition while the Big Ten went 9-4 and has Indiana playing in the CFP championship game Monday.
So the SEC has had to adjust, reorganize, re-think what it needed to do to win. A case in point is Florida, which has fallen into mediocrity the last few years and is far removed from the Steve Spurrier and Urban Meyer eras.
Frustrated by the way the program has collapsed, Florida now seems to better understand what it needs to do to not only bring in championship talent, but keep it and build around it.
“We can only maximize our potential with your full support,” Florida’s new coach, John Sumrall, said at his opening press conference as reported on the Gators’ athletic website. Sumrall was referring to boosters and others necessary to making a college program successful in the new era.
“It takes all of us working together to win championships,” Sumrall continued. “The standard here is championships, and that’s why I came. Winners win. I’m a winner and we’re going to win,” he predicted.
In addition to Sumrall, Florida made a key administrative hire when it brought in Dave Caldwell, an experienced NFL exec, to be the program’s general manager.
“I believe retention of the base (keeping the players you bring in) is the most important thing to build on. We need those guys to stay,” Sumrall went on. This in contrast to schools like Ole Miss and Texas Tech which seem willing to turn over almost their entire roster every year.
“I believe the life blood of your program is recruiting good high school players and, at Florida, elite high school players, and keeping them,” Sumrall remarked.
That has proven difficult at most places, because players don’t want to sit and will leave for more money and a chance to play elsewhere. Defending national champion Ohio State, for example, has lost 30 players in the portal. Still, it has the resources necessary to replace them.
“I think with the model we’re in now, it’s not going to be a deal where Dave (Caldwell) goes out and gets players and hopes it works out,” Sumrall said. “I’m going to be very involved. We’re going to be in partnership and we’re going to be in lockstep on how we put together our roster.
“The head coach gets pulled in a lot of different directions now but my No. 1 job, and I have a sign in my office that says “Coach the team,” is to coach the team,” Sumrall emphasized.
Sumrall dismissed the notion that the Gators are in desperate shape. “I think there’s a lot right with this program,” he said. “I have to diagnose all of that and it will take some time. But we’re going to do everything we can to win fast and I also have a plan for how we can win long term.”
Sumrall seems to have his priorities right here, because as Indiana, Vanderbilt and a few others have shown, you can win fast. And if you don’t win fast, you’re not going to win long term because you won’t be around.
Note: There will be a new college football story or NASCAR piece up on oldguysport.com each week.
by Patrick Zier | Dec 30, 2025 |
Texas Tech has the best team money can buy and now, it’s trying to prove it’s college football’s best team – period.
Texas Tech meets Oregon in one of the CFP’s quarterfinal games Thursday, and both are symbolic of the new model for team building as we move into a new era for college athletics.
In short, money talks. Take Texas Tech, the latest and best example. Once the courts threw out all the rules and regulations governing college sports, the best way to get the best players and build the best teams was to buy them.
And after years of being mired in mediocrity; Texas Tech had never won a Big 12 championship before this year despite being one of the league’s founding members in 1996, some big donors said “enough”.
Led by Cody Campbell, chairman of the Board of Regents and founder of Double Eagle Energy, Texas Tech boosters poured millions into the program this year. They spent $12 million on 21 transfer portal players and put another $28 million into NIL and roster building.
Armed with his new bank roll, Texas Tech’s veteran coach, Joey McGuire, totally reshaped his team. To go along with the new players, he brought in new offensive and defensive coordinators and made other changes in his coaching staff.
The model was Oregon, which, with backing from Phil Knight and Nike, has been at this for a while and transformed Oregon into a national power. It’s estimated that Oregon’s roster this year cost over $40 million.
“First, they’ve (Oregon) done a good job of hiring coaches,” McGuire commented at a press conference before Thursday’s game. “(Dan) Lanning was a slam dunk.
“Second, they’ve made it cool to be an Oregon Duck. I mean they’ve got every uniform known to man and players love that. With Adidas and Patrick Mahomes, We’re doing the same thing,” McGuire continued.
“We’re really fortunate with Adidas as our partner,” McGuire went on. “We’ve got some great looks.
“And then you know they’ve got a great booster in Phil Knight who said ‘Hey, we’re going to win at the highest level and there’s no excuses when it comes to finances.’
“And you know, you turn that around and I think we’ve shown that we’re doing that. I think we’re really comparable (to Oregon). We’ve got guys that have really stepped up and done a great job,” McGuire said.
“I kind of call them the big five,” McGuire said of the quintet, all of whom are worth millions and at least one of whom, Cody Campbell, is worth billions.
“Whenever you talk about Cody and John (Sellers) and Mike (Wallace) and Dusty (Womble) and Gary (Petersen), those guys and everybody else in Red Raider nation, we’re kind of comparable (to Oregon) on and off the field. They’ve just done it for a little longer,” McGuire said.
“He’s built a great roster,” Oregon’s Lanning said of McGuire, also at a press conference before their playoff game. “College football’s about adapting and this (Texas Tech) is obviously a program that’s done an unbelievable job adapting and saying ‘OK, let’s make our team the best it can possibly be’.
“They’ve done that this year,” Lanning said. “So they deserve credit for that because you have to evaluate; there’s a lot of teams that take people out of the portal, right?
“There’s not a lot of teams that necessarily have success,” Lanning continued. “It’s about evaluating that talent, getting them to play together and creating a team that does that. This is a team that’s done that.
“There’s just kind of an admiration and respect for teams that are doing it at a high level and Texas Tech’s certainly one of those teams.”
While some play down Texas Tech’s accomplishments because they don’t consider the Big 12 to be a very strong conference, Lanning is not one of them.
“Good football is good football and I’ve kind of always said that regardless of what conference you’re in,” Lanning remarked. “Are you playing a high level of ball? and these guys (Texas Tech) play a really high level of football, right?
“And they’ve not just beaten opponents, they’ve dominated them, right? And to dominate the way they’ve dominated speaks volumes about what kind of team this is. So we’ve got a ton of respect for them because they’ve got the winning formula.”
That may be true, and it is true that Texas Tech has turned things around and accomplished a lot this year. Beating Oregon, though, will require Tech’s best effort, because these Ducks aren’t quacks.
by Patrick Zier | Dec 6, 2025 |
For Brian Hartline, who will be officially announced as South Florida’s new coach Monday, the job isn’t about picking up the pieces, starting over. His job will be to build on the foundation Alex Golish has laid down.
Hartline appears to be a solid hire. He is highly regarded as Ohio State’s offensive coordinator and considered an outstanding recruiter. He has an impressive pedigree as a player, first at Ohio State and then in the NFL.
His approach will no doubt be different from Golishes; it is likely to be less intense because Hartline appears more confident than Golish, who seemed to be driven, in large part, by a need to prove himself.
The unexpected end of the Golish era was a sharp contrast from its beginnings. At least publicly, it was somewhat messy and tumultuous, a bit out of control. And that was totally different from the way Golish ran his program, where everything seemed precisely planned and well thought out with definite goals in mind.
It appears that Golish was more open with the USF administration, which seemed to know he had gotten some offers and was considering them, than he was with the media and the USF fan base.
Even as more and more reports linking him to other jobs surfaced, Golish continued to insist he wasn’t seeking other opportunities, that he was happy at USF and that he hadn’t completed his rebuild yet. All of that was undoubtedly true.
It was what he didn’t say that was troubling. While he said he wasn’t seeking other jobs, he didn’t say he wouldn’t consider other offers. And all the talk about being happy in Tampa and having all the resources he needed to build a nationally relevant program at USF, which gave the impression he wasn’t going to leave, was misleading at best and dishonest at worst.
And so Golesh has packed up and headed to Auburn, a step up from USF but a gamble on his part. In many ways, Auburn is much like Tennessee, where Golesh was before he came to USF. Both schools have a rich SEC history and are trying to reclaim it. This is particularly true of Auburn, which has struggled to reach the .500 mark over the last several seasons.
At USF, Golesh pretty much had a straight line to football success. The Bulls have made and are making sizable investments in new facilities and a stadium. They plan to spend the full $20.5 million allotted to schools in recent court settlements on players, the only Group of 5 school to do so.
If all goes well, meaning primarily if it can bring in enough money to pay for the stadium, USF will have an advantage virtually every year as far as being the Group of 5 representative in the College Football Playoffs.
In contrast, Auburn has some huge hurdles to overcome just to be competitive in the SEC, and even being competitive is no guarantee you will get to the championship game or the playoffs.
So Hartline takes over USF at a time when the school seems ready to break out of the American, to establish itself as a mid-major, not quite up to Power 4 standards but a notch above everybody in the Group of 5. And that’s a very advantageous position to be in.
“Brian Hartline was our clear-cut first choice to lead our football program into the most exciting era in program history and I am fired up to have him leading the Bulls,” Rob Higgins, CEO of Athletics, said in a USF press release.
“A relentless recruiter, outstanding developer of talent and a gritty competitor, he comes from a championship background and is obsessed with instilling championship excellence in his players and teams. He is ready to lead our program to the next level,” Higgins said.
And Hartline is off to a good start. Even with Golesh gone, USF’s recruiting class pretty much held together on early signing day. According to rivals.com, the Bulls signed the 10th best class among all Group of 5 teams and the third best in the American. And as yet, we have not heard anything about a mass exodus of players via the transfer portal.
“Coach Brian Hartline is a proven winner who has experienced success at the highest level,” Will Weatherford, USF Board of Trustees chair, commented, also in the press release. Weatherford was the driving force behind getting a stadium built and most of the other infrastructure improvements in USF’s athletic facilities.
“He (Hartline) shares our vision for winning championships, developing student-athletes and providing them with a world-class experience and positioning our university on the national stage,” Weatherford added.
So USF is ready to roll. Let the games begin.
