J-MAGIC

The 1-8 and 2-7 games would probably be blowouts most years, but the 1-16 and 2-15 games in the basketball tournament almost always are and nobody ever hand-wrings about them. I also think opening up the Playoff to more spots might actually help decrease parity in recruiting (i.e., more teams can sell the experience of consistently playing in the Playoff to prospective big-time recruits than only Alabama, OSU, Clemson, Georgia, and OU). To me, the biggest question that needs to be answered regarding the Playoff is still: What are the priorities for having it? Does this exist to determine the best college football team with an eye toward keeping the regular season important? Or does this exist to make Disney Corp. advertising money by playing as many marquee games as possible? Because those are competing interests, though I have a feeling I know which will win out.

Personally I'd love eight teams with every P5 champion and the highest-ranked G5 champion getting autobids with two at-larges. Makes the regular season important, only adds potentially one more game for player safety, and I think the middle-seed games would be extremely fun.

Louisville or like a K-State where they run their QB a ton and embrace a lot of single-wing or read option stuff would probably be the best place for him to play QB. If he couldn't make it there I don't know where in P5 he thinks he can play. Ohio would be a good fit in the MAC.

He looks like he would be an excellent early-down 3-4 MLB. We should have room for both.

Never going to get mad at a teenager for pursuing what options are best for them, but I do think McCaffrey is going to have a very hard time being a P5-level quarterback with his arm strength. It sucks because he would be an excellent wide receiver, but that's his decision.

Witlfong just put a CB in for us with 6 confidence.

Can we please stop engaging with this guy and talk about the Opendorse stuff? I also think it's pretty cool they're incorporating the journalism and business schools into this. Those are real skills that need to be developed for big-time athletes and our athletic department has clearly thought about this a lot.

I drove through Iowa last weekend and actually found it kind of pleasant. Nice rolling hills and the fields. Nothing is worse than Missouri.

This guy could be the next Wes Welker

Counting the Big 12 stats is an LOL. He went to one Big Ten title game in four seasons in a division that featured coaching luminaries such as Bill Cubit, Gary Anderson, Darrell Hazel, Tracy Claeys and Hot Seat Kirk Ferentz and Pat Fitzgerald. All of those teams have better coaches or much healthier programs now.

Mo Wash was a gamebreaker but he struggled to run the ball where it was designed to go, especially inside, and was constantly passing up good holes to bounce stuff outside. He was an incredible B back but with him we were always going to need an A back to run the powers and inside zones. We haven't found either since he left so I agree that him being here really doesn't solve our RB problems.

This is the local rumor but Hall grew up an OU fan and desperately wanted to go there. His HS coach told Lincoln Riley to offer him and Riley said they were full at RB. When it became clear he wasn't getting the OU offer he chose the school that had been recruiting him the longest (ISU). FWIW it's partly backed up by this article. https://247sports.com/Article/Iowa-State-Cyclones-upset-Oklahoma-Sooners-Breece-Hall-Wichita-Northwest-coach-Steve-Martin-calls-out-Lincoln-Riley-152415976/

People in Wichita say Breece Hall was never coming here. OU was the one who messed that up.

The Big Ten West was the fourth toughest division in football last year by the numbers, significantly better than the Big 12, both ACC divisions and both Pac-12 divisions and only very slightly worse than the SEC East. Three of the teams in the West are on what could reasonably be considered the best 10-year stretches in their programs' histories, Minnesota and Purdue currently have coaches who are vastly better than their programs' reputations, and Illinois was recently lead by the guy who took the Bears to the Super Bowl. What?

Arkansas has to play Alabama, LSU, Auburn and A&M every year. Bielema did a lot better there than they have in the years since he left. I think he's a decent coach; I just think the Wisconsin infrastructure made him look like a great coach.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think they can give Yant a scholarship this year with him being a walk-on

I think Wisconsin's success under him was way more a product of Alvarez's system, having Chryst as his OC, and getting Russell Wilson than anything Bielema is bringing to the table in particular. Not saying he can't win there, but it's going to be a lot harder for him than it was a Wisconsin.

People need to understand that we can be a very good, top 25-caliber team this year and still go 7-5 against our schedule. OSU and OU are projected to be top-5 teams, Wisconsin and Iowa are projected to be top-15 teams, and Michigan and Minnesota are projected as top-35ish teams. If we're, say, the 22nd best team in the country, I think most reasonable Husker fans would be pretty happy with that given the way things have gone the last five years. But if we're 22nd that still means two games we're going be favored to lose comfortably, and four more that are essentially toss-ups. I think real progress would be looking competitive against the OSU/OU tier and splitting the Iowa/Wisconsin/Michigan/Minnesota tier, but that would still be four losses, let alone if you drop a game you're supposed to win.

Wiltfong's CB is just a 5 so not super high confidence ... does that just mean he's making an educated guess based on "Clemson is interested and a lot better than the other teams recruiting him," or is there inside info?

I feel like he would be an incredible punt team gunner.

Again, the service academies have some of the least talented rosters in the country and punch above their weight because they ***run the QB***. Bill Snyder basically ran the single wing and used it to turn around the fortunes of one of the worst jobs in Division I. QB run game has been one of the main strategies that less talented teams have utilized throughout football's entire history to even the playing field. You can hang your offense's hat on running the QB and still be a very good offense, and for us to be good it's probably going to be a huge part of what we do. Of course it would be better if we had a guy like Justin Fields who could do that AND throw the ball like an NFL player, but those guys are unicorns and come around very rarely, so just saying "We need to get a guy like that" is not really living in reality. And on the second bolded part, OSU also had the JT Barrett and Braxton Miller eras where they couldn't really throw well against equal talent and was still able to have some pretty damn good offenses that won a lot of games. We need to find as many ways to move the ball as possible, but running the QB is a completely valid one and can be the focus of a good offense. Let's get back to talking about Haarberg.

They had to take some of the physicality out of the game for safety reasons so it's hard for me to criticize that. I think they could pretty easily tighten up the linemen downfield rule and take away a lot of the RPO stuff that's kinda bologna. Maybe I'm being a crank, but throwing a pass when your right guard is six yards down the field blocking a linebacker isn't fair football to me. I do also think just quarterback and receiver play is better. High schools are running more modern stuff and everyone does months of 7 on 7 in the offseason. QBs and WRs are getting to college (and later the NFL) with a lot more reps and better technique than they used to have even 10 years ago.

I think rule changes have played a big role but offensive schemes and QB play have dramatically improved from even like 10 years ago. During quarantine I watched a bunch of old football games on Youtube and caught two games from '05 USC, and it was shocking how average Matt Leinart looked compared to today's QBs and he won a Heisman then.

He said that teams with running quarterbacks don't win their conference and then that only talented teams like Ohio State can have success with QB run offenses. Those are dumb things to say, regardless of what our scoring offense ranked.

I hadn't seen their schedule. OK never mind. Must be nice!