Mandel's Mailbag: Which QB can maintain momentum? Could college football players win gold? (2024)

Someone asked me last week which preseason magazine I preferred. Full disclosure, I had not yet procured one.

I have one now.

Tell us something that blew your mind from that Athlon. — Dan M., Washington, D.C.

The thing that blew my mind the most was seeing the new Big Ten’s predicted standings on paper.

We’ve known there are going to be 18 teams with no divisions for some time, but it suddenly just hit me: Someone is going to finish in 18th place. (Athlon predicts it will be Purdue. No love for Ryan Walters.) Whereas previously a team could go 1-11 and still maintain an ounce of dignity to finish only seventh in its division.

Also: It’s not the “Big Ten” anymore. Not the number, but the hodgepodge of schools, from second-place Oregon to fifth-place USC to ninth-place (!) Rutgers to 14th-place UCLA. It’s a conference that we still primarily associate with the Midwest, but now nearly 40 percent of its members are from outside the region.

Finally, I noticed the magazine is no longer attempting to predict the teams’ records and just lists them one through 18. I don’t blame it. There are going to be some wild tiebreak situations where the team listed seventh has the same conference record as the team listed 12th.

Finally, I dare anyone reading this to try to name all 10 Conference USA schools without Googling it. Better yet, let’s play a little game. Which of these four schools is not in Conference USA?

1. Jacksonville State
2. New Mexico State
3. Kennesaw State
4. Texas State

Answers further down the page.

Which team that had a first-round quarterback drafted takes the biggest step back this year? Which keeps the most of its momentum? — Karl T., Minneapolis

Washington unquestionably will take the biggest step back, but it won’t be solely because of Michael Penix Jr. The Huskies lost nearly the whole team. If anything, one of the few saving graces for new coach Jedd Fisch is that Washington brought in a highly experienced replacement, Mississippi State’s Will Rogers, who committed to Kalen DeBoer but stayed to play for Fisch. Rogers made 40 starts in the SEC, passing for 12,315 yards and 90 touchdowns.

But he may have trouble staying upright behind an entirely new offensive line that might start multiple freshmen.

Staying out west, USC’s Miller Moss might not win a Heisman Trophy or become the No. 1 pick like Caleb Williams, but he made quite a debut in the Trojans’ bowl game, throwing for six touchdowns against Louisville. Plus, I don’t worry too much about quarterbacks with Lincoln Riley as the coach. (Defense, on the other hand.)

Elsewhere, the likely replacements for LSU’s Jayden Daniels and North Carolina’s Drake Maye are also players with SEC starting experience: Garrett Nussmeier and Max Johnson, respectively. Nussmeier won’t be as dazzling as Daniels, but I expect he’ll perform well. Johnson’s best season came in 2021, his second year at LSU, when he threw for 2,814 yards, 27 touchdowns and six interceptions. He did not continue that momentum at Texas A&M, but there was just a little bit of dysfunction going on there.

If we’re talking specifically about who will have the biggest drop-off at that position, I’d say Michigan more so than Washington. J.J. McCarthy wasn’t a superstar, but he was a solid, reliable starter who made some big plays in the Wolverines’ biggest games. The front-runners to replace him are third-year sophom*ore Alex Orji, known more as a runner than a passer; fourth-year junior Davis Warren, a former walk-on; and Jack Tuttle, who has been in college for seven years yet has made five career starts (at Indiana).

But Michigan, 15-0 last season, is unlikely to drop further in its win total than Washington.

Is it just me or is the Fox “Big Noon” game a big swoon? — Jim C.

There’s a truly remarkable disconnect between how people say they feel about “Big Noon” anecdotally (not positive!) and how many people watch it (a lot!). Fox decided to move its biggest game to noon in 2019 figuring it would face less competition than later in the day, and it proved prophetic. It’s out-rated the “SEC on CBS” afternoon package and the ABC prime-time package each of the past three seasons, finishing with a new average high of 6.74 million last season.

You have to take into account that the Michigan-Ohio State game alone (19.1 million) skews that number considerably. Also, there’s no way to say whether another “Big Noon” game, like No. 7 Penn State at No. 3 Ohio State last year (9.96 million), would have performed the same, better or worse in prime time, especially since ABC/ESPN no longer had the Big Ten by last season. All I can say is that seven of the 15 most-watched regular-season games last year (not including conference title games) were played at noon ET (six on Fox and Oklahoma-Texas on ABC).

But I fully recognize that fans attending largely hate early games — especially at 11 a.m. CT: super-early wake-up calls if you’re driving in from out of town and less time to tailgate. ESPN and the SEC announced all their early window kickoff times for the entire season specifically so fans can plan accordingly. “Big Noon” is particularly unpopular at Penn State, where the revered White Out tradition is being wasted on lesser games because the biggest ones are no longer at night.

But, as we know, TV runs college football. If a school wants to make $60 million per year in media rights, it has to show up when TV tells it to.

My situation on Saturdays is admittedly unique, but my order of preference is 1. Early games, 2. Night games, 3. Mid-afternoon games. I love being able to file my story, head back to the hotel and watch the rest of the day’s action (or do it in reverse). The problem with those 3:30 p.m. ET games is you miss pretty much everything else in the sport.

As for the 9 a.m. West Coast times, keep in mind that this is the one part of the country that prefers day games to night games. West Coast fans hate 7:30 p.m./8 p.m. local kicks the way the rest of you hate 11 a.m./noon kicks. It’s a culture thing. But most people don’t mind watching football at 9 a.m. It’s much preferred to staying up until 2:30 a.m. to see the end of a Fresno State game.

If football were an Olympic sport, would a team of U.S. college players be good enough to win gold? Also, who would the other seven nations be in an international tournament? — Martin D., Detroit

We can safely assume the U.S. would be as dominant as the 1992 Dream Team. Because the “pros” in other countries haven’t had nearly the same level of coaching, training and competition. A couple of years ago, I wrote about well-traveled former Boston College coach Jeff Jagodzinski, who at the time was coaching for a pro team in Poland. Most of the players had day jobs and were still learning the basics of the sport.

The other seven countries question is more challenging. Canada, which has its own robust college football league (shout out to the Montreal Carabins), would be one. Japan is another. Did you know that an Ivy League all-star team plays a team from Japan each January in the Dream Japan Bowl? The home team, led by former Arizona running back Samajie Grant, got its first win over the Ivy Leaguers this year, so watch out.

Germany is another one (shout out Rhein Fire), as well as Austria. Sweden has produced a decent number of U.S. college players in recent years, as has Nigeria. But perhaps the biggest threat to the U.S. team would be Australia, which could field a team full of All-America-caliber punters. The strategy: Line up to punt every time you have the ball. Install the most creative fake punt calls in the world and execute a couple to perfection. And hope the returner muffs it at his 2-yard line enough times to get it in the end zone.

The U.S. team will be coached by Kirby Smart; the Australian team by Kirk Ferentz.

Let’s say for a second that Iowa’s offense is top 10 nationally in pretty much all metrics this year. How does that happen, and what does that do to Ferentz’s legacy? — Dylan H.

All jokes aside, Ferentz’s legacy is pretty well established. He will be a Hall of Famer, provided he finishes above .600. (He’s sitting at .598.)

And all it would take for the offense to finish in the top 10 would be 124 schools canceling their seasons.

Can you explain why universities are so opposed to athletes becoming employees? What are the underlying reasons? — Eric R.

Well, that’s easy. It will cost them a fortune.

The revenue-sharing model at the heart of the proposed House v. NCAA settlement gives schools the option to pay their athletes up to around $20 million collectively. But they are not required to pay them. Were the athletes to be recognized as employees, every one of them immediately would be due at least minimum wage — $7.25 an hour nationally but much higher in many states, including $16 in California. At UCLA, which has around 700 athletes, that would amount to nearly $11 million per year. (I based it on 48 weeks of 20-hour work weeks, although we know many spend well more than 20 hours a week on their sport.)

But do we think the starters on the football and men’s basketball teams, or the star softball pitcher or gymnast, will command only minimum wage? Of course not. On top of that, schools would be required to provide certain benefits, including worker’s comp insurance, payroll taxes, etc. The expense per athlete would go well beyond their salaries.

So you can see why NCAA President Charlie Baker and others are lobbying Congress to pass a bill that would declare as law that college athletes are not employees. They’re open to collective bargaining, but employment is a bridge too far for them.

I believe an employer-employee model would have far more negative consequences than name, image and likeness collectives or revenue sharing. Schools will start cutting non-revenue teams to bring down their expenses. Lower-level Division I schools may have to cut athletics entirely. While the players would gain certain protections, they may also lose the ability to move freely between schools, and their social media and other off-the-field activities may be more tightly regulated. Employment status is not the black-and-white, right versus wrong story some would have you believe.

But, it’s inevitable. From what I’ve read about the issue, the level of control schools hold over their athletes and the requirements expected of them seem to fit the definition of employment. Meanwhile, the NCAA’s entire defense strategy consists of asking politicians to act in a swift and meaningful manner, so …

The basketball selection committee has made it clear that strength of schedule matters. In football, teams historically have been judged first by the number of losses, with strength of schedule used only as a tiebreaker. Will that continue, or will the committee be willing to overlook an extra loss if a team played a tough schedule? — Rob W., Atlanta

That’s the $1.3 billion question. This is the reason why the Big Ten and SEC were threatening to create a 14-team bracket with the top two seeds (and the only first-round byes) reserved for their champions. They don’t have confidence the committee will recognize how much harder their league schedules will be than the ACC’s or Big 12’s. It died down for now, but I would not be surprised if they revisit the possibility this offseason. Especially if the first year of the new system bears out that the committee is going to prioritize the number of losses over strength of schedule.

But there’s also a significant difference between football and basketball: sample size. In hoops, the teams play 13 or so nonconference games that provide KenPom/NET/RPI enough data to establish the pecking order of conferences in that given year. Then the teams go play 18 conference games, after which an 11-9 team in the top-rated conference may have a notably better resume than a 13-7 team in the seventh-rated conference.

We just don’t have that in football. We have teams playing four nonconference games, of which at least two bear little relevance. And even within that subset of Power 4 versus Power 4 are games that look impactful at the time but ultimately prove to be not what they seemed (see: last year’s Colorado–TCU opener).

It’s easy to look at Georgia’s schedule and Florida State’s schedule and say if the Dawgs go 11-2 and the Noles go 12-1, Georgia should be the higher-ranked of the two. But what if Georgia’s opener against Clemson turns out to be a win over a 6-6 opponent, while FSU knocks off a 10-win Notre Dame team on the road? What if Alabama and Texas, both of whom Georgia plays on the road, have disappointing seasons, while Miami, which the Noles play on the road, turns out to be a national title contender, and North Carolina, which the Noles play at home, is a surprise 10-win team? Plus the teams have two common opponents, Clemson and Florida.

It may be that the teams’ resumes don’t look that different by season’s end, so the committee doesn’t feel comfortable putting two losses above one loss. But then they meet in the Playoff, and Georgia is inevitably a 16-point favorite.

I don’t envy the committee. Its job is going to be harder, not easier, in the new system, for several reasons: 1. Fans are going to be much more closely scrutinizing their rationale for teams ranked in the 10-14 range, and those teams may be impossible to separate. 2. Teams within the same 16-18-team conference are going to have wildly different schedule strengths. 3. With three times as many teams now, there may be far more Jordan Travis-type scenarios than we had in the past.

Could Cal football surprise people this year? — Haazim A.

It could, yes.

Cal was a surprise bowl team last season, smashing UCLA 33-7 in the regular-season finale to get eligible. Justin Wilcox was able to hang on to star running back Jaydn Ott, the nation’s ninth-leading rusher last season (1,315 yards in 12 games), and Wilcox brought in productive North Texas quarterback Chandler Rogers to compete with incumbent Fernando Mendoza. The defense was not up to recent standards last season but will be more experienced this season. FCS All-America cornerback Marcus Harris (Idaho) and junior college safety Ja’ir Smith could plug some holes in a leaky secondary.

The arguments against Cal would be that its most talented receiver, Jeremiah Hunter, transferred to Washington, and the Bears don’t have the bodies up front on defense to effectively pressure opposing quarterbacks. Also: Wilcox has been there for seven seasons and won more than six games just once (8-5 in 2019). Why believe now?

It may come down to how effectively Cal handles the transition to the ACC. From a pure football standpoint, it sure helps Wilcox’s defense that it won’t be facing Caleb Williams, Penix and Bo Nix this season. (The Bears allowed 50 or more points in those three games.) And while the Bears play FSU, Miami and NC State, they don’t get Clemson, Louisville or Virginia Tech.

But, it’s still a team from Berkeley, Calif., that has to travel to Pittsburgh, Tallahassee, Winston-Salem, N.C., Auburn, Ala., and Dallas. The good news is it will charter. The bad news is no frequent flyer miles.

Conference USA answer: Getting back to that Conference USA challenge earlier: The 10 members this season are Liberty, Western Kentucky, Jacksonville State, FIU, Sam Houston, Middle Tennessee, Louisiana Tech, New Mexico State, UTEP and Kennesaw State.

True story: New Mexico State, which had been an independent for the previous five seasons, joined its sixth conference since 1983 when it became a CUSA member last year. I dare anyone to name all six without Googling it.

(Top photo of Ryan Walters: Justin Casterline / Getty Images)