College Football

Ooof. I suppose the only interesting part left will be the branding and terms. Although, since 18 seems to be the new 16, and the ACC may have secured itself as a going-concern, the B12 might want to crunch some numbers to decide if there's a payout price that would make sense.

I feel like it's my duty to post this one. Jorts-Five, standing by.

Stanford and Cal are expected to take reduced television revenue shares, while SMU will earn no television revenue from the league for approximately nine years.

Battle for the $5 Bits of Broken Chair Trophy!

Since the Texans can’t do it, the Cougars will.

Here's the sticky thread for this weekend's matchups.

We have yet to get our game thread bot up and running so I'll be making these manually for now. If you have experience/are interested in helping with the bot, please message me or @Manibusan@fanaticus.social.

Note that for the time being while we're still a growing community, I only intend to open game threads for matches that include a P5 team to avoid potentially empty threads. That said, if you're interested in a game that doesn't have a thread please create your own!

I also don't think there's a need for post-game threads yet, so feel free to post those thoughts in the game threads for now -- I won't be locking them.

I will update links here as game threads open.

Rankings per our community poll. All times Eastern:

Thursday, August 31

Friday, September 1

Saturday, September 2

Sunday, September 3

Labor Day Monday, September 4

https://archive.ph/M9B61

South Alabama unveiled its uniform combination late Thursday via a short video on social media — white pants, white jerseys and white helmets. But an added touch is an alternate logo that includes the standard Jaguar head between two halves of the Mardi Gras harlequin, with “Mobile 1703″ (the year of the city’s first Mardi Gras celebration) on a banner beneath.

But the “coup de gras” (so to speak) is on the back of the helmet, which reads “Home of Mardi Gras” on the bumper plate. Though New Orleans is more famous for Mardi Gras, Mobile actually began its celebration in 1703, some 150 years before New Orleans first did in 1857.

very soft paywall here but in case you're curious the must watches are:

• UF v Utah
• CU v TCU
• FSU v LSU

For those without ESPN+:

1. Ohio State @ Michigan
2. LSU @ Alabama
3. Georgia @ Tennessee
4. SoCal @ Notre Dame
5. Texas @ Alabama
6. Florida State @ LSU
7. Ohio State @ Notre Dame
8. Michigan @ Penn State
9. Penn State @ Ohio State
10. Florida State @ clemson

The Deion Sanders coaching era at Colorado begins Saturday when the Buffaloes visit No. 17 TCU. Colorado hired the charismatic Sanders away from Jackson State.

1. Georgia 124(4)
2. Michigan 118(1)
3. Ohio State 110
4. LSU 97
5. Alabama 93
6. Penn State 90
7. USC 86
8. Texas 81
9. Notre Dame 79
10. Tennessee 78
11. Utah 78
12. Washington 75
13. Clemson 63
14. Oregon 60
15. Florida State 57
16. TCU 48
17. Wisconsin 33
18. Kansas State 32
19. Oklahoma 31
20. Ole Miss 31
21. Texas A&M 26
22. North Carolina 20
23. Tulane 16
24. Oregon State 15
25. South Carolina 15

Others receiving votes: Duke 14, Louisville 10, Wake Forest 8, Baylor 7, Boise State 4, Iowa 4, Kentucky 4, Maryland 4, Arkansas 3, Mississippi State 3, Iowa State 2,Texas Tech 2, UTSA 2, Illinois 1, Kansas 1

Again if you would like more granular results they can be found here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FoyR3wPFVjfjPaqWhGqVIqXe9y23l968lFooFHZVZ88/edit?usp=sharing

Now that we have a weekly poll (thanks @g0d0fm15ch13f@lemmy.world for extending that over from the lemmy.world instance), I'd be happy to update our banner weekly with the results.

I made a few mockups in Photoshop with the preseason AP rankings and would like the community's input. Because web/mobile/app clients display it differently and often superimpose the community icon either in the bottom left or center, the design parameters are kind of tricky.

Option 1:

I feel this one balances a clean layout with a fresh look.

Option 2:

This is the most straightforward, but also most reminiscent of r/cfb. I personally would rather not directly rip off their look, but if a one-to-one replacement is what the community wants, this is the closest.

Option 3:

A whole 25 teams gets cluttered, but the result is kind of interesting. Couldn't really fit the ranking numbers though.

I'm of course open to other suggestions as well. I thought about trying out different end zone ideas, such as the old-school diagonal lines, but kept it simpler for now.

The agreement, in total, is set to cover approximately 75 games throughout the college football season. The cost of attendance at participating locations will be decided by each theater.

The deal also includes all six NY6 bowl games and the National Championship.

TL;DR: Texas, OU, TCU, TTech, K-State, KU, Baylor, OKST, BYU, UCF, Cincy, Houston, ISU, WVU.

Picking Texas to do well anytime they show even basic competence in the year prior is pretty much de rigeur for the media, so whatever; they can prove it or not. I'm slightly surprised at my Frogs being tapped for third and it feels a little like unearned inertia (is this a taste of what being a Texas fan is always like, LOL?). I'm more surprised at the disrespect to K-State at fifth.

A few months ago I decided to cut YouTube out of my life as much as possible, but I soon realized I missed a way of passively consuming CFB content (little did I know Reddit would soon become equally unbearable). I decided to fill the void with various CFB podcasts. I know many of them livestream on YouTube (which is how I used to catch Cover 3 and Late Kick), but fortunately that's not needed to get all the content and this way you can fast forward through ads.

Here are my favorites:

Top Tier:

Cover 3

Hosted by CBS/247Sports analysts Chip Patterson, Tom Fornelli, Danny Kanell, and Bud Elliot. My personal fav. These are some of the biggest nerds covering college football and present their thoughts in a very informal and fun way. Excellent chemistry. An excellent balance of deep cutting facts with fun, speculative fluff (particularly when answering listener mailbag questions). In particular, Bud Elliot's (of Blue-Chip Ratio fame) insight is really informative (and can get very sicko-mode at times). Danny Kanell's perspective as a former FSU and pro QB is also something other podcasts lack. 3 of the 4 are ACC fans so they might fall down the ACC rabbit hole at times.

The Audible

Hosted by The Athletic writer Bruce Feldman and editor Stewart Mandell. This is probably the most insider-connected podcast. Very even-keeled, objective, and balanced.

The Solid Verbal

Hosted by Ty Hildenbrandt and Dan Rubenstein. If the others are too insider-y, this is a pure fan podcast by a duo with excellent chemistry and deep CFB knowledge (15 years strong). Loyal listener base provides good mailbag questions.

Second Tier:

Always College Football with Greg McElroy

Hosted by ESPN analyst Greg McElroy. For a former QB, Greg is a total CFB nerd who geeks out a lot (which I like, but I could see this being annoying for some). Obviously, he's very biased towards Alabama (but homerism is part of what makes CFB great). Very connected and knowledgeable, so hot takes are very rare. Gets big name guests on his show, although his interviews tend to be all easy/flattering questions (although that's par for the course in sports, I guess).

ESPN College GameDay

Hosted by ESPN sportscaster Rece Davis and writer Pete Thamel. Classic ESPN talk, although the podcast format allows it to be looser than on-screen content. I think Rece is better when he's more free to joke around like this. Has the typical ESPN bent of focusing on the big name programs (so you may not get much out of it if you're a fan of a non-"P5" program).

The Joel Klatt Show

Hosted by Fox sportscaster Joel Klatt. I've always liked Klatt in the booth, so it's nice to hear him expound on his thoughts on what's happening across the broader CFB landscape. Has a fairly positive/amicable personality (despite his "Klatt back" segment he did last year). Also regularly gets big name guests (I found it interesting to compare all the commissioners), and his first interview which was of his partner Gus Johnson is a must watch/listen.

Third Tier:

College Football Enquirer

Hosted by journalists from Yahoo! Sports (Dan Wetzel and Ross Dellenger) and Sports Illustrated (Pat Forde). I would describe this as light entertainment rather than really CFB news, despite all the hosts being very well-connected and the topics covering the latest stories. Very jokey atmosphere and typically ends with silly tabloid stores (which I guess you can just skip if you don't want to hear about otters stealing surfboards or raccoons drinking beer).

The Late Kick with Josh Pate

Hosted by 247Sports' analyst Josh Pate. Very well-known and prolific podcast. I used to listen regularly, but realized there is better content out there so now I only tune in to listen to the bits about my team. Josh Pate is a bit of a hot take machine (but they're not awful). I like that they run their own computer model which they base their power ratings and analysis on.

365 Sports

Hosted by journalists from SicEm365 (David Smoak, Paul Catalina, and Craig Smoak). Not sure if this fits because it's technically affiliated to one team (Baylor) and at the same time covers all sports stories, but I included it because they do cover the entire CFB landscape quite well. They also land decent guests on their show, which is more of a traditional sports talk show format, filling 4 hours a day. This was a daily listen for me when the fate of the Big XII was uncertain and they had the latest updates.

Any that I missed? What is your go-to? Team-specific podcasts are cool, too (there just don't seem to be any decent Texas ones out there).