Mario Cristobal – Syndication Server

How every former Nick Saban assistant fared in Week 10 head coaching performance

How did Kirby Smart, Lane Kiffin, Mario Cristobal, Curt Cignetti and other former Nick Saban assistant coaches do at their respective Power Four and G5 programs in Week 10? We take a look.

Several members of former Alabama football coach Nick Saban’s expansive coaching tree had a busy Saturday in Week 10 of the 2024 college football season this past weekend.

From as far south as Miami to as far north as Bloomington, Ind., Saban’s former Crimson Tide assistants had their teams involved in high-stakes conference games on the first Saturday of November.

Not all of the former Saban assistants were on their respective sidelines in Week 10. Among the coaches whose teams had bye weeks was Texas Longhorns coach Steve Sarkisian, whose team is ranked No. 5 in this week’s US LBM Coaches Poll.

Mike Locksley and the Maryland Terrapins were also on a bye, as were Brent Key and the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, Bill O’Brien and the Boston College Eagles, and Butch Jones’ Arkansas State program.

Former Alabama offensive coordinator Jim McElwain’s Central Michigan Chippewas didn’t play Saturday as CMU has three consecutive Tuesday night games coming up (MACtion!).

Lance Taylor’s first-place Western Michigan Broncos also didn’t play Saturday but will look to improve to 5-0 in MAC play Wednesday when they welcome Northern Illinois to Kalamazoo.

A week ago, Roll Tide Wire ranked every member of the Saban coaching tree by their schools’ season-to-date performances. This week, we’re taking a look at how each of those head coaches and their respective teams fared in Week 10 action.

As with last week’s rankings, we’re also including salary information from the USA TODAY Sports College Football Head Coach Salaries Database.

Again, former Saban assistants whose teams were idle in Week 10 do not appear on this list. With that out of the way, here’s how every former Saban assistant and his team fared over the weekend.

Major Applewhite (South Alabama Jaguars)

Overall/Current Record at South Alabama: 4-5

Week 10 Game: Georgia Southern 34, South Alabama 30

2024 Salary: $825,000

South Alabama had a fourth-quarter collapse against a Georgia Southern team they had on the ropes in Mobile. The Eagles got two touchdown passes from JC French to erase a 30-14 deficit heading into the fourth quarter. With both teams at 3-1 in Sun Belt play entering the game, this was a huge missed opportunity for Applewhite and the Jaguars.

Billy Napier (Florida Gators)

Overall Record at Florida: 14-18

2024 Record: 4-4

Week 10 Game: Georgia 34, Florida 20

2024 Salary: $7.3 million

It’s hard for me to be too upset about Napier and the Gators’ performance against a Georgia team that’s simply better than Florida. The Gators competed and didn’t allow themselves to be pushed around in a game many figured would be a blowout. If not for an injury to Florida starting quarterback DJ Lagway, we could be talking about this game in a whole new light.

Charles Huff (Marshall Thundering Herd)

Overall Record at Marshall: 27-20

2024 Record: 5-3

Week 10 Game: Marshall 28, UL Monroe 23

2024 Salary: $755,500

Huff and the Herd won their fourth game in their last five contests, getting two fourth-quarter touchdowns to hold off ULM to improve to 3-1 in Sun Belt play. Marshall is a half-game behind Georgia Southern in the Sun Belt East division. At 5-3 and scheduled to face a Southern Miss team that’s one of the worst in FBS for the second straight year, Huff is well in position to lead the Herd to a fourth straight bowl game in as many seasons as Marshall’s coach.

Kirby Smart (Georgia Bulldogs)

Overall Record at Georgia: 101-17

2024 Record: 6-1

Week 10 Game: Georgia 34, Florida 20

2024 Salary: $13,282,580

If we’re going by season-to-date rankings, Smart still tops our list at No. 1. The Bulldogs struggled for much of the afternoon against Florida in Jacksonville as Carson Beck threw three more interceptions to continue an alarming trend. He now has eight interceptions over his last three games.

Georgia has won all three of those contests in spite of Beck’s turnovers. While Beck looked much in the second half, questions still linger about his turnover ratio — and how much longer Smart can seemingly pin the blame on his receivers.

Lane Kiffin (Ole Miss Rebels)

Overall Record at Ole Miss: 40-17

2024 Record: 7-2

Week 10 Game: Ole Miss 63, Arkansas 31

2024 Salary: $9 million

During his appearance on “College GameDay” Saturday, Nick Saban predicted that Sam Pittman and the Arkansas Razorbacks would pull an upset over Ole Miss. “Not so fast, my friend.” Jaxson Dart threw for a school-record 515 yards, and his six touchdown passes in one game tied Eli Manning (in 2001) and Matt Corral (in 2020). Ole Miss had 694 yards of total offense in a complete domination of the Hogs.

Last week, we wrote that Kiffin hadn’t been able to win the big one yet in Year 5 with the Rebels. With the No. 2 ranked Georgia Bulldogs coming to Oxford this Saturday, Kiffin has a chance to change that and put Ole Miss squarely back into the College Football Playoff race.

Curt Cignetti (Indiana Hoosiers)

Nick King/Lansing State Journal / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Overall/Current Record at Indiana: 8-0

Week 10 Game: Indiana 47, Michigan State 10

2024 Salary: $4.25 million

A week after hosting “College GameDay” for the first time, Cignetti and quarterback Kurtis Rourke led the Hoosiers to their first 9-0 start in program history with another offensive explosion on Saturday in East Lansing. The Hoosiers are averaging 49.0 points per game this season, and their fewest points scored in any one game was the 31 they put up against the Washington Huskies in Week 9 and their season opener against FIU.

The Hoosiers host the four-loss Michigan Wolverines in Bloomington in Week 11. If they can beat the reigning national champions, they’ll face a “Game of the Year of the Week” in Columbus matchup against the Ohio State Buckeyes with major Big Ten championship and College Football Playoff implications on the line at “The Shoe.”

Mario Cristobal (Miami Hurricanes)

Overall Record at Miami: 21-13

2024 Record: 9-0

Week 9 Game: Miami 53, Duke 31

2024 Salary: $7.7 million

Cristobal’s Hurricanes pulled away from former Miami coach Manny Diaz and the Duke Blue Devils with a 36-point second half explosion to erase a 21-17 halftime deficit. Miami recently passed Ole Miss for the national lead in average yards per game at 556.9. They’re also averaging 47.4 points per game with quarterback Cam Ward leading one of the nation’s most explosive offenses.

At 9-0, Miami is one of only five unbeaten teams in college football, joining Cignetti’s Hoosiers, the No. 1 ranked Oregon Ducks, BYU Cougars, and Army Black Knights. With Clemson suffering a stunning 33-21 loss to the Louisville Cardinals over the weekend, the ACC is officially Miami’s to lose. Their schedule takes them to Georgia Tech and former Saban assistant Brent Key in Week 11.

A look back at the short, rich history between Oregon Ducks and the Boise State Broncos

The Oregon Ducks have never beaten the Boise State Broncos. Can that change this year?

It’s impossible to predict how a college football season will go, through the beginning, middle, and end. But, I don’t think anyone expected the Oregon Ducks’ 2024 season to start the way it did against the Idaho Vandals. The Ducks won the game, 24-14, but they looked flat. Now, they have a chance to get their season back on track against Boise State this weekend.

Unlike the Idaho Vandals, the Boise State Broncos don’t have an extensive history against Oregon. The two teams met for the first time in 2008, and they’ve played twice since then in 2009 and 2017. The Broncos are 3-0 in those games.

Oregon finished the 2008 and 2009 seasons with 10-3 records, which is impressive after falling to a Group of Five opponent so early in the season. 2008 was capped off with a Holiday Bowl win over Oklahoma State, and in 2009 Oregon lost to Ohio State in the Rose Bowl. A year later, the Ducks made it to the BCS National Championship game, where they lost to Auburn.

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2017 was the last time the Ducks played the Broncos, and it was a tumultuous year for Oregon. The Ducks finished 7-6, losing to Boise State in the Las Vegas Bowl. It was Willie Taggart’s first and only season as head coach of the Ducks, and he left for Florida State before Oregon’s Bowl game. The Ducks Las Vegas Bowl loss was Mario Cristobal’s first game as Oregon’s head coach.

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Staring down the fourth game between these two schools, Oregon doesn’t have an easy task ahead of them. Boise State is one the top unranked teams right now in college football, and they are the favorite of many to secure the group of five’s bid to the College Football Playoff this season.

The Ducks are 18.5-point favorites in this week’s game, but with how they looked against Idaho, they’ll need to look like a team reborn this weekend to cover that spread. Still, Oregon has a great chance to open up their season 2-0 and log their first-ever win against the Boise State Broncos.

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Lincoln Riley proclaims USC is ‘at the top of the Big Ten’

Lincoln Riley was at times defiant in his belief that USC will be ready for the Big Ten.

Lincoln Riley spoke with the local beat reporters after being on stage with the national media on Day 2 of Big Ten media days in Indianapolis, Indiana. Riley took exception to a question that asked if he felt USC would be competitive in the long term with the teams at the top of the Big Ten Conference.

Riley didn’t hesitate to proclaim, “We are at the top of the Big Ten Conference. We’re the top of any conference. I don’t ever look at ourselves below anybody and I never will.”

After a season that exposed USC’s dearth of depth along both lines of scrimmage, it was clear that USC’s return to glory was not a reload, but a rebuild. The schools that many point to as the top of the Big Ten this year: Ohio State, Penn State, Michigan and Oregon have completely different rosters than USC had two years ago when Riley took over for fired coach Clay Helton. Ohio State head coach Ryan Day took over a program from Urban Meyer that was loaded with bluechip players and has program has been rolling under Tressel and Meyer for the better part of two decades. Mario Cristobal had the Oregon Ducks reloading talent for four years before Dan Lanning arrived. The Ducks have been stockpiling that roster with Nike founder and super booster Phil Knight and his elite collective Division Street.

“Listen, two years ago, look at where Ohio State and Oregon were two years ago,” Riley continued. “Look at what they took over and look at what we took over. You now. I mean, it takes time. I’m not a magician. I can’t wave a magic wand and everything just be perfect right away, but just name one area that we have not made progress. This thing’s got momentum. It’s coming. Nothing’s going to stop it. That’s fine, they started at a different point. We’ll see where it ends up.”

It seems that Riley needs to remind the media and fans often that building line depth doesn’t happen overnight.

Then there is NIL. USC has also been much more conservative than schools like Ohio State and Oregon in how they interpreted NIL rules regarding inducements to high school recruits prior to things changing with the court rulings which effectively neutered the NCAA’s ability to enforce them. It doesn’t take a giant leap of faith to believe that USC is a program that should be at the top of the Big Ten with the right coaching staff in place; history has made that very clear with USC’s dominance of the Big Ten throughout the decades with the right head coach.

Riley has not only moved on from Grinch but he has brought in an elite defensive coaching staff headlined by the talented second year defensive coordinator D’Anton Lynn. If this staff proves that it’s as good on Saturdays as it is on paper, the Big Tens knows what’s coming next.

Perhaps the most intriguing part was the conviction and confidence in Riley’s voice during his response. There wasn’t any hesitation. There was no doubt.

Dan Lanning is far from being on any hot seat per CBS Sports

CBS Sports ranked 134 FBS college football head coaches and determined that Dan Lanning is nowhere near the hot seat at Oregon.

Dan Lanning has had a successful two seasons as the Oregon Ducks football head coach and to think he’s on any kind of hot seat in terms of job security is a bit comical.

CBS Sports tends to agree with that assessment as they determined whether a coach is on the hot seat or not for all 134 FBS college football head coaches and Lanning is one of a few that has absolutely nothing to worry about.

On a scale of 0-to-5, with 0 being the furthest from being on a hot seat to 5 being win now or don’t let the door hit you on the way out. Interestingly enough, only one coach in the country, Sam Pittman of Arkansas was rated as a 5. He’s 23-25 as the Razorback head coach and things are becoming boiling hot in Fayetteville

A few names Oregon fans might be curious about is Mario Cristobal at Miami. He received a 3 rating (Pressure is mounting), up from a 2 (All good … for now) from last season.

Former Duck offensive coordinator, Joe Moorhead of Akron, is in the same spot as Cristobal. Former Washington coach, Kalen DeBoer, now at Alabama, received a 2 rating and hasn’t even coached a game in Tuscaloosa. One average season there and that rating will go up.

As for Lanning, his rating of 0 (Untouchable) will remain just that as long as he stays the course, continues to recruit at a high level, and wins some playoff games. The future of Oregon football is as bright as it ever has been.

Miami Hurricanes are happy not to face Clemson in 2024, analyst says

Analyst says Miami is happy not to have Clemson on the Hurricanes’ 2024 college football slate.

The Miami Hurricanes are not on the Clemson Tigers’ 2024 college football schedule. According to one analyst who covers the ‘Canes, that’s a good thing for coach Mario Cristobal’s team.

Sam Fariss of Canes Warning lists three teams that Miami is happy not to be playing in 2024. At the top of his list is Clemson.

Explains Fariss:

“The Clemson Tigers might be in a drought for appearances in the College Football Playoff but Dabo Swinney has still brought the team up to a dominant place in the ACC.

“Despite the lack of transfer portal pickups, Clemson is projected to be the No. 19 team in the nation according to ESPN’s way-too-early rankings.

“Miami, like almost any other season, should be as grateful as ever that they don’t have to face the Clemson Tigers in 2024.”

The Hurricanes erased a 10-point deficit to rally and stun Clemson, 28-20, in double-overtime a season ago at Hard Rock Stadium. Prior to last year’s game, though, the Tigers had won four straight and six of the past eight meetings against Miami, including a 40-10 rout in Death Valley in November 2022.

Clemson opens its season on August 31 against Georgia at Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium. The Tigers begin ACC play on September 21 when they host NC State.

Follow us @Clemson_Wire on X and on Facebook for ongoing coverage of Clemson Tigers news, notes and commentary.

Mario Cristobal, Miami ranked ahead of USC in post-spring top 25

Mario Cristobal and Miami are getting more of the benefit of the doubt than USC.

The Miami Hurricanes and Mario Cristobal had a terrible 2023 college football season. If you thought USC had a rough year — which it did — Miami wasn’t any better. In the end, Miami lost more games in 2023 than USC did, finishing 7-6. The Hurricanes lost their bowl game, whereas USC won the Holiday Bowl against Louisville. College Sports Wire has taken notes on what various media outlets are projecting in their post-spring college football top-25 rankings. In a composite set of rankings taken from four different outlets, Miami checks in at No. 19, whereas USC is not even ranked in the top 25.

Cristobal, far more than Lincoln Riley and USC, has struggled at his current job. Riley at least had an 11-win season in 2022. Cristobal has not come remotely close to a New Year’s Six bowl or ACC championship at Miami. Cristobal has struggled to develop high-end offensive talent in Coral Gables. Yes, he has a roster which — on paper — looks very good this season. Still, Cristobal deserves less benefit of the doubt than Lincoln Riley does. It isn’t showing up in the rankings, which reinforces how skeptical a lot of media outlets are toward USC and Riley.

The Trojans will simply have to do something about all of this and prove they’re being underappreciated.

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How Marcus Freeman, Brian Kelly and other second-year head coaches graded out in 2023

What grade do you give Marcus Freeman through two seasons?

We’re two full seasons into the Marcus Freeman era at Notre Dame, and there have clearly been some ups and downs.

The era started in a troubling way as the Irish began 0-3, but they’ve gone 19-5 since being upset by Marshall in Week 2 of 2022.

How does Freeman compare to some of the other head coaches that were hired in the 2023 coaching carousel?

CBS Sports graded all of those 2022-23 hires through two seasons into their current stops. How did Freeman compare to the man he replaced at Notre Dame, the man he’ll face in Week 1 of 2024, and some Irish rivals?

Let’s take a look at a handful here:

How Dan Lanning, Mario Cristobal, and other second-year head coaches graded out in 2023

A look at how Dan Lanning, Mario Cristobal, and other second-year head coaches graded out after the 2023 college football season.

At the end of the 2022 season, Oregon Duck fans felt pretty good about their first-year head coach Dan Lanning. He had won 10 games in his first year leading the program and walked away with a victory in the Holiday Bowl over North Carolina to go along with a top-10 ranked recruiting class.

However, losses to both Oregon State and Washington stuck out like a sore thumb. There was a belief that the future should be bright in Eugene, but success against the rivals was going to need to be paramount going forward.

After the 2023 season, I think Duck fans are feeling pretty spectacular about Lanning, now their second-year head coach. A 12-win season landed the Ducks in a New Year’s Six Bowl, and a Heisman-caliber season from QB Bo Nix had the team in the national title conversation all year long. They fell short to a rival — Washington — twice but managed to beat every other team in their path. To add to the good feelings, Lanning punctuated the season with another top-10 recruiting class, and one of the best transfer portal classes in the nation, not to mention his public denial of the Alabama Crimson Tide coaching job, giving Duck fans the one thing they truly desire more than almost anything else: Loyalty.

So while Oregon feels good about their head coach, how is he being publicly? As they do every year, CBS Sports broke down the second-year head coaches and offered a grade for their tenures so far. More than just Lanning, let’s take a look at the grades and analysis for other notable figures like Mario Cristobal, Lincoln Riley, Joe Moorhead, and a few others.

Former Oregon tight end granted a ninth season of eligibility

Former Duck tight end Cam McCormick was granted his ninth year of eligibility from the NCAA.

Former Oregon Duck tight end and Bend native asked for and was granted one more year of eligibility from the NCAA.

It would be his ninth season.

McCormick has had more than his share of injury problems and coupled with the 2020 pandemic, this might be the one and only time you’ll see an athlete play this long on the collegiate level.

He has suffered numerous leg injuries and in his five years in Eugene, including a redshirt season, McCormick played in 23 games for the Ducks, good for 169 yards and four touchdowns.

After his time with Oregon, McCormick decided to follow his former coach Mario Cristobal to Miami where he played in all 13 games for the Hurricanes. He caught eight passes for 63 yards in 2023.

Appreciate all of the support! #84Resilient #GoCanes pic.twitter.com/KKYlI2jO8P

— Cam (@McCormick_Cam) January 18, 2024

How Dan Lanning’s first two years compare to other Oregon Ducks head coaches

A look at how Oregon Ducks’ head coach Dan Lanning’s resume through two years stacks up against past coaches in Eugene.

The second year of Dan Lanning’s tenure as the head coach of the Oregon Ducks has come to a close. He wrapped up his second year in emphatic fashion with a 45-6 win over the Liberty Flames in the Vrbo Fiesta Bowl on Monday. With the win, Oregon improved to 12-2 on the season, and Lanning picked up the second bowl game victory of his career.

While it’s impossible to perfectly compare coaches throughout the years because of the constantly changing landscape in the world of college football, what we’ve seen from Lanning so far has been impressive, to say the least, and has him up there with some of the best coaches that Oregon has seen over the last several decades.

Now that we have a two-year sample size to go off of, this felt like a great time to see how Lanning’s accolades from the past two years stack up compared to other coaches of the modern era who have come through the Ducks’ program, potentially look at what it might portend for the future.