Tag: NCAAF

Travis Hunter throwing down a ridiculous dunk shows just how talented he really is

What can’t this guy do?

Colorado two-way football superstar and recent Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter really can do it all.

While attending the Colorado men’s basketball matinee against Bellarmine on Saturday, Hunter showed off his basketball skills by throwing down a ridiculous dunk after passing the ball through his legs on the way up.

While we’re sure NFL teams held their breath while they watched this clip for how much can go wrong on a dunk gone away, Hunter made it down just fine and showed why he could probably be a pretty good basketball player if he wanted to be.

The elite 2025 NFL Draft prospect will be playing on Sundays soon before long, but this impressive dunk makes you wonder of an alternate world where Hunter is showing out for an NBA team.

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Indiana absolutely deserved its College Football Playoff spot, and arguing otherwise is revisionist nonsense

Pointing to the result of the Notre Dame-Indiana game as evidence the Hoosiers shouldn’t have been in the CFP is a weak argument at best.

You could see the potential for ridiculous arguments coming before kickoff in South Bend on Friday night. You could see it really brewing when Notre Dame went up 14-0 over Indiana in the College Football Playoff first round, and it was out in full force when the Fighting Irish took a 27-3 lead in the fourth quarter.

The arguments that Indiana didn’t deserve its No. 10 seed playoff spot were abundant after the Hoosiers’ 27-17 first-round loss, subtly from folks like Lane Kiffin and more bluntly from Kirk Herbstreit on College GameDay on Saturday. They’re all preposterous.

Indiana absolutely deserved its College Football Playoff berth, and pointing to the result of the game as evidence to the opposition is a weak argument at best because what happens in the playoff isn’t necessarily an indictment on which teams earned their way in.

If you’re really anti-Hoosiers in this year’s playoff, you could yell about how they hadn’t played anybody. You could argue their strength of schedule wasn’t particularly impressive with wins over Nebraska, Maryland and Washington. You could point to their only regular-season loss being an embarrassing one to Ohio State or how Indiana wasn’t in Big Ten title contention late in the season.

But claiming the Hoosiers didn’t deserve to be there because you didn’t like the result of the Notre Dame game is a hindsight logical fallacy. Stop acting like there have never been blowouts or ugly playoff games and pretending it would be different with more SEC teams in the field.

Indiana played the schedule it had. It was dominant through the vast majority of it and put up style points where it could. It clearly caught the attention of the College Football Playoff committee, which placed the Hoosiers at No. 8 in the debut rankings when they were 9-0. Even after a 23-point loss to the Buckeyes, the committee dropped Indiana just five spots to No. 10.

As the season approached Selection Sunday, 11-1 Indiana wasn’t playing for a conference championship, but the Hoosiers’ playoff resume wasn’t even a debate. Their resume wasn’t being evaluated with the other teams’ in contention for an at-large bid. It was all about SMU and Alabama and South Carolina.

Indiana was a given in the 12-team field, like most, if not all, 11-win Power Four teams would be in the same situation.

Now, whatever version of Curt Cignetti and the Hoosiers that showed up in South Bend on Friday is a different story. This was not the same aggressive team we saw all season and instead looked like a team playing not to lose, which is the perfect recipe for losing, with or without a couple garbage-time touchdowns that make the score inaccurately reflect the game.

Let’s not forget: There’s almost always a blowout or ugly CFP game, whether we’re talking four or 12 teams, and the results don’t invalidate what a team did to get there.

Here’s what I noted three years ago while similarly defending Cincinnati, despite its 21-point loss to Alabama:

At least they scored points on Alabama, unlike Michigan State against the Crimson Tide in the 2015-16 playoff or Ohio State against Clemson in the 2016-17 season. At least they didn’t lose by 35 or more points, like Oklahoma did to LSU (63-28) in the 2019-20 semifinal, or like Florida State did against Oregon (59-20) in the inaugural 2014-15 playoff.

Indiana’s magical season is over, and it ended in particularly disappointing fashion. But you can’t present a revisionist version of history and playoff resumes to argue it was a mistake to include the Hoosiers. They earned their spot, and their game was ugly, just like many playoff-deserving teams before them.

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How much is Penn State coach James Franklin’s buyout in 2024?

If Penn State ever decided to fire James Franklin, it wouldn’t be cheap.

There’s a ton of money floating around college football, and head coaches make a lot with monster contracts that deliver them millions of dollars. Sometimes, college football coaches are even the highest-paid public employees in their respective states.

With their huge contracts also come very large buyouts — the money a school would owe the coach if it decided to fire him without cause. And it can sometimes be enough money to force a school to ride it out a little longer, rather than cough up several million dollars.

So how much would Penn State have to pay James Franklin if the Nittany Lions ever decided to fire their head coach?

Franklin — who has been the Nittany Lions’ head coach since 2014 — has the sixth-largest buyout among college football coaches as of 2024, according to USA TODAY Sports’ database of salaries and contracts. As of December 1, 2024, Franklin’s buyout is $56,666,667.

That’s definitely not the largest — Georgia’s Kirby Smart has the biggest buyout at $118,083,333 — but still a huge chunk of change if Penn State ever decided to fire Franklin.

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Kirk Herbstreit’s argument against Indiana making the College Football Playoff is so weak

It’s easy to make Kirk Herbstreit’s argument here with hindsight.

It’s no secret that Indiana got outworked against Notre Dame in the first round of the 2024 College Football Playoff on Friday evening in South Bend.

Since the Hoosiers got their butts kicked like they did, hindsight starts to creep in and the detractors start wondering why [Insert Marquee College Football Team Here] didn’t get Indiana’s spot instead in the 12-team field.

Hindsight is very easy when you have a result to make your case, as ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit did on College GameDay to decry Indiana’s playoff placement over what he feels are better teams with more losses.

“Indiana was outclassed in that game,” Herbstreit said. “It was not a team that should’ve been on that field when you consider other teams that could’ve been there.”

It’s easy to say this now with the Indiana result what it is, but what if the Hoosiers took the Irish to task on Friday? Nobody would be wanting Indiana sitting at home in that scenario.

That’s the problem with trying to play semantics after the final whistle; it gives you ammunition to make the point you put in your back pocket before the game even happened.

If Alabama, Ole Miss and the like wanted to make the College Football Playoff this year, they shouldn’t have lost as many games as they did. An 11-win team like Indiana shouldn’t be punished on subjective balancing on who the “better” team is. Let the record set it straight and go from there.

Indiana face-planting in the first round doesn’t mean it shouldn’t have been there. It just means it didn’t take advantage of what it had. That’s football for you; the ball just doesn’t bounce your way sometimes. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t have bounced in the first place.

Herbstreit is going to make this argument because it’s how that class of analysts will always view college football, but it doesn’t make him right.

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Why ESPN’s College Football Playoff broadcasts are only on TNT and Max

College football on TNT? Huh?

If you’re looking for Saturday’s College Football games on TV and streaming, you’re probably pretty stunned to see TNT, TBS and Max airing first round contests including SMU-Penn State and Clemson-Texas.

You’re probably even more confused flipping on those channel to see what looks like an ESPN broadcast.

Well, here’s the deal: Back in May, TNT reached a five year agreement to sublicense select College Football Playoff from ESPN. Which means while ESPN is producing the broadcasts, TNT gets to actually air them.

Here’s how it works, per the College Football Playoff:

TNT Sports will present two first-round College Football Playoff games during the 2024 and 2025 seasons. In addition to the first-round games, TNT Sports will add two quarterfinal games each year –beginning with the 2026 season through the 2028 season. TNT will be the primary network televising the sublicensed CFP games, among additional TNT Sports distribution platforms.

ESPN will present all other College Football Playoff games on its networks including the annual CFP National Championship Game. ESPN will also continue to manage the sponsorship program for the presentation of the CFP.

It kind of makes sense considering ESPN has plenty of other commitments this time of year, including college basketball, NBA games and NFL games. There’s only so many channels that allow it to reach a national audience. So TNT was all too glad to step in.

Hopefully that clears things up!

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College Football Playoff first-round announcers: Who’s calling Penn State vs. SMU on TNT?

Here are the first-round CFP announcers for Penn State vs. SMU on TNT and Max.

The first 12-team College Football Playoff is finally here with the three of the four first-round on-campus games set for Saturday.

The first game up on Saturday is No. 11 seed SMU at No. 6 seed Penn State — the lone first-round playoff game where the opposing team is traveling from a vastly different climate to play.

The Penn State-SMU game is set for Saturday at noon ET at Beaver Stadium on TNT and HBO Max, and the winner of this game will face No. 3 seed Boise State in the Fiesta Bowl on December 31.

If you’re here, you might be wondering who’s voices you’re hearing on TNT and Max during the Penn State-SMU game. Fear not: We have the answers!

For the CFP first-round game between Penn State and SMU, ESPN’s Mark Jones, Roddy Jones and Quint Kessenich will be on the call.

[afflinkbutton text=”Watch Penn State vs SMU on Sling” link=”https://sling-tv.pxf.io/PyLvRQ”]

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Lane Kiffin whining about the CFP selection committee during Indiana-Notre Dame was sore loser behavior

Shouldn’t have lost three games, Lane.

Sometimes Mississippi head coach Lane Kiffin acts like a child on social media and it’s pretty funny. Sometimes he does and you wish he’d just grow up already.

It’s a fine line walked by every internet troll. Friday night was an example of the latter for Kiffin.

During Indiana’s 27-17 loss to Notre Dame in the first round of the College Football Playoff, Kiffin fired off a post on Twitter that sounded like the kind of whining you hear from the most annoying kind of sore loser.

Right around the time Notre Dame took a 27-3 lead in the fourth quarter, Kiffin couldn’t stop himself.

Yeah, Lane, tagging the College Football Playoff isn’t the cool move you think it is. But let’s make this super clear: Indiana’s performance in the Playoff is not a referendum on whether or not the Hoosiers deserved to get in (which it absolutely did). Even in the four-team playoff era not every game looked competitive.

Indiana won 11 games in the Big Ten with a schedule it had no control over. In fact, the Hoosiers end their season with the No. 32 strength of schedule per ESPN while Notre Dame sits at No. 38. When it comes to strength of record (which reflects the chance an average Top 25 team would have team’s record or better, given the schedule) Indiana ranks No. 11.

The Hoosiers convincingly beat both of last year’s national championship game participants.

But none of this is even necessary to discuss as it relates to Mississippi because the Rebels lost three games. They did not win a conference championship. In the final CFP rankings, Kiffin’s team finished No. 14 — it wasn’t even the first or second team left out of the tournament. Complaining about Indiana’s resume when the Rebels started the season against Furman, Middle Tennessee, Wake Forest and Georgia Southern is some pretty hilarious hypocrisy.

If Kiffin wants to be angry about anything regarding the playoff, he can start with his team’s losses to unranked Kentucky and Florida. Or he cant quit his whining.

Sadly, we already know that latter option will never happen.

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Here’s how Curt Cignetti explained his ill-advised punts in Indiana playoff loss

The punts were head-scratching in the moment and the explanation doesn’t help much.

Indiana’s 27-17 loss to Notre Dame in the first round of the College Football Playoff was not head coach Curt Cignetti’s finest performance.

While a few late Hoosiers touchdowns made the score much more respectable, the reality is that Indiana was a step slow and a bit outmatched. But that was all buoyed by Cignetti’s timid decision-making.

Nothing embodied that more than Cignetti deciding to punt twice while down 17 in the second half. Despite the fact IU made it’s name with risky offensive gambles in the regular season, the Hoosiers opted to punt on 4th-and-3 from their own 32 with three minutes left in the third, then punted again on 4th-and-11 from the Notre Dame 48-yard line with 10 minutes left in the fourth.

“I didn’t want to punt, but we were doing nothing on offense and our defense was fighting,” Cignetti said after the game. “You know, that was the only positive really, that I could draw, is our defense was still fighting because our offense was doing nothing.

“…I didn’t want to go 4th-and-10, you know it’s like you’re wishing and hoping. You have nothing to base it on, that you can convert 4th-and-10 at that point, right? There’s still time, if you punt to win the game. That was the reasons why I didn’t want to do it, but I felt it was the best move.”

You could argue — and many will — that Indiana’s defense continuing to hold up is as much of a reason to go for it on offense as it is to punt. Especially since Notre Dame went on a nine-play, 78-yard touchdown drive that ate up more than five minutes of clock after the second punt.

It was pretty much curtains on the Hoosiers’ season after that.

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Curt Cignetti’s NSFW trash talk on College GameDay looks so weak after playoff dud

Curt Cignetti talked tough before kickoff. His play-calling didn’t back it up.

No. 10 seed Indiana absolutely deserved its spot in the College Football Playoff.

It won 11 games. It’s only loss in the regular season came to a then-No. 6 Ohio State team that also made the postseason. The Hoosiers handily defeated both teams that played in last year’s title game. In Year 1 under Curt Cignetti, Indiana played with swagger, style and zero mercy for its opponents (the Buckeyes loss notwithstanding).

At least that was the case until Friday night’s 27-17 loss at No. 7 seed Notre Dame in the first round of the College Football Playoff. And to be clear, there’s really a limited amount of shame in this kind of loss. It seems like every year we get a dud in the playoff no matter how many teams are in the bracket.

What makes Indiana’s loss sting a bit more is just how cowardly some of the coaching decisions felt — especially after Cignetti talked a tough game about “kicking the [expletive]” out of top-25 teams on ESPN’s College GameDay before kickoff on Friday.

If you’re going to talk the talk — in enemy territory, no less — you’ve got to back it up. Instead, Cignetti seemed allergic to risk against Notre Dame until an Irish win was all but assured.

The Hoosiers punted twice down 17 in the second half. They kept trying to establish the run no matter the down and distance to no avail. Cignetti made all the types of decisions you see from a coach who doesn’t want the scoreboard to reflect just how bad the performance was. That tactic worked out as IU added two touchdowns in the last two minutes to secure a respectable final score. Too little, too late.

Indiana was out-matched Friday. Notre Dame was a step faster at every point. Which is why it was fair to expect Cignetti would take more gambles. Indiana was playing with house money, after all. The program with the most losses in FBS history just making it to this stage will remain an incredible story worth celebrating.

But watching Cignetti talk tough all season only to see the Hoosiers hide in their shell in the final game of the year is a rough look.

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How to watch Penn State vs. SMU, College Football Playoff TV channel, live stream

Everything you need to know to watch the Penn State Nittany Lions vs. SMU Mustangs in the College football Playoff on Saturday, Dec. 21.

The Penn State Nittany Lions welcome the SMU Mustangs to Beaver Stadium this Saturday for the first round of the College Football Playoff. If you want to catch the action you have been waiting all season to see on TV or live stream, we have the details you desire below.

The Nittany Lions are the fourth-seeded team in the CFP while holding the fifth spot in the US LBM Coaches Poll on the heels of an impressive 11-2 campaign. However, they lost the Big Ten title game to the top-seeded team, the Oregon Ducks.

The Mustangs arrived on the Atlantic Coast Conference scene with a bang in their first season, earning the 10th seed in the CFP while being ranked 12th in the Coaches Poll. Like Penn State, SMU also lost its conference championship game — a 34-31 defeat at the hands of the Clemson Tigers.

[afflinkbutton text=”Watch Nittany Lions vs. Mustangs on Sling” link=”https://sling-tv.pxf.io/c/50053/2373029/14334?sharedid=usatoday_paidncaa”]

Penn State vs. SMU Week College Football Playoff info

Here’s everything you need to watch the Nittany Lions against the Mustangs.

  • When: Saturday, Dec. 21
  • Where: Beaver Stadium, University Park, Pennsylvania
  • TV channel: TNT
  • Live stream: Sling

It is time to get hyped up for the College Football Playoff!

What time is Penn State vs. SMU?

The Nittany Lions take on the Mustangs at noon ET on Saturday, Dec. 21.

[afflinkbutton text=”Watch Penn State vs. SMU with Sling” link=”https://sling-tv.pxf.io/c/50053/2373029/14334?sharedid=usatoday_paidncaa”]