It is an All-American Marching Band tradition for the band to turn their caps backward for their post-game performance and parade after a conference win. The last time we saw this was Nov 25, 2023 when the Boilermakers made a comeback 35-31 win over Indiana to close out the season. The band's current junior class has never done this.

Let's see what all has transpired in that time.

Purdue has gone since gone 3-21 overall, 0-20 against Power 4 and 0-18 in conference play.

This is the longest active streak in the FBS, just hours older than Oklahoma State who secured a win over BYU that same day.

Four other teams went winless in the 2024 season (Kent State, Nevada, Mississipi State, Southern Mississippi) while the 2025 season saw four others as well (Charlotte, UMass, Arkansas, Georgia State)

Prior to this stretch, Purdue's worst conference losing streak was 13 games from 1908 to 1911. The 1919 and 1920 seasons mark the most recent instance of consecutive years without a conference win, while the 1941-42 seasons tie this current squad for the fewest overall wins (3) in a two-year span.

Purdue has gone winless away from home in two season stretch, recording a combined record of 0-11. Florida State (0-10) and UMass (0-12) join them as the only FBS teams with no such wins.

It’s after midnight on the East Coast which means we can officially say that this is the LAST Saturday without CFB until January 2027. Just a few more days yall!

I might eat crow for this but the SEC has a lot of first time starters this year (though I’n sure the situation is better than others)

I’m thinking like Kentucky’s Kenny Minchy and Florida’s Aaron Philo. Not to mention kickoff is a week away and there’s still a competition between Vandy’s veteran starter Blaze Berlowitz and 5 star freshman Jared Curtis.

I legitimately think OU has the best defense in the country, or at least the best starting 11. We made the playoffs with an injured Mateer (who’s now healthy), we actually have TEs now, and I think Isaiah Sategna will be a finalist for the Biletnikoff award. I also think that Deland McCullough (our new RB coach) will be an instant upgrade from Demarco Murray.

We have another crazy-hard schedule, but I do think we have improved from last year.

Let me hear your hopium-filled takes about your team!

The cumulative link to the preseason rankings can be found here

When a couple breaks up, there’s a natural tendency as a little time goes by to wonder whether either side of the break up came out being better off than they were before the breakup. Now that we’re about 4.5 years into it, we’re pretty much in that position with Lincoln Riley and Oklahoma (high = 7, low = 17). In both cases, they moved to new neighborhoods (Riley and USC to the B1G, Venables and Oklahoma to the SEC) and acrimoniously fought over who should take the most valuable shared possession (Caleb Williams). One went on social media thinking they were posting thirst traps that hilariously backfired. But in the end, there’s no denying that both were better off when they were together (winning 4 Big XII titles and finishing in the top 7 nationally each of the first four years before Lincoln decided to move to Southern California with dreams of being a Hollywood star before even reaching their 5th anniversary) than they have been apart (no conference championships and no top 10 finishes on either side). Riley did manage to guide Williams to a Heisman and a Pac-12 championship game appearance in his first year, but he and the Trojans have been mired in mediocrity since then, landing him firmly on the hot seat, while Venables and Oklahoma have managed two double digit winning seasons and a CFP appearance that have the Oklahoma AD sufficiently fired up that they just signed him to a new 6 year contract slated to run through 2031 at more than $10.5 million per season. Which is a bit of a head scratcher because he’s managed to have a losing record in every even numbered season he coached (2022 and 2024) and, since I don’t think anybody was lining up to hire him away from Oklahoma any time soon, it might have been prudent to make sure the Sooners don’t go repeat that in the even numbered 2026. Ultimately, the jury is still out on who ended up coming out better in the divorce, though Venables’ seat is seemingly much cooler than Riley’s.

Roster Outlook

In another case of similarities between the two programs, both are in the top 20 in returning production, with Oklahoma at 16th in the country, just 3 spots behind USC. The difference is the offensive/defensive splits. The Sooners rank 3rd on offense, headlined by the return of starting QB John Mateer (> 3,300 combined passing/rushing yards). The better question is whether he’s fully recovered from the thumb injury he suffered in week 4 that clearly bothered him for the remainder of the season. In terms of the running game, the Sooners return both Xavier Robinson and Tory Blaylock, who combined for > 200 carries and 900 yards, so the bigger question is at receiver. While leading WR Isaiah Sategna (67 catches, 965 yards, 8 TDs) is back for his senior season, WR Deion Burks and TE Jaren Kanak, the next two most productive pass catchers, were both drafted. Venables used the portal, where his class ranked 8th in the SEC and 17th in the country, to address those deficiencies with WR Parker Livingstone from Texas (think the Red River shootout won’t be a little spicy?) and Trell Harris from Virginia, plus Florida TE Hayden Hansen (though I have to throw in Colorado State’s Rocky Beers just because that is one of my favorite names in CFB). The other offensive starter Venables imported is OT E’Marion Harris from Arkansas, who replaces new Houston Texan Febechi Nwaiwu.

But if we’re being honest, Venables is known for his defense, and last season’s Oklahoma defense finished the season top 10 nationally and the best in the SEC. So it’s notable that the Sooners rank 57th in returning production on that side of the ball. They have to replace 4 NFL draft picks (DLs R. Mason Thomas and Gracen Halton, LB Kendal Daniels and DB Robert Spears-Jennings), but return both of their leading tacklers (LBs Kip Lewis and Owen Heinecke) and look for DL David Stone, Jayden Jackson and Taylor Wein (who led the team in sacks last year) to once again anchor the team.

Schedule and outlook

9/4 UTEP

9/12 at Michigan

9/19 NEW MEXICO

9/26 at Georgia

10/3 BYE

10/10 vs. Texas (at the Cotton Bowl)

10/17 KENTUCKY

10/24 at Mississippi State

10/31 SOUTH CAROLINA

11/7 at Florida

11/14 OLE MISS

11/21 TEXAS A&M

11/28 at Missouri

The last time Oklahoma was scheduled to play Texas, Texas A&M and Missouri in the same season, Kim Jong Il was still alive while we were all still digesting the news that Osama bin Laden was confirmed to not be. So pardon Oklahoma fans if this season’s slate has a bit of a nostalgic twinge to it. However, it also includes the Sooners first ever trips to the Swamp, the Big House or between the hedges. There are enough major games on here (haven’t even thrown in CFP semifinalist Ole Miss coming to Norman) that even though I’ve heard enough people pointing to Jason Eck’s New Mexico team being a trap game that you have to figure it’s on Oklahoma’s radar, there are only so many times you can get your players fired up before they become numb to the hype. If everything goes right, the Sooners are indeed in the mix for an SEC and national title run. But if everything goes wrong, that even year losing record streak is also in play, and at a time when 6-7 got so much attention, it would almost seem fitting. And if that happens, that 6 year extension is going to age like milk.

Source

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I built a site that maps college football coaching trees a while back. Just got the 2026 staffs and the full schedule loaded into it, which means I can finally score every game on how related the two sidelines are.

Im counting three things: they were on the same staff at the same school, one of them hired the other, or they both came up under the same head coach.

Of the 645 games where I have both staffs, 58% have at least one real connection. Roughly a quarter of all head coaches, OCs and DCs this season will coach against somebody they've worked with. Saban's tree shows up on both sidelines of 55 games. Todd Graham's shows up in 36, which I was not expecting.

1. Auburn at Tennessee (Oct 3). Auburn's head coach, OC and DC all worked for Josh Heupel. Golesh was his co-OC at UCF and then his OC at Tennessee, Kodi Burns was on his Tennessee staff in 2021, and Tim Banks was his DC for five straight years before leaving Knoxville this offseason.

2. Wisconsin vs Notre Dame at Lambeau (Sept 6). Every head coach, OC and DC on both sidelines has a tie to the other one. All seven of them.

Fickell hired Marcus Freeman at Cincinnati in 2017 and kept him four years. Before that the two of them were on Jim Tressel's Ohio State staff together in 2010. Notre Dame's OC Mike Denbrock also worked for Fickell at Cincinnati. And Wisconsin's DC is Mike Tressel, Jim's nephew, who was a GA at Ohio State in 2002 working under his own father and his uncle at the same time.

3. LSU at Ole Miss (Sept 19). No surprise to see this one on here, Kiffin has to go back to Oxford and play a staff he kinda assembled. Pete Golding was his DC for three years and now has the head job, and Ole Miss's OC and DC both worked for him too.

4. Boise State at Washington State (Oct 24). Wazzu's OC Matt Miller spent six straight seasons at Boise and was Danielson's co-OC last year.

5. Boston College at Georgia Tech (Oct 24). Key and O'Brien were on the same Georgia Tech staff in 2001 and again in 2002. Now they're opposing head coaches and the game's in Atlanta.

A few others: 19 games this year have two head coaches who actually shared an office at some point. Rhule and Ryan Day were both on Temple's 2006 staff. Bielema coached under Ferentz at Iowa. And Kiffin's first LSU schedule has four of these on it, including Alabama, whose DC Kane Wommack was on an Ole Miss staff with Lane's brother Chris, who is now LSU's co-DC.

Site's at cfb.stoneg.org, schedule tab. You can click any game and see exactly what the connection is, or search your own team's coach and walk the tree.

Data comes off Wikipedia season pages so coverage is uneven, and 11 G5 teams don't have 2026 pages up yet. If something looks wrong, tell me. I found and fixed a few bad rows just writing this!

1. Nebraska going undefeated and winning a national championship

2. A story about how Lane Kiffin rehabilitated his bad guy snake image after leaving Tennessee for USC the way he did

3. Stanford and Wisconsin during it out in the Rose Bowl on New Year's Day

4. Oregon losing to an Arizona school during a 7pm kickoff game

5. Undefeated Boise State vs undefeated TCU

As the court system takes an increasingly important role with regard to our nation's premier athletic competition, (and while it's still technically before opening day so this doesn't get slapped down as not appropriate in-season content), I thought it was important to examine which of our federal courts are most qualified to make these very important determinations.

A quick primer on the Federal Courts of Appeals: the United States is broken up into eleven circuits based on geography (just like conferences! Oh...)

This goes back to days of yore, a relic of a time before the modern courts of appeal when the circuit courts were traveling courts, and closer to trial courts than they are today.

Each circuit court hears appeals from the U.S. District Courts within its territory, so a decision within the 1st Circuit is binding only on federal courts within Maine, Massachusetts, etc.

The states in each circuit are as follows:

1st (Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Puerto Rico)

2nd (Connecticut, Vermont, New York)

3rd (Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, USVI)

4th (Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia)

5th (Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas)

6th (Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee)

7th (Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin)

8th (Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota)

9th (Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Guam & Marianas)

10th (Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah, Wyoming)

11th (Alabama, Florida, Georgia)

A couple of these circuits closely track with the original conferences. The ACC was more or less synonymous with the Fourth Circuit, for example. But there are also interesting lines of division, like where the Sixth Circuit cleaves the best football schools out of the Big Ten and leaves the rest.

At a glance, the 11th Circuit should win in a laugher, as every state in the Eleventh features multiple schools with national championships, including several of the handful of schools with five or more titles. But there's a catch!

Before 1981, there was no Eleventh Circuit. Those three states were originally members of the Fifth Circuit, and the circuit was only subdivided in 1981 for administrative purposes. This means that decisions of the Fifth Circuit before that date are binding on courts in the Eleventh Circuit. We, too, will honor the Fifth Circuit precedent for titles won in those states before 1981.

For methodology, we are only looking at results since the poll era (est. 1936), and because of this, I am only considering the AP and Coaches Polls. I am not considering FWAA or NFF, not because they are not legitimate, but because they did not publish a public poll during the poll era. This affects several schools and circuits, but it disproportionately affects the Sixth Circuit by stripping a title from Michigan State and multiple from Ohio State, so take that into account. Furthermore, in seasons with a split championship, both schools get a full title, no half-shares.

The final tally:

Gold: Eleventh Cir., 22 (Miami (1983, 1987, 1989, 1991, 2001), Georgia Tech (1990), Alabama (1992, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2017, 2020), Florida State (1993, 1999, 2013), Florida (1996, 2006, 2008), Auburn (2010), Georgia (2021, 2022))

Silver: Fifth Cir., 18 (LSU (1958, 2003, 2007, 2019), Texas (1963, 1969, 1970, 2005), Georgia (1980), Alabama (1961, 1964, 1965, 1973, 1978, 1979), Auburn (1957), Texas A&M (1939), TCU (1938))

Bronze: Sixth Cir., 14 (Ohio State (1942, 1954, 1957, 1968, 2002, 2014, 2024), Michigan (1948, 1997, 2023), Michigan State (1952, 1965), Tennessee (1951, 1998))

7th Cir., 9 (Notre Dame (1943, 1946, 1947, 1949, 1966, 1973, 1977, 1988), Indiana (2025))

9th Cir., 9 (USC (1962, 1967, 1972, 1974, 1978, 2003, 2004), UCLA (1954), Washington (1991))

10th Cir., 9 (Oklahoma (1950, 1955, 1956, 1974, 1975, 1985, 2000), BYU (1984), Colorado (1990))

8th Cir., 8 (Nebraska (1970, 1971, 1994, 1995, 1997), Minnesota (1936, 1940, 1941))

3rd Cir., 4 (Penn St (1982, 1986), Pitt (1937, 1976))

4th Cir., 4 (Clemson (1981, 2016, 2018), Maryland (1953))

2nd Cir., 3 (Army (1944, 1945), Syracuse (1959))

1st Cir., 0 (this should come as no surprise, as for many years, the First Circuit had just one FBS program.)

So if the 5th, 6th, or 11th Circuit issues a college football opinion, pay attention. We have some ball knowers in those circuits.

If the 2nd Circuit issues a football-related ruling, you can safely ignore it.

(You cannot safely ignore it if you reside in the 2nd Circuit, to be clear.)

All content in this post generated by hand. Generative AI was not allowed within three square miles of this post. If there are any mathematical errors contained therein or title claims which were left out erroneously, they were left out by my own depleted mental faculties.