football

NOTRE DAME GOT JOBBED (And I Like It)

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After enduring two early season losses to Miami and Texas A&M, it became clear throughout the rest of the regular season that Notre Dame was6 one of the twelve best teams in college football. Before entering conference championship weekend, Notre Dame was ranked above the University of Miami (FL) by the College Football Playoff Selection Committee for what many believed was to be one available at-large berth to the tournament.

At the conclusion of Saturday’s conference championship games, the Selection Committee determined that Texas Tech’s ass-whooping of BYU (34-7) allowed Miami to leap past BYU in the rankings. Now, the committee was forced to look at Miami and Notre Dame for the final at-large berth: head-to-head. The Selection Committee was instructed to take another look at the game played on August 31st, where Miami beat ND, 27-24, at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami.

This game was the season opener for both schools. And now the Selection Committee was looking at a game played at the end of the summer as possibly the deciding factor to determine the final spot in the the CFP.

Based on other metrics both schools were near even. Miami’s two losses were to conference foes, SMU and Louisville. Notre Dame’s two losses were against Miami and CFP participant Texas A&M in the first two games of the season. ND ran the table after those two losses.

By noon on Sunday, the College Football Playoff Selection Committee had made the decison that Miami was deserving of the final at-large berth vaulting over Notre Dame. Neither ND or The U had played that weekend, but somehow BYU’s loss opened the door for the Canes to edge out the Fighting Irish. Miami would play Texas A&M in the first round of the CFP and Notre Dame would likely play BYU in the Pop Tarts Bowl.

If you have been around the block more than once, you realize that college football is a cesspool of backroom deals, good old boy handshakes and political machinations that would make Louis The XVI’s royal court look like a bunch of junior high amateurs in the use of deception and manipulation.

Notre Dame has chosen to be an an outlier in college football by retaining its status as an independent. (Notre Dame and UConn are the only true FBS independents.) Notre Dame has elected to use its brand and its large nationwide fan base to further the goals of Notre Dame. ND makes its own schedule (Though it does have an agreement with the ACC to schedule 5 ACC schools each year.), negotiate its own tv deal and retains every cent of that money, and when it plays in the postseason does not have to share a dollar with any fellow conference members.

Further, when Notre Dame enters into a scheduling agreement with another school it uses its brand as leverage to get the best possible deal. Notre Dame usually prefers a scheduling agreement where the Irish receive two home games and the opponent receives one. Or the Irish recieve a home game and the opponent will host the game at a neutral site. Exxamples of that are Notre Dame playing Boston College at Fenway Park and ND traveling to Met Life Stadium to take on Navy.

Notre Dame is the bully on the block and constantly seeks preferential treatment. For the 2026 season, Notre Dame Athletic Director Pete Bevacqua has already negotiated an agreement where the Fighting Irish are guaranteed a spot in the College Football Playoff if they finish ranked in the Top 12.

But when you are an outlier and you demand preferential treatment and strong-arm deals with other schools, enmity grows.

College football is made up of athletic conferences or alliances. Each alliance operates in the best interest of its member schools. Miami is a member of the ACC with 17 full-fledged member schools. Notre Dame, for its own convenience, joins the ACC for certain sports to raise that number to 18 schools.

If Notre Dame had been a member of the ACC, odds are it would have played in the ACC Championship game and secured an automatic berth.

But Notre Dame does not play well with others.

The Selection Committee is populated by folks who have served as athletic directors and coaches at major conferences. The University of Virginia’s Athletic Director Carla Williams is a member of the Selection Committee. UVA is a proud member of the ACC. (Who knows for how long?)

Does anyone believe that these stewards of college football are going to choose Notre Dame over Miami? If the ACC fails to earn a CFP berth, a Power 4 conference would see its value and marketabilty negatively impacted. The ACC is comprised of 17 schools in football. It has a large tv deal with ESPN. None of the stakeholders in college football want to see the value of the ACC diminished.

When you choose to go it alone and thumb your nose at the rest of college football, Notre Dame is not going to receive an invitation to the party. Join a conference like everyone else. (ND’s quest for superiority through exclusivity.) For a school who has not won a national championship since 1988, Notre Dame suffers from the delusion that it is still the largest program in the land. Georgia and Alabama might want to challenge the Fighting Irish on that conceit.

Miami pays protection money to the ACC (Miami will share CFP money with its ACC brethren.) and to the larger community of college football by being a member of the ACC. When Notre Dame is asked to pay protection money, it tells the friendly and well-dressed folks from the Big Ten or ACC to go fuck themselves. Well, this time ND fucked itself.

In a fit of pique and anger, Notre Dame has announced it will decline its bowl invitation proving once again that ND is all about ND. (The bowl system is in a perilous state.)

ND is an exclusive club of one. ND doesn’t need to be in a conference. Well, the Selection Committee just gave you the answer to that.

The next time we see Notre Dame football will be when the Irish visit Wisconsin on September 6th of 2026. The game will be played at Lambeau Field in Green Bay.

Lane Kiffin Is The Real Life Spaulding Smails

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It’s easy to pile on former Ole Miss head ball coach and now current LSU head ball coach, Lane Kiffin, but this fifty-year-old man has a way of oozing douchiness.

There is no other way to describe the face, the posture, the clothes, the trademark visor that on any man of a certain age raises the douche-o-meter, the public relations-inspired bon mots that clatter off his tongue that make any thinking college football fan do a double-take at the source of said comments, his need for prayer to make a decision that had already been made, and Lane Kiffin’s innate ability to conjure the image of Caddyshack’s Spaulding Smails whenever I think of his douchey presence on the old gridiron.

“Fifty bucks says the Smails kid picks his nose.” – Porterhouse

Lane Kiffin is not alone in college football. The sport is decorated with glad-handers and gamblers, nepo coaches and Neanderthals, savvy agents and college presidents lacking savoir faire, millionaire money-grubbing coaches and greedy parents pimping out their sons to the highest bidder. The game is a flim-flam scam and fans fund these slight-of-hand schemes that make coaches, agents, athletic directors, athletic conferences, television networks and now some teenage players a vast amount of money.

College football is rudderless. Whatever rules exist are made to be broken. Million dollar mega lawsuits are as much a part of the game as is hiring a graduate assistant coach at a barely able to survive salary. As much as society attempts to push college football into the future, the sport resolutely and fiercely clings to its past.

Pay players. Create a transfer portal that favors the players. And the immediate reaction from the administrators and coaches that govern the sport is: This is a completely lopsided relationship. Coaches can no longer bury a kid on the depth chart, because another program is going to give that kid an opportunity. A volatile system of supply and demand is now a real concept in college football.

A college football head coach can no longer act like Steve Spurrier and play golf every day. Just ask former Auburn head coach Hugh Freeze how his short game is.

The stakes are higher. The demand for wins are higher. And the money to be made is in the stratosphere, which creates more problems.

College football is now a sport where a team on the brink of a possible national championship-run and ranked 6th in the nation, Ole Miss, is losing its coach to a conference rival, LSU. The season isn’t over, the College Football Playoff has yet to begin and Ole Miss is hiring its defensive coordinator, Pete Golding, as Lane Kiffin’s permanent replacement. Golding will have to stave off attempts by Kiffin to immediately abscond with other Ole Miss assistant coaches to Baton Rouge. Golding will have to re-recruit his Ole Miss players to stay at Oxford and not take the Kiffin cash in Baton Rouge.

Ole Miss players, alums and fans have waited generations for something like this to happen and the reality on the ground is that Ole Miss’s national championship aspirations have been cut off at the knees. How does this happen?

How does Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), with ten conferences and 136 schools, have no rules in place to prevent a circumstance such as this from happening? The majority of players are now given one transfer portal a year, that runs from January 2nd thru January 16th, to decide whether to stay or go.

Coaches are bound by nothing. If Louisiana’s governor, LSU’s new school president and new athletic director show up to Casa Kiffin with a $91 million-dollar contract for seven years, which they did; that’s going to buy a lot of purple and gold visors (Lane Kiffin ain’t paying for a visor.) and the Kiffin family is hopping on a private jet to Baton Rouge — only days after a victory in the Egg Bowl — to be anointed the saviors of LSU football.

Kiffin will now be the second-highest paid head coach in college football with an annual salary of $13 million dollars. Only Georgia head coach Kirby Smart is above Kiffin on the coaching salary pedestal.

The Bama Boys: Kirby & Lane

The Kiffin Buyout:

If LSU fires Kiffin without cause, it would owe him 80% of his remaining salary, which would be paid out in monthly installments through 2032. The deal does not include any mitigation or offset clauses that would reduce the cost if Kiffin got another job, fully guaranteeing his compensation. LSU would not have to pay him if he was fired for cause. – From nola.com

The good old boys at LSU sure don’t care about handing away another large chunk of change if Kiffin fails with the Tigers. Fifty million to Brian Kelly apparently didn’t make anyone blink. And then in a few years — it could be two years with the crazy nature of college football — LSU might be on the hook for another monster buyout to Kiffin.

The money is absolutely astonishing and the terms of the buyout packages — favoring Kelly and Kiffin — are similar to what Putin is looking to leverage from Ukraine. Kiffin’s agent, Jimmy Sexton, should give a tutorial to Putin.

What’s even more astonishing is that LSU appears to routinely move the douche-o-meter with its most recent head football coach hirings:

— Ed Orgeron

— Brian Kelly

— Lane Kiffin

That’s hard to compete against.

Right now, Lane Kiffin is the face of college football. Let’s just say that isn’t necessarily a good thing for the sport, but no one seems to care or has the power to rein in a cluster fuck of a sport.

College football is inhabited with a cavalcade of Spaulding Smails wannabes.

Lane “Spaulding Smails” Kiffin