2025-26 College Football Thread

[Cobra Mgr]

How'd you like to travel all the way to Ireland, lose your season opener, and have your dad & big bro fist fighting in the streets like soccer hooligans after the game? Welcome to K-St starting QB Avery Johnson's weekend.

[Déjà Bru]

Not an impressive season debut by Arch Manning, the latest to be short-circuited to premature superstardom based on his surname.

[monkeyman576]

Arch Manning didn't have the best game today(170 yards, 1 TD, 1 INT), but it was against an elite defense. I'm guessing he has to have 3 or 4 subpar games to be knocked off the #1 draft pick spot.

[Cobra Mgr]

Arch sucked. Bottom line. Anyone not named "Arch Manning" would have been benched by the 4th quarter.

[Cobra Mgr]

FSU w/the upset of Bama. FSU looked faster then the Tide.

[Cobra Mgr]

If I'm not mistaken, Manning & Klubnick were the Heisman front runners, correct?

[Cobra Mgr]

The sports media really irks me. Everyone this morning is talking about the "unreal, unfair expectations" heaped on Arch Manning.........................

THEY ARE THE ONES FRIKKIN' RESPONSIBLE FOR THEM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Amazin69]

Originally Posted by Cobra Mgr

If I'm not mistaken, Manning & Klubnick were the Heisman front runners, correct?

Semi-. LaNorris Sellers was tied with Klubnick at 2nd-shortest odds heading into the weekend and has, I presume, now moved past him.

Not that he had a great game; two good drives and a lone bomb. But compared to what we did to the Hokies' Kyron Drones, easily good enough.

1-0! Tomorrow the world! (Or SC State. But whatever.)

[Amazin69]

I know I had a post linking to Matt Mitchell's various SEC videos so far this season. It seems to have been deleted.

I cannot comprehend why. What is going on here?

(I am being polite, but I am in fact very angry. Say what?)

[Cobra Mgr]

Originally Posted by Amazin69

I know I had a post linking to Matt Mitchell's various SEC videos so far this season. It seems to have been deleted.

I cannot comprehend why. What is going on here?

(I am being polite, but I am in fact very angry. Say what?)

Why? I love his SEC vids.

[Cobra Mgr]

Matt Mitchell SEC Roll Call Week 1

[Amazin69]

All I can think is that maybe I did the links (to his three preseason vids) and didn't click "Post Reply" or something stupid like that? But I'm pretty sure that didn't happen and there's no other open tab from this site lurking around my browser, so I don't have the foggiest. Weird.

Why are all the schools in little compartments? Did COVID make a comeback and I missed it? Strange decision, but the vid is still great.

ETA: Is there a board limit that prevents you from linking to multiple videos at once? Maybe I triggered some sort of bot by doing all three together? Grasping at straws, here, ngl.

[Cobra Mgr]

Originally Posted by Amazin69

All I can think is that maybe I did the links (to his three preseason vids) and didn't click "Post Reply" or something stupid like that? But I'm pretty sure that didn't happen and there's no other open tab from this site lurking around my browser, so I don't have the foggiest. Weird.

Why are all the schools in little compartments? Did COVID make a comeback and I missed it? Strange decision, but the vid is still great.

ETA: Is there a board limit that prevents you from linking to multiple videos at once? Maybe I triggered some sort of bot by doing all three together? Grasping at straws, here, ngl.

It could be the 1st one. I've done that myself a number of times.

[Amazin69]

Yeah, to paraphrase H.L. Mencken, nobody ever went broke by underestimating my "competence". Sigh.

Different subject: watching the Auburn-Baylor replay and this 98-yard TD kickoff return by Rayshawn Pleasant really reminds me how much I hate the current NFL abortion, by contrast.

[CONN CHRIS]

So, who's going to take the Pac 2 title home?

[Cobra Mgr]

Originally Posted by CONN CHRIS

So, who's going to take the Pac 2 title home?

Flip a coin.

[Déjà Bru]

Cobra, you are not going to like this article. Please avert your eyes.

From The Athletic:

For Bill Belichick’s debut, UNC came to party — but got a buzzkill instead

By Brendan Marks



CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — At least the party was fun, right?

Right?

It better have been, for what came after: North Carolina, high on nine months’ worth of Bill Belichick-induced hope, being completely humiliated, 48-14, by TCU in a prime-time Labor Day opener.

Not only is that the most points UNC has ever allowed in a season opener, it’s also the most points Belichick has ever allowed as a head coach.

“Look, they just outplayed us. They out-coached us,” said a red-faced Belichick from behind a postgame podium Monday night. “I mean, they were just better than we were tonight.”

That’s a tough truth to swallow, especially considering the larger circumstances. Ever since December, when the Tar Heels pushed their chips to the center on a 73-year-old who’d never coached a game in college, the spotlight has been on this one night. On B-Day — Belichick Day, the day when the six-time Super Bowl-winning head coach would signal a new era of football in Chapel Hill.

Which is why, understandably, UNC threw the pregame party to end all pregames. Everything, on 10, everywhere. Even on the fringes of town — in parking lots, on Franklin Street — you had fans tailgating in crevices and alleys, smoking cigars while sitting in baby blue picnic chairs, the soft thud of bean bags slapping against cornhole boards around every bend. Closer to campus, fraternity ragers spilled into the streets, while gigantic banners — like one that read “What the f— is a Horned Frog?” — hung in the background. And the soundtrack to it all? Dua Lipa’s “Levitating,” the pop star’s apt lyrics reverberating throughout fraternity court: “I can take you for a ride…”

Meanwhile, at He’s Not Here — one of UNC’s most popular bars, famous for its 32-ounce blue cups — liquid courage flowed freely hours before kickoff. “This is like the Duke game!” hollered one fan, barely able to move through the masses after the three empty cups in his grasp. Clearly, plenty of the season ticket-holders who signed up for the Belichick experience wound up here, elbow to elbow, marinating in pregame enthusiasm. Another late-arriving customer, seeing the beer line wrapping outside the bar and down a black metal staircase, had to talk himself into even attempting to buy a drink: “Lord, have mercy.”

By that point, two and a half hours before everything unraveled, the buzz had migrated to the Old Well, the iconic drinking fountain that serves as a UNC emblem. As part of Belichick’s push to elevate Tar Heels football, the coach said he wanted to bring back certain elements of the school’s football history — including the Old Well Walk, which originated under Carl Torbush in 2000. And there fans were, four-deep, walling off the space around the fountain, where buses would deliver North Carolina’s players and coaches. The only issue? Those buses arrived minutes before the designated 5:30 p.m. start time … leaving dozens of stragglers, from across a wide quad, late for the party.

Cue tens of sorority members, sprinting in sundresses and cowboy boots for a glimpse of the team.

The walk, as was designed, led the crowd to its final pregame launch point: Polk Place, UNC’s main quad and the site of the school’s new “Chapel Thrill” concert series. In some ways, a brief technical mishap worked to the Tar Heels’ advantage, as more and more fans flocked to a makeshift stage to hear country star (and former UNC linebacker) Chase Rice perform.

That crowd, more than any, provided a snapshot of modern-era UNC football. Plenty of CHAPEL BILL merch in the crowd — T-shirts, buttons, the works — but also a surprising amount of New England Patriots gear, fans of Belichick’s former team showing out for their old coach. Small clusters of students, almost apologetically proclaiming: “We’re really into football, but we just don’t know any of the players.” (And with 70 new names on Belichick’s first roster, nor should they.) Old-timers, too, in their worn Lawrence Taylor and Charlie “Choo Choo” Justice jerseys, mingling with the shiny-new Drake Maye and Omarion Hampton ones. And lastly, the curious, those who came to see the spectacle of Belichick, who could only stare with wide eyes at the sea of blue rolling across Polk Place.

As one said on the phone before the cell signal dropped out: “Mom, there are a lot of people.”

And then, hours later, there weren’t. The pregame light show, the fireworks, all that momentum swelling inside Kenan Stadium? It didn’t vanish in a flash, but rather, in gashes.

In a pick-six by starting quarterback Gio Lopez, 76 seconds after a UNC interception — the Tar Heels’ lone turnover forced all night — seemingly offered a glimmer of hope.

In two real-time hours without completing a single pass. In a 75-yard, untouched touchdown run by TCU back Kevorian Barnes on the first play of the second half.

In a scoop-and-score fumble recovery, during which Lopez injured his back, pushing the score to an overwhelming 41-7 margin midway through the third quarter.

That one, it turned out, was the final straw. The signal flare for fans to run to the exits, to get as far away from this place — from this nightmare — as possible.

“Fans were awesome. It was great energy in the stadium,” Belichick said. “We just didn’t do enough to keep it going. We’ve gotta play better for the energy to be sustainable.”

What began as a celebration, as a precursor of future success, could not have turned more sour. UNC waited nine months, and spent millions of dollars, for empty stands before the fourth quarter began. For loyalists who stayed until the final whistle, so few and far between, you could quite literally count them? (Unofficially 69 in the eastern end zone, by one reporter’s count.) The countless UNC dignitaries who made the pilgrimage back to Chapel Hill — Michael Jordan, Lawrence Taylor, Mia Hamm, Julius Peppers — couldn’t leave early, for optics, but buried their heads in their phones all the same.

Anything but what was right in front of them.

The official time of death — not just for this one game, but for the larger UNC hype machine — was 11:24 p.m., a whimper of an end to a day that once held so much excitement.

Minutes later, Michael Lombardi and Freddie Kitchens — the program’s $1.5 million general manager and $1.15 million offensive coordinator, respectively — silently entered an elevator, the first step in a long route back to the program’s football center (and, surely, a long night ahead of them). As Kitchens leaned against the railing, playcard still in hand, he could only exhale and turn quietly to Lombardi: “I don’t know.”

No response back.

All that awaited at the end of that five-story elevator ride? Crushed Michelob Ultra cans, and crushed dreams — of a supposed new era.

“There’s no shortcut to it,” Belichick said. “We just gotta work harder and do a better job. That’s all there is to it.”

[Cobra Mgr]

Originally Posted by Déjà Bru

Cobra, you are not going to like this article. Please avert your eyes.

From The Athletic:

Glad U brought this up............

Anybody who expected UNC to win more than 4 games while having the knowledge that a mediocre program had lost close to SEVENTY players on the roster either has never watched football or is a complete fool.

People that watch Chapel Hill & try their best to live in reality recognized 2025 would at best be a foundation year. From this rubble, their future hoped for empire would have to be built. BB said he wanted to create the NFL's 33rd team. Well why would an NFL team have 70 players plus staff who had never before operated together?

Only because they are an EXPANSION team.

That is what you saw Monday night. You have no idea what kind of players you have, what kind of system works best, which mix of players give you the maximum output until you play game 1. There is no chemistry. No cohesion. No feel. No familiarity. Just guys in uniform trying to figure things out as they go along.

(Not to mention TCU was vastly underrated. In this day and age, if you have a 9 win team that retains as many players as the Frogs did, they should have been considered a top 20, if not top 15 team for the season.

The disappoint for me wasn't the loss. Not even the blowout. As a life long UNC fan, I have been tired of seeing the Heels not looked coached. The Tar Heels have had good game planners. They just haven't had anyone that could teach players how to execute a game plan. It has been season after repeated season of unforced penalties, soft line play, zero pass rush, confused secondaries, lack of will, missing killer instinct and questionable pride. I expected it to take time & a flushed locker room to address those areas.

But the terrible tackling left me worried. I expected this staff to be drilling this patched up roster on the fundamentals. They might lose their one on one matchup, they may get shoved around, but they MUST have their mechanics solid. All I saw was Heel defenders hitting Toads 4 or 5 times before getting a whistle. Often the play ended after a TCU ballcarrier dragged 2 or 3 blue shirts an extra 2 or 3 yds.

I was embarrassed for them. It looked like walk ons from the student body vs scholarship football players. That can't happen. I expected BB to have those guys sound in that regard. They looked just like the defenses from Mack Brown & Larry Fedora.

UNCOACHED.

[Déjà Bru]

The downside of hiring Bill Belichick are the unrealistic expectations that his reputation has generated. Hence the "buzzkill". The anticipated upside is, of course, is that he is a coach who can "teach players how to execute a game plan". But first, he has to acquire the players to do so; that will take time.

Also, there is Belichick's transition from professional to semi-professional. Aside from a few UNC players that may benefit from NIL earnings, the rest are just playing the game to have fun, impress girls, or maybe pay for college. I wonder if Belichick can make this transition successfully.

[Cobra Mgr]

Originally Posted by Déjà Bru

The downside of hiring Bill Belichick are the unrealistic expectations that his reputation has generated. Hence the "buzzkill". The anticipated upside is, of course, is that he is a coach who can "teach players how to execute a game plan". But first, he has to acquire the players to do so; that will take time.

Also, there is Belichick's transition from professional to semi-professional. Aside from a few UNC players that may benefit from NIL earnings, the rest are just playing the game to have fun, impress girls, or maybe pay for college. I wonder if Belichick can make this transition successfully.

Actually, the expectations are a good thing. The program needed them. Keep in mind, even though the campus is known as liberal, the $ & the people who call the shots are still conservatives. And they are slow to recognize change on the horizon. As long as the basketball program was reaching Final 4's & at the top of the ACC, they saw no need to change course.

Now they see the SEC dominating everything and how football is the dog while every other sport is the tail it wags. But they needed something more to make them think they are going to get return from their investment. And that is where BB comes in. They now view football as more than a placeholder til Midnight Madness. That change in attitude has come about a decade too late, but at least it has arrived.

But UNC really needs the Belicheks to deliver. Remember, his son Steve is supposed to be the HC in waiting. The best thing that can happen to Tar Heel football is BB establishes the professional identity he promised & Steve's defense to become top rated by the end of 2026. Otherwise, then we can say this experiment is a failure.