That's All Folks
The College Football Season has come to a close, let's take a look back.
The Film Room
Reviewing The National Championship and Significant Coach/Player movement since
Apologies for the delay, I’ve been in denial that the college football season is actually over.
First, to recap the natty: I was wrong on the over as Michigan was able to pop 2 big runs early and then were content to run the ball and play defense. Minus those two plays the first half was played pretty tight by both teams and we had a 1 score game at half. However, Michigan was able to lean on their run game and ended up with 303 yards on the ground to Washington’s 46. Hard to win a game when you get outgained by 6x on the ground. On top of that, Michigan’s defense suffocated Washington’s passing attack and kept Washington QB Michael Penix uncomfortable for most of the game. A pretty dominant performance by Michigan all around. And good on them for winning all year despite their coach being in and out of the picture, and all the other distractions. It’ll probably be hard for them to get rid of the asterisk a lot of folks will put on their season because of the scandal, but they looked impressive even after all of that came out. We’ll see what comes of the Connor Stalions spying scandal, but no word on punishments yet. Lots of rumors swirling that Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh is interviewing for an NFL job, so we will see if he sticks around in Ann Arbor to try to keep the Wolverines on top of college football.
In case you live under a rock, all time great, Alabama Head Coach, Nick Saban, has retired from coaching College Football at 72 years old.
I didn’t expect this to happen this year, but I did expect it in the next 2 or 3. It does make sense though - Saban is getting old, College Football landscape is going to continue to shift quite a bit over the next few years until it stabilizes with conference shakeups, playoff expansion, NIL regulation etc. So it probably is a pretty good time for Saban to hang it up and relax. Washington Head Coach Kalen DeBoer, fresh off his National Championship loss, was tapped to be the heir of the Crimson Tide program. Alabama was able to get this all squared away in a matter of days, meanwhile Iowa has been without an offensive coordinator for 12 weeks. Poor Washington fans though, they lost the natty, their Head Coach, and then half of their roster all in a week’s time. That’s going to be a tough transition to the Big10 next year. Back to Saban, Nick won 7 National Championships (2003 with LSU, and 2009, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2017, 2020 with Alabama). In his 25 years as a College head coach, his only losing season was his first at Alabama back in 2007 - the guy even coached at Toledo and Michigan State and kept those programs above water. He’s actually had a statue in Tuscaloosa since 2011, and following his retirement announcement Crimson Tide fans placed items around his statue like a shrine. I feel like that normally happens when someone dies, but nope that’s just SEC football. Someone actually made a list of the weirdest things on his shrine, including a bad of ice and bucket of pickles.
The GOAT of college football will surely be on our TV screens next fall making appearances at big SEC games and serving as an advisor to the Alabama program, I’m sure. Shoutout to the boys at TexAgs for having this, but below you can see all the coaching movement that has happened so far this offseason, potentially more to still happen after the spring, stay tuned. And as I was writing this, Jim Harbaugh of Michigan took the Los Angeles Chargers job to make his return to the NFL. So 3 out of the 4 Head Coaches that were in the playoff, are no longer with their schools. College football is ever changing!
The Warm Up
Some Content to get the blood flowing
Tweeted during the national championship, this guy must have had this one queued up as soon as Washington made the playoffs.
I actually tweeted about this same player in Week 5. Might be time for Cam McCormick to go pro in something other than sports.
SEC football, it just means more.
The Offseason
How We’ll spend it
While the NFL scratches my itch for football for the next couple of weeks, I look forward to getting back into the swing of things next fall. I’ll be sure to preview some big movement of players and coaches as we get close to August. I’ll make predictions about the 2024 season and, of course, get the betting models ready to bring you another winning season of bets. Some other milestones to look forward to for your teams:
National Signing Day (Feb. 7th) - a day where the decisions of 17 and 18 year old’s of where to go to college affects adult’s day
Spring Practice/Spring Game
A second portal window so your team can fill in missing spots on the roster
More general recruiting movement and early enrollees to get the future started
Enjoy having your Saturday’s back, get outside and enjoy the Spring and Summer weather and we’ll catch you in the Fall! Thanks for making Season 1 of Herbie’s Huddle a success, and welcome to the Team!
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