Yahoo Finance Monday Measure: High-profile opt-outs could start trend, but championship weekend still looks like fun
Minnesota WR Rashod Bateman became the first high-profile player to opt out of the rest of the season when he said he’d be prepping for the NFL draft following the cancellation of the Gophers’ game against Wisconsin on Saturday.
Over the weekend, Bateman was joined by Texas tackle Sam Cosmi, LSU wide receiver Terrace Marshall Jr. and Florida State cornerback Asante Samuel Jr.
Cosmi made his decision to opt out and head to the NFL after Texas’ loss to Iowa State on Saturday. While UT is 5-3, the Longhorns are now eliminated from the Big 12 title race. With little to play for over the next two games plus a bowl, Cosmi decided to prep for the draft. He should be one of the first tackles taken in 2021.
Marshall’s team is simply playing out the string. The Tigers lost to Texas A&M on Saturday to drop to 3-4. LSU wasn’t competitive at all during the game, though Marshall ended his college career on a high note. He had 10 catches for 134 yards and a touchdown and will finish the season with 48 catches for 731 yards and 10 touchdowns in just seven games.
Marshall is the second big-name LSU wide receiver to opt out. Reigning Biletnikoff Award winner Ja’Marr Chase said before the season that he wouldn’t play at all to prep for the NFL draft. Chase could be the first receiver taken in the 2021 draft. And Marshall shouldn’t be far behind him.
Samuel — the son of former New England Patriots CB Asante Samuel — also said he was opting out of the season. The junior has 30 tackles and three interceptions in eight games as FSU has had its last two games postponed due to COVID-19.
It’s a little surprising that we haven’t seen more high-profile midseason opt-outs before the last week or so. But this could be the start of a trend as players smartly realize that playing games during a pandemic may not be worth risking any impact to their potential professional careers. We’ll see as the calendar flips to December if there are a lot of other players who decide to start prepping for the futures.
— Nick Bromberg
Championship Saturday is setting up to be really fun
Get ready for a championship Saturday like no other.
This upcoming Saturday would have been the championship weekend for all of college football in a normal year. This, as we all have come to experience over the past eight months, is no normal year.
Thanks to COVID-19, we have to wait a couple more weeks. And Dec. 19 is shaping up to be one fun day of college football.
The Big Ten announced Saturday morning that it would play its conference championship game at noon ET instead of in its traditional Saturday evening time slot. The move of the Big Ten title game along with the SEC’s shift to prime time means that we’re set for a Power Five title-game schedule that looks like this:
Dec. 18
Pac-12, TBD (Fox)
Dec. 19
Big Ten, noon ET (Fox)
Big 12, noon ET (ABC)
ACC, 4 p.m. ET (ABC)
SEC, 8 p.m. ET (CBS)
With the Big 12 out of the playoff picture, college football fans are going to get a chance to watch all three title games that will have playoff implications on Saturday. With the ACC and Big Ten games traditionally being played at the same time, that’s been impossible to do in recent years.
Oh yeah, there’s going to be a ton of other football too thanks to postponements due to COVID-19.
The Big Ten will have games scheduled for that day and the Pac-12 likely will too. SEC teams who had multiple games canceled may also play on Dec. 19 so they can play a full schedule and two ACC games are already scheduled for the day.
There could be 20 or more games over Dec. 18 and Dec. 19 if conferences push to make up as many games as possible.
It’s going to be a weird day seeing teams at the bottom of their conferences play on the same day as the title is decided. But again, this is a weird college football season. With it coming to a close, let’s all embrace the weirdness. And hope that we can safely and healthily get to the end of the season.
— Nick Bromberg
Kevin Sumlin era at Arizona has been a mess
It wasn’t that long ago that every Arizona game was must-see TV.
With Khalil Tate playing quarterback in Rich Rodriguez’s offense, the Wildcats were one of the most exciting teams to watch. Sure, the Wildcats were mediocre-at-best in Rodriguez’s final three seasons. But these days they aren’t even competitive.
Rodriguez was ousted amid claims of sexual harassment, and the school brought in Kevin Sumlin following his dismissal from Texas A&M. Things haven’t gone well. Tate’s production fell off a cliff in Sumlin’s first year, the Wildcats lost seven straight to close out Sumlin’s second season and now they are off to an 0-3 start in 2020.
Spanning the last two seasons, the program’s losing streak currently sits at 10 following a 27-10 loss to UCLA on Saturday. Grant Gunnell, the team’s starting quarterback, was lost to an injury early in the game and the offense struggled mightily, turning it over twice and finishing with just 300 yards of total offense.
It was the ninth double-digit loss for Sumlin’s team during the 10-game losing streak, and the Wildcats dropped to a miserable 2-11 on the road during Sumlin’s tenure.
Overall, the Wildcats are now 9-18 overall under Sumlin with just a 6-15 mark in Pac-12 play. And it’s not like the Pac-12 has been full of national title contenders in recent years. It’s been a league full of middle-of-the-road programs, and Arizona can’t even compete with them.
Worse, there’s little evidence that it’s going to get better.
Arizona ranks No. 10 in both total offense and total defense in the Pac-12, and there are very few players on either side of the ball that have shown much promise in 2020.
Arizona administrators have to be mulling pulling the plug on the Sumlin era, even after just three years. But would the school be willing to pay Sumlin’s reported $7.5 million buyout in a pandemic year?
— Sam Cooper
Making the case for Jamey Chadwell and Vanderbilt
A 41-0 loss to Missouri on Saturday capped off a 3-17 stretch over the last 20 games for Vanderbilt, and the school decided that it was time to move on from head coach Derek Mason.
Mason inherited a program coming off back-to-back Top 25 seasons under James Franklin, but could not build off of that rare stretch of success for the Commodores. Mason nearly lasted seven seasons in Nashville, but Vanderbilt fired him on Sunday to create the second head-coaching opening in the SEC, joining South Carolina.
Vanderbilt is not an easy job. Resources are significantly lacking compared to its SEC counterparts and there is very little history to fall back on. The fact that Mason — who exits with a 27-55 record — is the sixth-winningest coach in program history is evidence of that.
But there’s now a new administration in place that apparently has a bold vision for what Vanderbilt football can be. That will start with the hiring of a new head coach.
Various names are already floating out there as potential candidates. Notre Dame defensive coordinator Clark Lea, a Vanderbilt alum, makes sense. A young, energetic type like Charlotte’s Will Healy makes a lot of sense, too.
Competing in the SEC has traditionally been a tall task at Vanderbilt, so it might be in the school’s best interest to stray away from a conventional hire — especially when it comes to offensive philosophy. Would Vanderbilt consider hiring a coach that runs the option? If triple-option coaches like Navy’s Ken Niumatalolo or Tulane’s Willie Fritz aren’t appealing to the Vanderbilt brass, Coastal Carolina head coach Jamey Chadwell should be.
Chadwell is in his fourth year at CCU with three years as the Chanticleers’ head coach — one as interim in 2017 and the last two as the full-time head coach. Coastal has been one of the best stories of the 2020 season. The Chanticleers are 9-0 and have already wrapped up the Sun Belt East Division while putting up nearly 450 yards per game and 6.74 yards per play, a top-20 figure in the nation.
Chadwell would bring 11 years of head-coaching experience to Vanderbilt. More importantly, he would bring in one of the most innovative offenses in college football.
CCU’s offense operates out of the shotgun, has elements of the option, but is also full of RPO concepts and frequently features two running backs on the field at the same time alongside quarterback Grayson McCall. It’s a run-first offense, but McCall throws the ball plenty. While CCU averages 222 rushing yards per game, McCall is averaging 218 passing yards and has totaled 20 touchdowns and just one interception.
There’s nothing else like Chadwell’s offense in the SEC, and it would be a handful to prepare for on a weekly basis for opposing coaching staffs. He’s a Tennessee native, too, who played and coached at East Tennessee State before working his way through the ranks as a head coach at the Division II and FCS level before landing at Coastal Carolina.
The fit is there, and now it’s up to the Vanderbilt athletic department, led by Candice Storey Lee, to make it happen.
— Sam Cooper
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