A month from today, college football is back on the board.
Week 0 opens with Bill Belichick’s turbulent Tar Heels in Dublin, Ireland, against TCU, the same team that humbled them last season. And after a 39-day World Cup - the longest ever - plenty of sports fans are probably looking up and realizing fútbol Americano is almost here.
With all 32 NFL teams in training camp now, the college game gets the spotlight for a minute. So let’s sort through a few preseason basics, because this sport never really sits still, even when it pretends to.
For once, though, the changes are a little more manageable. Sponsored jersey patches are here, including Notre Dame’s, which might have cost $20 million.
The Playoff stays at 12 teams, even if the people with power want more. And North Dakota State, the FCS juggernaut that moved up, got a rule change that could put it in the FBS Playoff in Year 1.
The bigger-picture mess is still the same one hanging over the sport. College football is dealing with the player-compensation era it never properly prepared for, which leaves schools hoping Congress can step in. That’s a very different setup from the NFL, which handled this stuff long ago.
The coaching carousel and the transfer market have also kept the chaos humming. Lane Kiffin left Ole Miss during a Playoff run and took over rival LSU, then landed the No. 1 class in our transfer rankings. Stewart Mandel has the Tigers at No. 10 in his current top 25, so the pressure is obvious.
Texas Tech is in a different kind of spotlight. The Red Raiders will be without big-money transfer Brendan Sorsby because of that gambling issue, and the quarterback job now belongs to Will Hammond, who ranks No. 35 in our QB Tiers ranking.
As for the title race, the same familiar powers are still sitting near the top, but the sport has already shown it can veer off course in a hurry. Indiana winning a national title would no longer sound completely absurd.
This time, the Hoosiers were picked to finish behind Ohio State and Oregon in the Big Ten. In the SEC, Georgia and Texas are favored.
And Notre Dame hype is, for once, actually as high as people always say it is.
College football will be a blast once it starts, as it always is.
In other news, FIFA announced plans to sell a stake in a new company that will run its premier events, with some of the expected billions from private investors going to member federations. The move is already drawing backlash, including concern over the involvement of someone in President Trump’s extended family through the lead investment firm.
Kyle Shanahan said he was at fault in the July 14 car crash that left him with serious injuries.
The Eagles and Jalen Carter agreed to a four-year, $152 million contract extension, making him the highest-paid defensive tackle in league history.
Ole Miss sued two former football players who transferred to LSU for breach of contract.
Zinedine Zidane was announced as the new coach of the France men’s national team.
Elise Woodward will be Washington football’s new play-by-play announcer this season, and she is believed to be the first woman to hold that role in the FBS.
Malawi stunned 10-time reigning champion Nigeria in its first-ever Women’s Africa Cup of Nations game, a result that matters in a 2027 World Cup-qualifying tournament.
And then there was the squirrel in Detroit.
It happened Monday night at Comerica Park, and it was impossible to ignore. The squirrel hung around for most of an inning, showing real persistence.
A grounds crew member opened a door and tried to coax it out, while Orioles outfielder Leody Taveras made a brave attempt to fling it somewhere. Tigers play-by-play announcer Jason Benetti may have been the real winner, though, because he seemed made for the moment.
Tonight’s watch list starts with Yankees-White Sox at 7:40 p.m. ET on MLB Network. Chicago is still sitting atop the AL Central, but time is ticking on the trade deadline decision, and the Yankees already won the first two games of the four-game set.
At 8 p.m. ET on USA, the WNBA brings Dream-Wings, with Dallas at 18-9 and Paige Bueckers sitting fourth in the standings, while Atlanta is 16-10 and Angel Reese is sixth. Valkyries-Mercury follows at 10 on CNBC.
The MLS All-Star Game also goes at 8 p.m. ET on Apple TV. The usual caveats about all-star games apply, but it still has some appeal if you’re not locked into baseball or hoops.
One more Tour de France photo gallery is worth a look, and so is the latest MLB mailbag from Andy McCullough, which is packed with trade deadline notes. In the year since Emmanuel Clase’s pitch-rigging scandal broke, a majority of players in an anonymous poll said MLB has done enough to prevent a repeat. And in British swimming, Adam Ramsay-Peaty is dealing with a celebrity family feud while trying to navigate an evolved outlook on his sport.
Most-read yesterday: Pre-training camp NFL Power Rankings. More on that tomorrow.
In Other News...
Ole Miss Just Dragged Two LSU Transfers Into A Legal Fight
A pair of LSU transfers has landed in the middle of a legal mess that stretches back to their time at Ole Miss, where revenue-sharing agreements were signed before the move to Baton Rouge. The school has now filed suit over what it says are unpaid buyout obligations tied to those departures, turning a routine transfer into a contract dispute with real financial stakes.
Ole Miss says it laid out the sequence of agreements, portal entries, transfer dates and payment deadlines before going to court, and LSU has already declined a request to cover the buyout on the players behalf. The case adds another layer to the modern transfer era, where roster movement can carry consequences long after a player leaves campus and where the paperwork can matter as much as the on-field fit. [Read more 🡒]
LSU Coach Lane Kiffin Gets Candid About The Rule Named After Him
Lane Kiffin spent part of SEC Media Days talking about a proposal that carries his name, and he did so with little hesitation. The LSU coach addressed the bipartisan Protect College Sports Act, which includes the so-called Lane Kiffin Rule, a measure aimed at stopping coaches from leaving for another job before the season ends and preventing schools from hiring a coach until a teams schedule is complete.
Kiffin said he supports the idea and hopes it keeps future coaches and players from getting caught in the kind of mess he once faced with an in-season move from Ole Miss. He pointed to the NFL as a model for how the sport handles coaching movement, and also noted the recent shift in the transfer portal calendar as another attempt to clean up a related problem for players. [Read more 🡒]
Florida Suddenly Has A Real Fight On Its Hands For Elite Commit}
Maxwell Hiller has become one of the more watched names in the 2027 recruiting cycle, and for good reason. The five-star offensive tackle is a premier talent, ranked near the top of the class and already viewed as a centerpiece for Floridas future, which is why his pledge has carried so much weight for the Gators as they try to build momentum on the trail.
But the recruiting battle around Hiller is far from settled, and that is where things get interesting for LSU fans following along. He has left the door open to taking visits during the season, and with rival programs still pushing hard to make their case, Florida has real work to do if it wants to keep one of the classs most coveted linemen from turning into a full-blown flip chase. [Read more 🡒]