Welcome to the wild and wacky world of college football 2024.
A world where:
Colorado coach Deion Sanders can blackball a member of the sports media covering his team and the administration is okay with it.
Players change schools as frequently as autumn leaves change colors. Thirty thousand enter the transfer portal every December.
Conferences expand with zero regard for common sense. Stanford and California are on the West Coast, the last time I checked. They belong to the Atlantic Coast Conference, which is largely spread among states on the East Coast.
Numbers mean nothing. The Big Ten has 18 members. Long the bastion of Midwest football, the conference now includes Oregon, Washington, UCLA and USC. The Big 12 has 16 members, the core being remnants of the old Big Eight and Southwest Conferences and newbies Colorado, Utah, Arizona and Arizona State.
Geography means nothing. Texas, for years a major player in the Southwest Conference, is a member of the Southeastern Conference now.
Tradition means nothing. The once-proud Pac 12 of icons USC, UCLA, Cal, Stanford and Washington is down to the Pac-2 — Washington State and Oregon State.
Thanks to medical redshirts and the extra COVID year, North Alabama wide receiver Takairee Kenebrew is playing his seventh season of college football. Seventh!
Players demand tens of thousands of dollars — in some cases millions — in name, image and likeness money from so-called collectives, and next year they will be able to collect a check directly from colleges themselves.
Oklahoma State slapped QR codes on the back of players helmets so fans could pledge support during games. The University of Connecticut has done the same to the surface at Rentschler Field in East Hartford. Gotta underwrite those collectives.
Wild and wacky might be understating the situation. It’s not just the behemoths in the Power Four conferences (Big Ten, Big 12, Southeastern and Atlantic Coast) that have shredded the old playbooks. Big changes are occurring right here in little Rhode Island.
Chris Merritt is the head football coach at Bryant University. He has been around the game for a long time. Five years at Bryant, 18 at Christopher Columbus High in Miami, a stint with Hamburg in the German Football League, and stops at two smaller college programs.
Last year, Bryant finished 6-5. Decent, right? Well, 53 Bulldogs left Merritt’s program after the season. Leading the exodus was superstar quarterback Zevi Eckhaus. He re-wrote the Bryant record book in his three years and took his game to Washington State, where he was one of 49 newcomers.
At Bryant, 64 new players were on the roster for the season opener at Delaware last week. I was stunned when I heard that.
“I know guys who replace 70 players,” Steven Ciocci told me last night. He is the offensive line coach and recruiting coordinator for Merritt. He has a difficult job.
“It’s a lot different now than it used to be,” he said. It used to be that Ciocci recruited high school kids to fill 95% of his roster. Now it’s no more than 75%. He keeps an eye on the transfer portal, the vehicle through which college athletes can change schools and teams.
“I know some guys in the Football Bowl Subdivision are 100% in the portal,” he said of the higher level of Division I.
Ciocci graduated six offensive linemen last spring. He had coached them since their freshman year in 2019. Toward the end of the 2023 season, he gathered them together. “I told them it was the end of an era,” he said.
Two could have returned, he added, “but they had jobs that pay them more than I make.”
An unusually large class of 30 seniors who had exhausted their eligibility partially explains the influx of new players this season. Of the remaining 23 who left, some would not have played much. Others sought a change of scenery and more opportunity to get on the field. Eckhaus, for example, is from California, so transferring to Washington State is a chance to play at a higher level closer to home.
Roster renewal is the new norm.
“It’s the nature of college football now to replace one third or one half of your roster every year. It’s insane compared to the way it used to be,” Ciocci told me.
The Wall Street Journal analyzed 2023 all-conference recognition for the Group of Five, smaller Division I conferences — American Athletic, Conference USA, Mid-American, Mountain West and Sunbelt — and found that 40% of honorees sought a new team for 2024. QB Dequan Finn, the 2023 MAC MVP, transferred to Baylor from Toledo.
There still is room for traditional recruiting of high-school football players who want to take the traditional road to a degree and a job that pays better than a recruiting coordinator.
“If a kid comes in and does not play but does everything right, we’ll keep him on scholarship” Ciocci said.
The Bulldogs committed a bunch of first-game errors during their 48-17 loss at Delaware, not surprising given all the new faces. “Three of my starting five started school in January,” Ciocci said.
Jarrett Guest, a graduate student and transfer from Coastal Carolina, started at quarterback and passed for 146 yards. Brennan Myer, a freshman from Frisco, Texas, also played and threw for 106 yards.
Bryant will play its home opener against Franklin Pierce Saturday.
At URI last Saturday night, QB Devin Farrell rewarded the capacity crowd of 5,770 at Meade Stadium with a 31-yard touchdown pass to Shawn Harris with 19 seconds to play for a 20-17 victory over Holy Cross. Farrell amassed 341 yards in total offense and is the Coastal Athletic Association offensive player of the week.
Making his first college start, Farrell completed 20 of 33 passes for 287 yards and rushed for a team high 54 yards. He is a redshirt sophomore who started his career at Virginia Tech. He spent last season backing up the veteran starter Kasim Hill. His last start was in high school.
Do not underestimate the importance of this victory. Rhody fumbled six times and lost three, kicked two field goals from the red zone, committed eight penalties and still found a way to win.
URI has 32 new players this season. Harris transferred from UMass.
The Rams will face a stiffer test Saturday when they play at Minnesota of the Big 10. Make that the Big 18! With apologies to the 1963 comedy classic, it’s a mad, mad, mad, mad college football world.
As usual, Brown will be the last of Rhode Island’s three Division I programs to kick off its season. The Bears will open Sept. 21 at Georgetown.
Cautious optimism reigns on the East Side. Quarterback Jake Wilcox, one of the best in the FCS ranks, needs to connect with new receivers in place of Wes Rockett and Graham Walker. Defensive back Isaiah Reed leads a unit that improved dramatically in 2023.
This is coach James Perry’s fifth season at his alma mater. It’s time for the Bears to challenge for the Ivy League title.
