Unlikely turnarounds, keeping the faith and the enduring appeal of bad college football
JERRY KILL CONSIDERS himself something of a Mr. Fix-It for programs in need of a serious overhaul, the college football equivalent of an HGTV host who must convince an overwhelmed couple that the crumbling mess they just took out a mortgage to buy can, with a little hard work and the right crew of contractors, become a dream home. He’s renovated places like Northern Illinois and Minnesota before, and he likes the reputation.
Still, when Kill took the job of head coach at woeful New Mexico State last year, it didn’t seem like a renovation job. More like a dare.
“I had coaches tell me I was crazy,” Kill said.
The concern was well-founded. In the previous 60 years, the Aggies made it to exactly one bowl game. The budget, facilities and fan engagement were abysmal. The team was bad — going 3-9 or worse nine times since 2008 — and recruiting to New Mexico was difficult. There were plans to join Conference USA, but at the moment, New Mexico State was muddling through as an independent.
“I was told there’s no way to win there, and this was the worst program in the country,” Kill said. “I thought, ‘Hey, those are the kinds of challenges I like.'”
The funny thing is, Kill isn’t alone. In college football, perhaps more than any other sport, there’s something inexorably alluring about the truly awful. Sure, most fans wouldn’t invest their careers in restoring New Mexico State the way Kill has, but every week, thousands of them invest a few hours into watching — dare we say, enjoying? — truly bad football in the hopes of seeing a miracle unfold or, at the very least, witnessing failure in the most interesting way possible.
Call it bad football, ugly football, sickos football — whatever the name, its charm is undeniable in a way that simply isn’t true of nearly any other form of entertainment. Yes, the cultural zeitgeist might occasionally stumble upon William Hung or Right Said Fred, but those are enjoyed with a measure of ironic detachment. And sure, sports fans have their butt fumbles and, well, pretty much the entire history of the Detroit Lions, but those are as sad as they are funny.
Bad college football, however, is something akin to cult classic movies of the “so bad they’re good” variety, enjoyable on their own merits once you buy into the central conceit. Whether it’s Patrick Swayze earnestly insisting “pain don’t hurt” in “Roadhouse” or Butch Jones announcing his awful 2017 Tennessee Volunteers won the “championship of life,” the line between ridiculous and sublime is effectively nonexistent.
At its heart, the joy of watching bad college football is rooted in the same passion that drove Kill to take the New Mexico State job. For Kill, turning abject failure into something approaching coherence is actually fun. That’s more or less the same reason so many fans tune in for Tuesday night MAC-tion or Pac-12 After Dark. There’s joy in finding something awful and sticking with it long enough to see what happens next because, particularly in college football, the possibilities seem endless. And if, against all odds, something magical does happen, we can say we knew it all along.
Kill’s dream home is still in the early stages of construction, but the job has been unquestionably rewarding. Walls are starting to go up. The foundation has been laid, and he’s starting the frame. He can see the progress.
“Everybody wants to see an underdog get going,” Kill said. “And they’ll watch to see if it can be sustained. You know, it takes a little time to build a house, and we’re planning to build a big one.”
FOR CONNOISSEURS OF bad college football, 2022 has been a revelation.
Think back to the opening week of the season, when Iowa defeated South Dakota State 7-3 on the strength of a field goal, two safeties and an unwavering commitment to avoiding forward progress. It was riveting. At nearly the exact same time, North Carolina and Appalachian State combined to score 62 points in the fourth quarter of their game. Every series was more ridiculous than the last. It was can’t-miss TV because of so many can-miss tackle attempts.
We watched Texas A&M collapse under the weight of Jimbo Fisher’s playbook, Iowa punt its way into the hearts of a nation and Nebraska play so horribly the Huskers even cursed the teams who beat them. We watched TCU keep its bowl hopes alive in what amounted to a game of chicken against the play clock. And those were just the name brands who rewarded us with sicko football performance art.
On the flip side, we had some truly amazing Cinderella stories, too. Three of the four worst teams during the decade from 2012 to 2021 made a bowl this year. The worst team in four of the Power 5 leagues over the previous decade made bowls. Duke, Southern Miss, Rice, Bowling Green and Georgia Southern (combined 14-34 last year) are all in bowls, too. Tulane (2-10 last year) is playing in a New Year’s Six game. It’s been a truly incredible run from utter despair to, well, the upper end of mediocrity, at least.
So why is this all so oddly exciting?
Matthew Stohl is a professor at the University of Montana who explored the paradox of enjoying bad films in his book, “Why It’s OK to Like Bad Movies,” and he sees similar logic in the appreciation of bad football.
First, Stohl said, there’s a critical formula involved in the process, whereby the cost of production must far outweigh the cost of consumption. Movies — even the really bad ones — require a lot of resources to produce. The creators put real effort into making them, even if they turned out horribly. But watching a bad movie? That’s a mere 90 minutes of time for the viewer. It’s a low-cost form of entertainment. The same is true in college football. The games have genuine stakes for the programs involved, but for the fans, it can be a harmless guilty pleasure. If UConn wins or loses by 50, it costs the fan nothing more than a few hours of time.
The second necessary ingredient is the opportunity for chaos. This is where college football truly shines. Why does a movie so utterly incoherent as “The Room” have such a wide audience? Because every scene is somehow a non sequitur. Go back and watch the fourth quarter of that UNC-App State game. It’s the same thing — utter ridiculousness and zero continuity.
“Even the worst NFL isn’t really that bad,” Stohl said. “In college football, there’s so much more chaos and variance.”
Indeed, the best NFL team of all time (say, the 2007 New England Patriots) was only about 36 points per game better than the worst NFL team of all time (say, the 1990 Patriots). This year, Georgia was at least 36 points per game better than 18 college teams. Guys with NFL aspirations play on the same field as guys hoping to start a hedge fund in a few years. The opportunity for chaos is limitless.
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Weber State is on the wrong end of the record books as it surrenders four safeties on errant special teams snaps.
From there, Stohl said, we can split “so bad it’s good” into two categories.
The first is the point-and-laugh group, which typically sees a once-powerful figure stripped of its cache. Think of the movie “Cats,” which was based on a long-running Broadway musical, had a massive budget and an all-star cast and yet, it was horrendous. In college football parlance, it was this year’s Texas A&M team.
The second is the lovable underdog story, the misfit auteur working on a shoestring budget, trying and often failing miserably, but at least doing it in a memorable way. Think “Plan Nine From Outer Space” or UMass‘ entire FBS history.
And tying it all together is a sense of community. Why do fans line up for midnight showings of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” or quote lines from “Point Break” in casual conversation? The same reason the 2018 Cheez-It Bowl was arguably the pinnacle of college football Twitter. It says we’re all in on the same joke — a joke that has long since ceased to be funny and, instead, evolved into a sort of personal identity. Bad football brings us together.
Think of it in those terms — applauding sincere effort, craving the unexpected, reveling in upended power dynamics, bonding over shared misery — and bad college football is something more than just sport. It’s the very heart of being an American.
Or, maybe it’s just funny to see how many times Iowa can punt in one game.
JORDAN EDMONSON AND George Smith have never met in real life, but they’ve become something like the dynamic duo of bad football over the past two seasons.
The two first crossed paths in 2020 on the social media app Discord, where groups of fans would chat about games during the course of a Saturday slate. Edmonson went to Dartmouth and, for grad school, North Texas, while Smith once considered himself “the internet’s only ULM fan,” and since they were so familiar with relatively bad football programs, they actually loved watching smaller schools and bad games.
“We found ourselves watching things like UTEP and New Mexico State and we were having so much fun with those games,” Edmonson said.
From there, the Sickos Committee was born.
The name comes from the popular meme, in which a man wearing a shirt reading “Sickos” peers through a window, while chanting, “Yes … Ha ha ha … Yes!” It’s an avatar for Edmonson, Smith and their now nearly 80,000 Twitter followers’ obsession with bad football — or, as Smith calls it, “unconventionally appealing football.”
Yes, Smith knows this makes him sound like a hipster, but there’s nothing ironic about the Sickos, he said. The goal is to give a little shine to the teams that never quite muscle their way into the spotlight on their own.
“Our motto here is all football is good football,” Smith said. “This is not something to punch down. We do the meme thing when someone does something silly, but we’re trying to find joy in [the ridiculous] and — like the Iowa fans really embraced us.”
Ah, yes, Iowa — a team that found new ways to not score points on a weekly basis. The Hawkeyes were an absolute delight.
To say there is genuine excitement for Iowa’s date with Kentucky in this year’s TransPerfect Music City Bowl would be a massive understatement. The Hawkeyes’ hapless offense will face off against a Kentucky team that was held to 21 points or less in six of its past eight games — and both teams will play without their starting quarterbacks. The over/under is currently 31, and even that seems like a long shot.
Of course, any true fan of sickos football can tell you the Music City Bowl has a long way to go to eclipse the biggest train wreck in bowl history.
Jason Benetti called the 2018 Cheez-It Bowl for ESPN and he struggles to decide his favorite moment. On one hand, TCU’s sports information director got called for a penalty, “and that should be the most ridiculous thing that happens in a game,” Benetti said. But then how can he overlook the fact that two — two! — interceptions were overturned because the quarterback was beyond the line of scrimmage when he threw the pass?
Oh, and the game still had nine interceptions.
At the end of regulation, Cal and TCU were tied at 7. Of course this game needed overtime.
Benetti said he’s used to getting texts from a few friends during games, “but by the end of this one, like half my phonebook had texted me asking, ‘What the hell was that?'”
Benetti chalked it up to a thesis he once heard on an episode of “This American Life” titled “Fiasco.” It states that at the beginning of a performance, the audience is rooting for the performers. They want a good show. But as more and more things go wrong, a Rubicon is crossed, and soon, the audience is simply rooting for more chaos.
The Onion didn’t design the Sickos meme for this game, but it fits perfectly.
And here’s the thing Benetti has realized about that game — and about the genuine love of bad football. It’s a contradiction that feels natural on a college campus. When we’re young, we can thumb our noses at authority and defy the tropes of everyday life and do something dumb just for laughs and never give a second thought to the larger repercussions. After college, the real world narrows our focus and insists we strive toward success.
Bad college football, Benetti said, isn’t just bad. It’s subversive, and it offers a small taste of a time when we were too.
SOMEWHERE DEEP WITHIN the bowels of Bottom 10 Headquarters, past the cardboard cutout of Charlie Weis, the shattered remnants of the Civil ConFLiCT trophy and the boxes of Florida State‘s unused turnover backpacks, Ryan McGee has been studying awful college football for — well, it’s hard to keep track of time after sifting through UMass game tape. It’s been a while though.
McGee authors ESPN’s weekly Bottom 10 rankings, which rewards — is that the right word? — the worst 10 teams in the country for their ongoing efforts to escape their miserable lots in life. It is, he swears, an act of love.
Well, maybe not for places like Nebraska or Texas A&M. They’re more like the jocks who are forced to play Dungeons & Dragons with the AV Club kids. They’ll learn to love it, but those initial weeks are uncomfortable, to say the least.
For everyone else, however, there’s a strange honor in being part of the Bottom 10. Anyone can have a bad season, after all, but 4-8 is forgettable, while 1-11 is an all-out, hair-on-fire joyride. There’s a real logic in the notion that, if you’re going to be bad, at least be bad enough to be interesting.
Cam Warner has been a Kansas fan his entire life, and he’s all too familiar with the Bottom 10. For more than a decade, it was home. Was he happy about it? It’s complicated.
“Even just seeing Kansas on a list for being bad was better than not being on anything,” Warner said, “because it’s recognition. It’s seeing what you identify with out in the public, and I think that’s always cool — like, I identify with that, with being one of the Forgotten Ones. I mean, I think about Bowling Green more than I think about Wake Forest.”
(Note to Dave Clawson, who coached at both of those schools: Warner’s examples are purely his own, and any and all complaints should be directed to him.)
To be truly at the bottom — rock bottom — offers a lot of freedom to accept failure and find joy in even the smallest success.
Once, in the 2015 opener against South Dakota State, Kansas flubbed an attempt to spike the ball and stop the clock on a potential game-tying drive because the center snapped the ball over the quarterback’s head, and the QB’s knee touched the ground as he recovered the errant snap.
It was misery — but it was memorable.
Twice during Kansas’ decade of misery, the Jayhawks managed to knock off big, bad Texas.
Those wins were memorable because of all the misery that preceded them.
The enjoyment of college football isn’t measured linearly. It’s actually a circle, whereby the distance between abject failure and transcendent joy can be covered by just one small step.
McGee remembers watching New Mexico State play Idaho in 2015, when the Aggies were riding a 17-game losing streak — the nation’s longest at the time. New Mexico State, leading 55-48, survived a final Idaho drive when a Vandals pass was deflected by one defender then intercepted by another, who used his feet to corral the pick. It was sheer lunacy.
After the game, at nearly 2 a.m. on the East Coast, McGee’s phone rang. It was the Aggies’ sports information director with a message.
“You need to know,” the SID said, “that as we were celebrating in the locker room, I had a player ask me, ‘Do you think this gets us out of the Bottom 10?'”
WARNER GAINED FAME when a camera caught him in the stands during another ugly Kansas loss in 2017. He was holding a sign — white paper with three words printed on it: I am sad.
This is the part of bad football no one likes to talk about. It may be fun or exciting or hilarious for the casual observer, but for those who live with it week after week, year after year, it is also a little sad. It is sad because, for some small group of die-hards, Stohl’s formula is off. The cost of consumption is actually quite high. They’re bought in. They have hope. They’re Charlie Brown thinking maybe this time, Lucy won’t pull the ball away at the last second.
Warner’s moment of infamy only told half the story, after all. He had a second sign, too, on which he’d printed a different message: I am happy. He planned to hold that one up when Kansas made a big play. Poor fool.
If that’s the burden for fans, it can feel like an absolutely crushing weight for the coaches and players, UConn athletics director David Benedict said.
“[Head coach] Jim [Mora] came in and changed the mindset of our student-athletes and instilled a confidence and an expectation on how they have to work to be successful,” Benedict said. “That’s one of the most difficult things to do in coaching. When you come into a program that hasn’t won for a decade, it’s tough. It’s really tough.”
And yet, sometimes the hope is rewarded. Sometimes, the stars align. Sometimes bad football is just the long, grueling precursor to something better.
This season, ESPN’s College Gameday came to Lawrence, Kansas.
This season, Tulane is headed to the Goodyear Cotton Bowl.
This season, UConn won six games — a total Benedict fully believed could happen, “even if it might’ve seemed delusional.” He now views this as just a starting point.
“It’s easy for people on the outside to crush your program when you’re not having success,” Benedict said. “But the bottom line is it was a hard program to root for over the past decade, but that’s what’s so fun right now.”
At New Mexico State, Kill was more subdued in his optimism. Six wins never crossed his mind. In fact, he set eight goals for his team — things like reliability, accountability and respect for authority that he had displayed on the video board during every practice. None mentioned winning.
Still, on his first day at New Mexico State, Kill told his players to practice celebrating. It must have sounded like dialogue from “The Room,” completely detached from the plot. But for Kill, it was the only way to start a new story.
“The first day I took the job, I made them take a victory lap,” Kill said. “Because every time we win, you’re going to take a victory lap and thank the fans. So we practice it.”
A funny thing happened after that. New Mexico State started winning — six of its last eight games to end the 2022 season. The Aggies will play in a bowl, just their second since 1960. And their fans — the ones in Las Cruces and the ones who’d watched out of morbid curiosity — can finally take a victory lap, too.
The 2024 World Series ended with the Los Angeles Dodgers winning the championship in a stunning comeback in Game 5, with Walker Buehler the unlikely pitcher to close out the 7-6 win over the New York Yankees. First baseman Freddie Freeman was handed the World Series MVP award for his record-tying 12-RBI performance.
But that doesn’t tell the full story of everyone who played a starring role this October — a postseason that featured a record six grand slams, among other wildness. So, to honor the best of the entire postseason, we’ve created our first MLB All-October Team.
From wild-card-round sensations to World Series heroes, here are the players our ESPN MLB expert panel voted as the best of the best at every position along with some award hardware for the brightest stars of October.
2024 All-October Team
Catcher: Kyle Higashioka, San Diego Padres
Why he’s here: To be honest, it wasn’t a great playoffs for catchers — they hit just .184/.254/.310. Higashioka is the one catcher who did hit, belting three home runs and driving in five runs in the seven games the Padres played.
Honorable mention: Will Smith, Los Angeles Dodgers
1B: Freddie Freeman, Los Angeles Dodgers
Why he’s here: Freeman didn’t have an extra-base hit and drove in just one run in the first two rounds of the playoffs as he tried to play through the severely sprained ankle he suffered at the end of the regular season. He didn’t even play in two games of the NLCS and required hours of physical therapy before each game just to get on the field. But the five days off before the World Series clearly helped, and he homered in the first four games, including his dramatic walk-off grand slam in Game 1 that will go down as not only the signature World Series moment of 2024 — but a World Series moment for the ages.
Honorable mention: Pete Alonso, New York Mets
2B: Gleyber Torres, New York Yankees
Why he’s here: Torres had a solid October as he heads into free agency, although he had little competition here. Indeed, second basemen collectively hit just .219 with three home runs the entire playoffs — two of those from Torres — and drove in 24 runs, with Torres driving in eight himself. He had three multihit games and scored five runs in five games in the ALCS, while also taking walks to help set the table for Juan Soto.
Honorable mention: Brice Turang, Milwaukee Brewers
3B: Mark Vientos, New York Mets
Why he’s here: Max Muncy set a record when he reached base 17 times in the NLCS, including a single-postseason-record 12 times in a row, but he went hitless in the World Series. Vientos, meanwhile, had a stellar first trip to the postseason, hitting .327/.362/.636 with five home runs and 14 RBIs in 13 games. That followed a breakout regular season in which he posted an .837 OPS with 27 home runs in just 111 games. He looks like he’ll be a fixture in the middle of the Mets’ lineup for years to come.
Honorable mention: Muncy, Los Angeles Dodgers
SS: Tommy Edman, Los Angeles Dodgers
Why he’s here: Edman was an under-the-radar pickup at the trade deadline, in part because he was still injured and hadn’t yet played for the St. Louis Cardinals. Most of Edman’s starts came at shortstop, especially after Miguel Rojas was injured in the NLDS, but his bat got him here. Edman was the NLCS MVP after hitting .407 with a record-tying 11 RBIs in the series. He had started at cleanup just twice in his career but was slotted there twice against the Mets, driving in seven runs in those two games. Then he went 2-for-4 in each of the first two games of the World Series, including a home run in Game 2, and finished the Fall Classic hitting .294/.400/.588 with six runs.
Honorable mention: Francisco Lindor, New York Mets
OF: Mookie Betts, Los Angeles Dodgers
OF: Juan Soto, New York Yankees
OF: Enrique Hernandez, Los Angeles Dodgers
Why they’re here: Betts entered this postseason in a 3-for-38 postseason slump going back to the end of the 2021 NLCS — and it initially looked like it would be more of the same when he went 0-for-6 the first two games of the NLDS, including a robbed home run courtesy of Jurickson Profar. Everything turned in Game 3 when Profar almost robbed him of another home run — but didn’t. After that, Betts was in the middle of most of the Dodgers’ big rallies, hitting .321/.394/.625 with four home runs and 16 RBIs over the Dodgers’ final 14 playoff games.
Soto’s at-bats spoke for themselves: He never seemed to have a bad one. His big at-bat was the three-run home run in the 10th inning of Game 5 of the ALCS to send the Yankees to the World Series. Getting intentionally walked twice while batting in front of Aaron Judge speaks to Judge’s struggles, yes — but also to how locked in Soto was all postseason. He finished the postseason slashing .327/.469/.633 with 4 home runs, 9 RBIs and 14 walks in 14 games.
Hernandez actually began October on the bench, but we’ve seen him perform big in the postseason before, and he stepped up when Miguel Rojas was injured in the NLDS. Hernandez homered in the Dodgers’ 2-0 victory to close out the Padres in the NLDS, had a big two-run home run against the Mets in Game 3 of the NLCS and got the series-turning five-run rally against the Yankees in Game 5 started with a leadoff single in the fifth as well as the series-winning rally in the eighth with another leadoff base hit. Overall, he hit .294/.357/.451 with 11 runs and six RBIs.
Honorable mentions: Steven Kwan, Cleveland Guardians; Teoscar Hernandez, Los Angeles Dodgers; Fernando Tatis Jr., San Diego Padres
DH: Giancarlo Stanton, New York Yankees
Why he’s here: The Yankees were often a two-man show in the postseason, just like they were in the regular season — except it was Soto and Stanton, not Soto and Judge. Stanton blasted seven home runs throughout the playoffs, including in the final three games of the ALCS (earning MVP honors) and in Games 1 and 5 of the World Series. He finished the playoffs hitting .273/.339/.709, and those seven homers are the most in a single postseason in Yankees history.
Honorable mention: Shohei Ohtani, Los Angeles Dodgers; David Fry, Cleveland Guardians
SP: Gerrit Cole, New York Yankees
SP: Tarik Skubal, Detroit Tigers
Why they’re here: Certainly, it seems as if the status of the starting pitcher in the postseason continues to decline — although, that doesn’t mean they’re not important. There were certainly some stellar individual outings along the way: Corbin Burnes allowed one run in eight innings (but lost 1-0) for the Baltimore Orioles, Philadelphia Phillies ace Zack Wheeler allowed one hit in seven scoreless innings (but that would be his only start) and the Padres’ Michael King fanned 12 to beat the Atlanta Braves in the NLDS. Skubal had two scoreless starts against the Houston Astros in the wild-card series and Cleveland Guardians in the ALDS, confirming his status as one of the best in the game — or maybe the best, as his soon-to-be AL Cy Young Award will attest.
Cole was really the one consistent starter throughout the postseason, making five starts with a 2.17 ERA. Unfortunately, that ERA doesn’t register the five unearned runs from the final game of the World Series when the Yankees’ defense turned into a comedy of errors — including Cole himself opening up the floodgates by failing to cover first base to get what would have been the inning-ending out.
Honorable mention: Walker Buehler, Los Angeles Dodgers; Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Los Angeles Dodgers; Sean Manaea, New York Mets; Seth Lugo, Kansas City Royals
RP: Luke Weaver, New York Yankees
RP: Blake Treinen, Los Angeles Dodgers
Why they’re here: It also wasn’t the best of postseasons for closers — not even great ones. The Guardians’ Emmanuel Clase allowed five earned runs all regular season — and then eight in the playoffs. Milwaukee Brewers closer Devin Williams blew that wild-card game against the Mets. All-Star Jeff Hoffman lost two games for the Phillies. Weaver, however, was the one consistent late-game performer and was great while often pitching more than one inning. He posted a 1.76 ERA across 15⅓ innings. Who knows how the World Series ends if Yankees manager Aaron Boone keeps Weaver in the game in the 10th inning of Game 1. (Weaver had thrown just 19 pitches.)
Treinen, meanwhile, capped his comeback season — he had missed almost all of 2022 and then all of 2023 — with a 2.19 ERA across 12⅓ innings, winning two games and saving three others. In the World Series clincher, he recorded seven outs and got out of a two-on, no-out jam in the eighth inning to preserve the Dodgers’ 7-6 lead before handing the ball to Buehler to close out the ninth.
Honorable mention: Cade Smith, Cleveland Guardians; Michael Kopech, Los Angeles Dodgers; Beau Brieske, Detroit Tigers
All-October Award Winners
October MVP: Freddie Freeman
Pitchers of the month: Gerrit Cole, Walker Buehler (tie)
Best October introduction: Mark Vientos
Clutch performer: Freeman
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Pete Thamel, ESPN
SMU quarterback Kevin Jennings has been medically cleared for the top-20 clash with Pittsburgh this weekend and will start for the Mustangs on Saturday night, coach Rhett Lashlee told ESPN.
Jennings has been described as being among a “bunch of beat-up guys” by Lashlee and was listed as questionable heading into the game. His injury has not been disclosed. He required medical clearance to play Saturday night, sources had told ESPN earlier in the week. That clearance came late this week, Lashlee said.
Jennings is 5-0 as a starter this season for No. 20 SMU, which hosts a key matchup against No. 18 Pitt. Jennings is 6-1 in his career as a starter and has emerged as the engineer of one of the ACC’s most dangerous offenses.
He has thrown for 1,594 yards with 10 touchdowns and five interceptions this season. He completed 21 of 27 passes in a road win at Louisville and threw for 322 yards in a win at Stanford. Jennings has also run for 321 yards and three touchdowns.
Both quarterbacks in Saturday’s game had some ambiguity around their status. Pitt’s Eli Holstein was also cleared late in the week, coach Pat Narduzzi announced on his radio show Wednesday.
Both teams are undefeated in ACC play, as Pitt enters 7-0 overall (3-0 ACC) for the first time since 1982. SMU is 7-1 overall (4-0 ACC), with its only loss coming early in the year to undefeated BYU.
Jennings took a hit that Lashlee has called “a real shot” during SMU’s game at Duke on Saturday night. He threw three interceptions in the 28-27 SMU win.
In ACC play, SMU’s offense ranks No. 3 in scoring with 36.0 points per game. The Mustangs also rank third with 477.3 yards per league game.
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Jake Trotter, ESPN Senior Writer
Jack Daniels had never witnessed a catch like it.
The South Florida high school coach of 35 years was playing Chaminade-Madonna — and future Ohio State wide receiver Jeremiah Smith — in the playoffs.
“They were already up on us pretty good, and they had the running back throw the ball,” Daniels recalled. “And [Smith] went up — I think he was about 5 feet over the goalpost over a kid that was a Power 4 corner [Kevin Levy, who is now at Rutgers]. … it was just incredible.”
The Cardinal Newman coach has faced dozens of future NFL wide receivers over the years, including Pro Football Hall of Famer Devin Hester and Super Bowl champion Anquan Boldin.
Yet to Daniels, Smith stands alone.
“He is head and shoulders, by far, the best I’ve ever seen,” said Daniels, comparing Smith’s high school prowess to that of Baltimore Ravens MVP quarterback Lamar Jackson, who hailed from Boynton Beach Community High School.
“There’s been nothing like him.”
Archbishop Carroll coach Jorge Zagales, who also lost to Chaminade in the playoffs, recalls only one opposing player over his three decades on the sidelines who could dominate like Smith.
“I coached against Sean Taylor. … and Jeremiah is right there, if not the same as Sean Taylor,” Zagales said of the former Pro Bowl safety from Gulliver Prep, who died at 24. “Sean Taylor probably would’ve been a Hall of Famer. I feel that’s the way Jeremiah is headed.”
Clearwater Central Catholic coach Chris Harvey grew up in West Virginia watching Randy Moss play for DuPont High School. As a coach, Harvey hadn’t come across anyone like Moss — until he met Smith in the Florida state championship game.
“You saw what [Moss] did to professional DBs, so imagine what he did to DBs in West Virginia in high school,” Harvey said. “I love my home state. But we’re not West Virginia in Florida. We’ve got dudes — and Jeremiah Smith made us look like the West Virginia high school DBs.”
All of that might sound hyperbolic.
Except seven games into his freshman season at Ohio State, Smith — still just 18 years old — is already one of college football’s best wide receivers, alongside Alabama freshman phenom Ryan Williams and Colorado Heisman Trophy contender Travis Hunter.
“His physical skills (6-foot-3, 215 pounds) are kind of incomparable for someone at that age, but it’s his maturity level that has set him apart. There’s a lot of guys that could get caught up in that hype. You don’t see that out of him,” said Ohio State offensive coordinator and former NFL head coach Chip Kelly, who noted that Smith carries on like a “10-year NFL veteran.”
“How he approaches meetings, how he approaches practices,” Kelly said, “it’s rare.”
Despite playing on an Ohio State offense loaded with future pros, including running backs Quinshon Judkins and TreVeyon Henderson, and preseason All-American wide receiver Emeka Egbuka, Smith leads the Buckeyes with 623 receiving yards on 35 receptions.
Last week, Smith tied Cris Carter’s Ohio State freshman record set in 1984 with his eighth touchdown catch, blowing by the Nebraska defense for a 60-yard score.
Saturday in a Big Ten showdown against third-ranked Penn State, Smith needs only seven receptions and 26 receiving yards to break Carter’s other freshman program records, though he’s still well behind Michael Crabtree’s national freshman receiving records at Texas Tech in 2007 (134 catches for 1,962 yards and 22 touchdowns).
Smith has reached the end zone in every game this season, highlighted by his dazzling one-handed touchdown grabs against Michigan State and Iowa.
TWO UNBELIEVEABLE ONE-HANDED CATCHES BY JEREMIAH SMITH 🤯
THEY CAN’T GUARD HIM 👀 pic.twitter.com/vGUUs6rn41
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) September 29, 2024
To those who faced Smith in high school, those spectacular catches are nothing new.
In their state championship game, Harvey assumed Chaminade quarterback CJ Bailey was throwing the ball away.
“Then from nowhere comes this arm,” Harvey said. “And [Smith] pulls it back in for a touchdown, like Stretch Armstrong. It was definitely one of the best catches I’ve ever seen. But the thing about it is, he does that so often, he doesn’t even get excited about it.”
Harvey and Clearwater Catholic lost the past two state championship games to Chaminade by a combined score of 104-14. Smith caught 11 passes for 170 yards in the second title matchup on the way to a 56-0 victory for Chaminade’s third state championship in a row.
Afterward, South Florida University coach Alex Golesh, who was in attendance, consoled Harvey, telling him, “That’s just what happens when you’re playing a generational talent.”
“And that’s what he is,” Harvey said. “And outside of Randy Moss, I’ve never seen a person have the ability to take over a game at that position the way he did.”
Smith didn’t reach that level by accident.
North Carolina running back Davion Gause, who grew up with Smith and played with him at Chaminade, recalled Smith being cut from their youth football team 11 years ago.
“He still came to the park every day and watched us practice, playing catch with his dad the whole time,” Gause said. “When he came back the next year, he was a different player.”
Bailey, who played on a different youth team, remembered Smith dominating in the championship game that following year.
“He was killing us,” said Bailey, now NC State’s starting quarterback.
Bailey, Gause and Smith later joined forces at Chaminade, forming one of the country’s top high school teams. Chaminade coach Dameon Jones said he’d hadn’t had a player more committed who worked harder in practice than Smith.
“His mindset, the way it is to be so young, is crazy,” said Jones, who coached Miami Dolphins quarterback Tyler Huntley and Cincinnati Bengals running back Zack Moss. “I’ve just never seen it before. … He’s the total package.”
As a junior, Smith was hampered by a hip flexor injury. Jones pleaded with Smith to take off a couple of practices to allow the hip to heal.
“He got pissed at me,” Jones said. “He told me, ‘I’m not missing practice. I’m not missing reps.'”
Smith brought that work ethic to Columbus. This summer, he became Ohio State’s first freshman to be named an “Iron Buckeye,” given to the top performers in offseason workouts.
“Jeremiah is already a freak in the weight room,” said Egbuka, who also earned the honor.
The one-handed catches, however, have been what have set Smith apart this season.
After Odell Beckham Jr. made his famous one-handed touchdown snag for the New York Giants in 2014, Gause remembered Smith toiling endlessly attempting to re-create it.
Later at Chaminade, Smith and teammate Joshisa Trader, who’s now a receiver at Miami, worked on their one-handed catches with the jug machines daily. Jones would get irritated when players would try to catch with one hand in games. But after watching how rigorously Smith practiced them, Jones had to relent.
“The stuff y’all are seeing right now in college with them one-handed catches,” Bailey said, “I’ve seen way, way crazier things from him.”
One of those one-handed catches came during a victory over Miami Central on ESPN.
“[He] would just kill other defenses,” said Pitt defensive end Zachary Crothers, who also played for Chaminade. “You could tell defenses were scared. They did not want to be out there.”
Bailey knew Smith would be special during their first 7-on-7 tournament together; Smith initially had played at Monsignor Edward Pace before transferring to Chaminade as a sophomore. The Lions were down a score, and time was running out.
“We got a played called,” Bailey said. “This is a clutch moment. But JJ [Jeremiah] walks up to the [offensive coordinator] and says, ‘I want a fade.’ Coach says, ‘All right, let him run a fade.'”
Bailey lofted the ball to Smith, who brought the pass down over the defender for a touchdown. Chaminade then went for two to win the game.
“And we never lost a 7-on-7 tournament,” Bailey said. “With him, I’ve seen it all.”
Despite becoming the No. 1-ranked high school receiver in the country, Smith only asked Jones for the ball one time.
An opposing defensive back from American Heritage kept talking trash to Smith during one of Chaminade’s few tightly contested games.
“So we threw [Smith] a bomb, and he caught a touchdown over him,” Jones said. “The one thing about JJ, he’s quiet, he’s humble. But he’s also got that dog mentality inside of him.”
Smith has kept that same mentality in college. Over the past three years, the Buckeyes have generated four first-round draft picks at receiver in Garrett Wilson, Chris Olave, Jaxon Smith-Njigba and Marvin Harrison Jr.
This spring, the Arizona Cardinals selected Harrison with the fourth overall pick, making him the highest-drafted receiver in Ohio State history. But Smith-Njigba says he believes Smith could ultimately go higher than any of them — though he won’t be eligible until the 2027 draft.
“He could play one year of college and be ready for the league,” Smith-Njigba said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a receiver that young like him.”
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