Untold stories of the Air Raid revolution, from pregame hot dogs to Phil Collins photo ops
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Dave Wilson, ESPN Staff Writer
Long before the world knew Mike Leach or Dana Holgorsen or any of the other oddballs, eccentrics and revolutionaries of the Air Raid fraternity, Hal Mumme was a high school coach in Copperas Cove, Texas, with a problem.
It was 1986, the NBA and a young superstar had captured the attention of the school’s best athletes. Even Mumme’s own son came home from school one day and announced he wanted to be Michael Jordan.
This was Texas, and most coaches still romanticized the notion that football had to be torture for it to be worthwhile. There was a machismo to the running game, ramming head-on into each other and surviving battles of attrition, with defenses built around big, physical players meant to win those battles.
“My generation’s football coaches fought World War II,” Mumme said, “and they were pretty damn determined to make us relive it every day in practice.”
So Mumme, who had already gone from being the nation’s youngest coordinator at UTEP at 27, was now 31, looking to reboot his career after the Miners’ whole staff had been fired, and he had a wild idea. What if he made football fun? What if he actually used the entire field?
And so the beginnings of the Air Raid were born, 67 miles away from Austin, where just 10 years before, Texas coach Darrell Royal was running the wishbone and repeating his maxim: “Three things can happen to you whenever you throw the football, and two of ’em are bad.” But Mumme, who idolized Royal, realized that the same thing that made the wishbone work, spreading the ball in space to skilled athletes, might work even better as a passing offense. So he went all-in.
A decade later, Mumme burst onto the national scene at Kentucky, walking around on SEC fields, eating hot dogs, wearing flip-flops and listening to Jimmy Buffet before becoming the only UK coach in the past 100 years to beat Alabama. His creation made 5-9 slot receivers superstars and walk-on quarterbacks Heisman winners. Mumme made it possible for Mike Leach, a lawyer from Pepperdine, to become a college football icon, for Lincoln Riley, a Texas Tech walk-on himself from tiny Muleshoe, Texas, to lead two of the most storied programs in history. He made football interesting for unpedigreed coaches who loved the sport, but who would rather write books about Geronimo than sleep in their offices or run the damn ball.
“The Air Raid is not an offense,” TCU coach Sonny Dykes said. “The Air Raid is a way of life.”
“It’s a mentality,” Riley said, “more than a collection of plays.”
These mavericks changed the course of football history and rewrote record books, paving the way for Patrick Mahomes to win two Super Bowls while forcing Bill Belichick and Nick Saban to give into wide-open passing attacks. How they did it was never boring.
Last year, Dykes, a former Mumme assistant at Kentucky, made a historic run to the national title game after a 5-7 season. This year Deion Sanders, who used to pick Mumme’s brain and called Leach for offensive staff recommendations, is using the same wide-open principles at Colorado during its program jump-start, turning his own son, Shedeur, into a Heisman candidate at QB.
With the sport still mourning Leach, the most famous and revered coach in the extended Air Raid family, following his death in December, we set out to find tales from the rise of the game-changing offense that illustrate the methods behind their collective madness.
The test pilot
For every Tim Couch or Kyler Murray or Caleb Williams, the bluest of blue-chip prospects, there are dozens of record-setting Air Raid quarterbacks who were unwanted by anyone else, then ran up the gaudiest of numbers.
Dustin Dewald blazed the trail in Copperas Cove. He was one of those players who got disillusioned with the drudgery of football in the 1980s, so he quit to join the golf team after watching his older brother get pummeled over and over as their QB.
“We got our heads kicked in trying to run the ball down the throats of bigger, more powerful teams, lining up in the Power I with an offensive line that averaged 195 pounds,” Dewald said. “It was just ridiculous. Hal came in and said, ‘All that’s going to change.’ It did. I think it was the first time in 10 years we didn’t have a losing season in Cove.”
Between 1978 and 1985, Cove went 10-69, including two 0-10 seasons. In Mumme’s first year in 1986, the Bulldogs went 5-5. They were still outmanned, but Mumme, who began by using the run and shoot, gave them a shot in every game. Then against district rival Georgetown, the opposing coach, Art Briles, blitzed Mumme relentlessly, making it difficult for more complex plays to develop.
“I decided I was never going to let that happen to me again,” Mumme said, reducing his offense to a collection of short passes and horizontal crossing routes.
Dewald threw the ball more than all but a handful of schools in Texas that year. There had been only two scholarship players in the previous 10 years at Cove, but he signed with Stephen F. Austin. Then, he went through the same cycle, quitting due to boredom and joining the golf team at Tarleton State. There weren’t any college teams he knew of where he could replicate his experience. Until he went home to Cove to visit.
He stopped by the football offices to congratulate Mumme on his new job he’d just landed at a small college, Iowa Wesleyan. By the time he left, Mumme had once again recruited him to play quarterback for a team that was similar to Sanders’ Colorado experiment: IWU was coming off an 0-10 season and had just two players returning.
“We tried to have a team meeting after I got introduced at the press conference and they told me there were going to be 40 guys,” Mumme said. “I walk in, there’s two, and the three that I brought with me. I just gave ’em the same speech I was going to give ’em anyway about working hard in the offseason, and we’re going to win games. One kid just got up and walked out. I guess he decided, ‘This is bulls—, I’m not doing this.’ So we had four.”
Leach was one of only two applicants for Mumme’s offensive coordinator job, and they quickly realized they were kindred spirits. It was a leap of faith: The high school coach took a $20,000 pay cut to try to prove himself in college again. The lawyer who could’ve made $200,000 a year instead was making $12,000, and the golfer took on student-loan debt to go to school in Iowa — where none of them had ever been.
They went 7-4 the next year, then, by 1991, started tinkering and added the up-tempo element where they never huddled and ran plays at a frenetic pace. Opposing teams had never seen anything like it and had no idea how to stop it. In Dewald’s accidental career, he threw for 12,045 yards, 115 TDs and set 25 NAIA records. He threw for 4,418 yards and 45 TDs in 1991, including one game where he set national records with 86 attempts and 61 completions. Leach sent out press releases to national media, coining the name “Air Raid” in the process and building the mystique.
While it may have appeared the gaudy numbers were because of an intricate playbook, it was actually the opposite. There was no playbook at all. The philosophy was making things as barebones as possible.
Don’t practice plays you won’t call in a game. Don’t call plays in a game you don’t practice. Don’t throw to a covered receiver and don’t pass up an open one.
The plays came from LaVell Edwards at BYU, with Mumme saying he’s watched every offensive snap of Edwards’ career. He picked his favorites — four passing and two rushing — that seemed to always work. His practice drills, the real backbone of the Air Raid, according to the coaches, were all about details of that limited set, and were all based on Bill Walsh’s 49ers practices.
So he made every practice consistent and repetitive and drilled until they were mind-numbingly boring. Do it until you can’t screw it up, and let muscle memory win. And if it works, keep doing it. Mumme said he once called the same play 52 times in a game for Dewald.
Decades after helping launch the revolution, Dewald has watched teammates like Bill Bedenbaugh, an Iowa Wesleyan offensive linemen who’s now considered one of the best O-line coaches in the country at Oklahoma, along with Holgorsen, his old IWU wide receiver who’s become another of the sport’s most idiosyncratic coaches, and he finds it amusing that he still understands almost everything they do.
“For years, I would go visit [Leach or Mumme] every year for at least one home game and spend days with them at practice and on the sidelines of games,” Dewald said. “The last time I visited Mike at Washington State, I looked at the script for the game and it was crazy. I actually knew what to do on 90 percent of it — and it was almost 30 years after I stopped playing. Just to see what they’ve all accomplished has been mind-blowing for me, how much it’s changed the game and how successful they’ve all been has been, really, cool to watch.”
It won’t work, until it did
Chris Hatcher is convinced Mumme isn’t the inventor of the Air Raid. He claims the title.
Hatcher signed at Valdosta State to play for Mike Cavan, a former Georgia assistant who had coached under Vince Dooley and was Herschel Walker’s lead recruiter. They were an I-formation team with a few passing concepts.
Mumme arrived at Valdosta after Cavan left for another job and, armed with talent he’d never had before, he initially made the same mistake he criticized other coaches for: He overcomplicated things.
“I don’t care what anybody says, I’m the guy that invented the Air Raid,” Hatcher said. “I was not smart enough to comprehend all this stuff Hal wanted to do. So we had to dummy it way down for me. And then that’s when the Air Raid took off. That is the truth.”
Hatcher learned to appreciate the beauty of perfecting and running an offense so simple that he had a little extra time on his hands, enough to visit a frat party the night before homecoming and leave with a parting gift.
“You didn’t have to be in the film room all night because it didn’t matter what the defense was doing,” Hatcher said. “We were so good at it that you had time to go out and steal a cannon in the evening. It was a legit Civil War cannon, now, too. Let’s not act like it was a little peashooter.”
Hatcher threw for 11,363 yards and 121 touchdowns and set 29 school records. During his senior year in 1994, he led the Blazers to their first postseason berth, advancing to the quarterfinals, and when it was all said and done set 29 VSU passing and total offense records. He won the 1994 Harlon Hill Award, often called the D-II Heisman, as the Blazers went 40-17-1 in his career.
This captured the attention of Kentucky athletic director C.M. Newton, who wanted to match the basketball program pace. He handpicked Mumme, which raised eyebrows among purists who believed such a gimmick offense wouldn’t work in the big, bad SEC. But Kentucky already had a homegrown star quarterback in Tim Couch, albeit one who was last seen losing 65-0 in his first start to Florida — and defensive coordinator Bob Stoops — and attempted just 84 passes over seven games.
First, Mumme enlisted Hatcher, now a graduate assistant, to convince Couch not to transfer. (They went to Hooters and talked it out.) He stuck around, working with Hatcher, who was in charge of getting Mumme’s play scripts prepared for Couch’s wristband. Mumme would say Play 1 or Play 2, and Couch would call what’s on the wristband. Quarterbacks often would check into different plays freely, but in one game, Couch took it to an extreme.
“We get about three or four first downs and Couch ain’t run a play Mumme’s called yet,” Hatcher said. “We go down and score, and the whole time Mumme is on the headsets using a few choice words to me.”
Mumme accused Hatcher, who often changed the play himself when playing for Mumme, of purposely telling Couch not to run Mumme’s calls.
“I can’t believe you’d do this to me,” Mumme said, according to Hatcher. “Then it finally hit me. Couch was using the wristband from the week before, and didn’t change it out. Every play was wrong, and we went down and scored anyway. My point is, when you rep the plays so much, we feel like it doesn’t matter. I can pick me a handful of plays that should work against just about anything you’ll see. I like to say we’re a well-coached backyard football team.”
Couch’s mastery paid off in 1997 when he threw a 26-yard touchdown pass to Craig Yeast in overtime to lead Kentucky to a win over Alabama 40-34. It was Kentucky’s first win over Alabama in 75 years — something the Wildcats haven’t done since. It came just a year after Couch threw for 13 yards (UK had 67 total yards) in an entire game against Stoops’ Florida defense under Steve Spurrier. Couch threw for 348 and 406 yards in the next two meetings. While the Gators ended up pulling away and winning both games handily, it was frustrating for Stoops, and their mentality impressed him.
“I liked how [Leach] and Hal Mumme were over there standing together,” Stoops said. “I took note of the casual nature of the two of them. But they were the most difficult to deal with.”
A little extra mustard
Nothing Mumme did was by accident. He doesn’t dispute any contentions that he and Leach were arrogant.
“There’s no question,” Mumme said. “We always thought we were smarter than everybody else. We always thought we had better ideas than everybody else. And we pretty much did. That’s why everybody’s trying to do it now.”
Mumme could be combative with reporters, and Leach could be aloof. And they weren’t worried about too many other opinions.
“We played Jimmy Buffett during warmups,” said West Virginia coach Neal Brown, who played wide receiver at Kentucky under Mumme. “I don’t know if that gets it going for you.”
“It got me and Mike going,” Mumme said, laughing. “We weren’t worried about anybody else.”
They loved causing a stir or annoying other fans, like when Leach mocked Texas A&M’s Corps of Cadets as head coach at rival Texas Tech.
“How come they get to pretend they are soldiers?” Leach said. “The thing is, they aren’t actually in the military. I ought to have Mike’s Pirate School. The freshmen, all they get is the bandanna. When you’re a senior, you get the sword and skull and crossbones. For homework, we’ll work pirate maneuvers and stuff like that.”
The Aggies were not amused.
Then again, Leach and Mumme were, which was the point. Jeff Allen can testify.
Before Allen became the only staff member that’s been with Nick Saban for his entire Alabama tenure, a trusted confidante and sports medicine guru, he was an assistant trainer at Kentucky — but most importantly, he was Mumme’s hot dog guy.
UK was about to play at LSU in Death Valley, then coached by embattled coach Gerry DiNardo. Mumme marched into the training room on Wednesday with a request that befuddled Allen.
“Hey, during pregame, when I’m talking to DiNardo, I want you to bring me a hot dog,” Mumme said.
Allen didn’t understand. He’d been with him for more than five years at this point, and this was a new one.
“Finally, over the next day or two, I said, ‘Why do you want a hot dog while you’re on the field talking to their head coach?” Allen said, “He said, ‘Because they’re going to be so uptight to begin with. I want to show ’em how carefree and how relaxed I am, and it’s going to make them even more nervous.'”
Mumme was very specific that he wanted mustard on it. He sent a student for the hot dog and was on the field during pregame when he saw Mumme, who he hadn’t talked to yet on the day of the game. He thought, “well here goes nothing,” and headed over.
“I looked at him and said, ‘Coach, here’s your hot dog,’ Allen said. “He looked at me and goes, ‘Oh, thanks Jeff.’ Then he said, ‘Hey, hold on, hold on. Does it have mustard on it?'” Allen assured him it did, all the while playing it straight.
“I can still see DiNardo’s face,” Allen said. “He was like, ‘What in the world is happening here?’ And I swear to you, Hal just stood there talking and eating that hot dog. I walked off and I turned around and I wanted to see it again. And there they are talking and Hal is just chomping on a hotdog right there on the 50-yard line of Tiger Stadium. And our players were seeing it. They were laughing. They were dying during warmups watching it.”
The Wildcats were 0-24 on the road against ranked teams since 1977. They were 9½-point underdogs. They played fast and loose and kicked a walk-off field goal to win at the buzzer 39-36, sealing one of the biggest wins in school history. It led Kentucky to a bid in the Outback Bowl, the first New Year’s Day bowl for the Wildcats since 1952.
“I’m not saying we won that game because of the hot dog,” Allen said. “But I don’t think it hurt.”
The Air Raid goes mainstream
On Dec. 1, 1998, Oklahoma hired Stoops. The Sooners hadn’t had a winning season in six years and were coming off a 12-22 stretch in three years under John Blake. Stoops, then 38, was a hot commodity as a defensive coordinator. Hiring someone to run his offense was his first big decision.
“My initial talks were with Turner Gill, who was at Nebraska at the time,” Stoops said. “That didn’t really work out. And then I got to thinking. … I didn’t know [Leach], but the more I thought about it, the more I referred back to how challenging it was to handle Kentucky. If they can be that good at Kentucky, why couldn’t we be as good or better at Oklahoma? So I went with it.”
It was a bold move. Leach had never been a playcaller, and let’s face it, he was pretty weird.
“I thought Mike was really interesting,” Stoops said. “Mike had a little different way of doing things. But let me tell you something: He was a hell of a leader. He was demanding, as aloof as he might be. He wanted things done a certain way and they damn sure better be done that way or you were going to hear it. He might look laid back, he was demanding, very demanding.”
That was a learning curve for the rest of the staff, who couldn’t figure out if this was all an act, or if Leach was for real.
“It was completely different from anything that any of us had seen in the offensive meeting room,” former Oklahoma assistant and Kansas head coach Mark Mangino said. “It did take time to get used to.”
So did Leach’s personality. The staff was all staying at a hotel in Norman, and somehow Mangino’s room became the center of the action.
“I couldn’t get him out of my room when I was living in the Residence Inn,” Mangino said. “Every night, somebody delivered a couple cases of beer, a box of cigars, and we sat around and called recruits till about 11:30.”
By midnight, everyone was gone. Except Leach.
“Mike used to like to watch those simulcasts of Howard Stern. And those things would run till 4 in the morning. I’m in my bed trying to sleep. And here’s Leach at 3 in the morning, he’s laughing at Howard Stern, he’s drinking a beer and he’s having a good time.”
Stoops, too, had a learning curve.
“I learned after the first few weeks late at night not to stop in and check in on Mike,” Stoops said. “One night, it’s 11 or something, I’m ready to go home, and he starts telling me a story about Geronimo. After about 20 minutes, I said, ‘Mike, I’m going home. I’m the head coach, I get to go when I want.'”
Mangino, meanwhile, couldn’t shake him at night, and he couldn’t get through to him by day. In a staff meeting, Mangino suggested a running play. Leach couldn’t have been less interested. Mangino suggested trying it at practice, and Leach blew him off again. Mangino said maybe he’ll practice it anyway.
“Mike said, you could put it in all you want, you could run it during every play of inside drill, but I’m never going to call it in a game,” and Mangino and Leach nearly came to blows, Stoops said, laughing.
An irritated Stoops called them into his office and made them hash it out. Stoops made it clear that he had given Leach full control, and they’d do it his way. Leach and Mangino became good friends.
The Big 12 was never the same. The new-look Sooners went 7-5 and made their first bowl game in five years. Texas Tech hired Leach, and Mangino took over, finally getting to put in a couple of wrinkles of his own.
Mangino had a season’s worth of reps in place, and he said he ran about 80% of Leach’s offense. “And it worked,” he said. The Sooners won a national championship, going 13-0 behind Josh Heupel, a lightly recruited junior college quarterback Leach found at Snow College.
From the @kfor archives, Mike Leach at his last OU practice with Josh Heupel on Dec. 8, 1999. You can see the emotions as he talks with Heupel. Leach was introduced as the Texas Tech head coach the next day. pic.twitter.com/xm65rAhAes
— KFORsports (@KFORsports) December 14, 2022
“They were the ones that invented it … but we [Oklahoma, Leach, Texas Tech and the Big 12] were the ones to make it popular,” Stoops said. “They weren’t getting the national attention at Kentucky until we started it. And then, of course, we kept it and won the national championship.”
Liftoff in Lubbock
Leach became a star at Texas Tech. He took down No. 1 Texas, guided the Red Raiders to a bowl game in all 10 of his seasons and finished as the program’s all-time winningest coach at 84-43.
Dykes was part of Leach’s first staff that replaced his dad, Spike Dykes, who had retired.
“We were doing all this stuff that was really analytics, but they didn’t know it was,” Dykes said. “We were going for it all the time on fourth down or going for it in our own territory. My dad would be like, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ I’m like, ‘It gives us a chance to beat Texas. Instead of losing by 14, we might lose by 50. But we also might win?'”
It became one of the most influential eras in college football. In Mumme’s days in Kentucky, Urban Meyer and Sean Payton were among the earliest coaches to visit to try to learn what the Air Raid is all about. In Lubbock, Leach made sure his doors were wide open, and there were visitors everywhere.
Leach made sure his coaches knew that he wanted them to teach visitors anything they wanted to know.
There was only one issue: “They didn’t believe us,” said Lincoln Riley, who was a student assistant for Leach, because the entire offense was so simple.
“I’ve never been to a place where you had more coaches around constantly,” Riley said. “Mike was so open to people coming in. You think just Texas high school coaches? No. I’m talking professional coaches, college coaches from all around the country, high school coaches from all around the country, every single year. There’s a group from Japan that came, groups from England that came over, I mean, you name it, we had ’em.”
Dykes and Holgorsen, who were receivers coaches and later co-offensive coordinators, would handle a lot of high school coaches on their visits. Dykes said he can remember walking out to the parking lot one day and overhearing the coaches leaving convinced the offense couldn’t be that simple, that Leach & Co. were holding things back.
“‘Those sumb—— wouldn’t tell us anything,'” Dykes recalled them saying. “And we told them everything.”
Muleshoe High’s David Wood coached Riley and his brother Garrett Riley, now the offensive coordinator at Clemson, and watched as they passed over small-school offers to head to Lubbock to learn from Leach. Over time, he said, you could see the Tech influence take hold and spread throughout high school football, with Muleshoe being one of the early adopters, because Lincoln returned to help him install it while he was still a walk-on quarterback at Tech.
“We were a run offense, but once we realized how simple it was, we didn’t think it was going to be that hard to switch,” Wood said. “We used to run maybe 30 plays in practice because you analyze every play and tell every player what they did wrong and then you’d run the play again and make sure everyone did it right. The way Leach did it, when we watched it, you got to coach on the run. So we were able to get like 120 plays a practice instead of 30 plays a practice.”
Wood said when Riley set out for Lubbock in 2002, there were maybe two schools in the Texas Panhandle that were running a spread offense.
“I would say probably 70 percent of the teams we played when I retired [in 2017] were running it,” he said. “Maybe 80.”
The Big 12 became known for its shootouts, and Leach’s earliest quarterback rooms were filled with future stars and coaches, all of whom waited their turn, many of them just to start for one season. Kliff Kingsbury, who had originally signed with Spike Dykes, threw for more than 5,000 yards as a senior in 2002 and set seven NCAA records in his three years as a starter at Tech. His backup, B.J. Symons, set the NCAA passing record with 5,833 yards in 2003, and Symons’ backups, Sonny Cumbie and Cody Hodges, each passed for more than 4,000 yards in a season as starters.
They did it all because Leach repeated the same things he and Mumme had always preached, particularly in the film room.
“The worst coaching point he would ever give us, and the one that we all hated, was: ‘This guy was open. This guy was open. This guy was open. This guy wasn’t open. And he’s the one guy you threw it to!” said Cumbie, now the head coach at Louisiana Tech, imitating Leach’s monotone cadence. “I don’t care if it’s two-high [safety coverage], one-high. Is it man? Is it zone? Is this guy open? Yes. Throw it to him.”
Something’s in the air tonight
Mumme’s Kentucky era ended in an NCAA investigation, with Mumme resigning in 2001 amid findings that an assistant coach was sending money orders to players in Memphis. Mumme was cited for a “failure to monitor,” but was not punished by the NCAA.
Since then, he’ll sign up to coach anything, anytime, anywhere, including stops at New Mexico State, reviving football after 20 years at Southeastern Louisiana or stops at Division III schools Belhaven in Mississippi and McMurry in Texas.
“I’m the Johnny Appleseed of football,” Mumme said. “I always thought that was a great story. It’s not that I set out to do that — I never set out to get kicked out of Kentucky — but when you look back on it, providence had a plan. We spread it a whole lot of places it wouldn’t have been otherwise.”
And despite his offense being almost the norm now, rather than catching teams by surprise, it still works as it was intended: As a sort of money ball, beating teams that you have no business beating.
At McMurry, he took over a program that had three winless seasons in the previous decade, including an 0-10 mark the year before he arrived. Three years later, they were 9-3 and 7-1 in the conference.
Out of the spotlight, Mumme still made history. And he did it in the most Mumme way possible.
McMurry opened the 2011 season with an 82-6 loss to Stephen F. Austin, who was ranked in the FCS at the time. After getting down early, Mumme would just keep going for it on fourth down over and over. He was down 35-0 at halftime, and it only got worse from there. But he wouldn’t stop.
“Losing by 50 was the same as losing by 1,” Dykes said. “Hal never cared.”
The next week, Mumme gave the team four days off. He showed them five plays from the first half where it easily could’ve been 35-28 instead of 35-0. They were set to face UTSA the next week, a D-I team coached by Larry Coker, who’d won a national championship at Miami. Mumme’s quarterback, Jake Mullin, like Dewald, wasn’t on the team when he arrived. He played baseball, but was a quarterback on the intramural team when Mumme found him.
“They said they created this offense for teams without much talent, which was great for us,” Mullin said, who, like Dewald, ended up throwing for more than 12,000 yards in his career. “Whenever [Mumme] got there, there was not much there. I mean, I remember I was bigger than my left guard.”
Mumme took the team to the Menger Hotel in San Antonio, his favorite place, where Teddy Roosevelt recruited Texans at the bar to serve in his Rough Riders. He took the team on a tour of the Alamo the night before the game. The next day, McMurry upset UTSA 24-21 in front of 31,000 fans in the Alamodome, one of the only upsets of a D-I team by a D-III team in history, and Mullin threw for 372 yards.
“The Menger’s filled with ghosts, we did have a ghost sighting in there,” Mumme said. “Between the Menger ghosts and the Alamo ghosts, they probably helped us out.”
Mumme’s fascination with history earned him an invitation from then-McMurry professor Don Frazier to a party for his new book, “The Alamo and Beyond.” Also invited? One of the world’s largest collectors of Alamo memorabilia in the world: Phil Collins. Yes, that Phil Collins.
Frazier didn’t want Collins to be constantly accosted at the event, so he invited Mumme because he said half the table of Texans would rather talk to Mumme about the Air Raid and Leach than to a British rock star. Even about the Alamo.
Mumme got his copy autographed by Collins. The inscription reads:
“To coach… Something’s in the air tonight. Cheers. Phil Collins.”
The next chapter
Mumme, 71, keeps spreading the gospel. He is part of the operations group of a new spring league called the International Football Alliance with teams in Mexico and Texas, and will coach one of the teams. His son, Matt, who never became Michael Jordan, instead stuck with the family business and is now the assistant head coach at Colorado State.
Mumme has seen his little creation change the sport, including watching some of the most storied running teams of his lifetime at USC and Oklahoma be completely transformed. Now, it’s finally broken through to the final frontier: the Big Ten, where Wisconsin, under Leach acolyte Phil Longo, is following the same formula as Oklahoma: Join forces with a defensive head coach (Luke Fickell) and flip the offense. Harrell, the former Leach quarterback, is the new offensive coordinator at Purdue as well.
“A couple of days before Mike passed, we talked and he was just ultra excited that we’re bringing the Air Raid to the Big Ten,” Longo said. “It’s the most excited I’ve ever heard him. So it meant something to me that he was happy that we were making moves, and he’s the only one who didn’t seem shocked by it.”
Mason Miller, Leach’s offensive line coach at Mississippi State who is now the offensive coordinator at Tarleton State, has worked for either Mumme or Leach basically since 1994 when he played running back at Valdosta State. He said the Air Raid family has become so big that it has its share of “little sibling rivalries,” but that when they all get together, “we’re like magnets to each other.”
Leach’s loss has been profound on the family. But out of that loss, there’s a new beginning.
Leach’s son Cody spent two years as a volunteer coach at BYU under Kalani Sitake, and spent his dad’s final year as a graduate assistant at Mississippi State. Now, he’s an assistant special teams coach for the Bulldogs, who has completed his Air Raid certification — a service Mumme offers to keep spreading the word to coaches anywhere — and is studying his dad’s old game tapes stored in Gatorade coolers in his garage.
“I wish I could have gotten more time with him,” Cody, 27, said. “But Dad being so famous, being on TV, the occasional ‘Friday Night Lights’ cameo and other random stuff in media, I can always find him. Not everyone has that kind of opportunity where your parent is so well-documented that you can just find them and pull them up anytime.”
There’s another Mumme-Leach pairing in the works, with Cody hoping to follow his father’s path.
“He knew so many other amazing coaches and all the guys he knows, I’ve known for a long time too,” Cody said. “So I have plenty of people to be able to talk to. His was the first generation, and it’s kind of taking off into other branches. For me, it’s a legacy.”
Stoops says he can’t help but look around and see how profound their impact was.
“It goes back to Mike,” he said. “And Hal’s not talked enough about. He and Mike were joined at the hip. Between the two of them, I don’t know that anyone’s had a stronger influence on coaches. It goes on and on. The influence is huge. These tentacles from them go all over the place. They branch out from the two of them everywhere.”
Jake Trotter and Chris Low contributed to this story.
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Ryan McGee
You miss 100% of the shots that you don’t take.
It was Wayne Gretzky — aka the hockey guy on the hood of Tyler Reddick‘s Toyota at Darlington Last Year — who made that quote famous. And he would know. The Great One took 5,088 shots in his NHL career, resulting in a record 1,072 goals. We remember so, so many of those times he lit the lamp. We don’t remember the so, so many 4,016 shots he missed.
That brings us to the NASCAR garage, a world where memories of swings and misses seem to linger longer than most, especially when it comes to the hallowed ground that is the Cup Series. You want to start an hours-long impromptu therapy session? Just bring up the early-to-mid-2000s, when NASCAR underwent more simultaneous extreme makeovers than a Beverly Hill bridge club. From the initial iteration of the Chase postseason format and moving the Southern 500 off Labor Day weekend to abandoning Rockingham and the rollout of the winged shoebox-shaped machine that was the Car of Tomorrow, stock car racing self-inflicted too many overhauls at once.
In its search for younger eyeballs and wallets, it became something older eyes no longer recognized and saw longtime fans put their wallets away. Back then, we collectively ripped NASCAR leadership for it all, and we should have.
Now, we should applaud them. Or at least appreciate them. Because, like Gretzky back in the day, NASCAR is taking a lot of shots, but unlike their predecessors two decades ago, now there appears to be more thought behind the timing and impact of those shots. What’s more, if they miss — and they do miss — they don’t keep taking the same shot over and over again even while the rest of us are screaming, “That’s never going to work!” Instead, they take their lumps and move on to the next idea.
Kind of like building a temporary Major League Baseball stadium inside of a racetrack to play one game, as the Atlanta Braves and Cincinnati Reds will do this weekend at Bristol Motor Speedway. Hardball purists can question the idea all they want. Or they can, heaven forbid, have fun for a few hours on a Saturday evening. And if it isn’t fun? Good news: There’s nothing that says it has to be done again. But if it is fun, perhaps they’ll try it again.
“The question is always, what’s your motivation? Why are you doing this? Do you have a larger vision or are you just saying, ‘What the hell’ and throwing stuff against the wall?” reigning Cup champ Joey Logano explained earlier this summer, in the midst of his 17th season in the series. “I don’t necessarily agree with it all, but I do agree with the willingness to try new things, as long we also stick with what made us who we are.”
It’s adding road and street races, of which there were six this season versus so many decades of only two. But it’s also returning to North Wilkesboro and The Rock, even if it is initially the All-Star Race or a Trucks/Xfinity doubleheader. It’s rotating Championship Weekend in coming years to different racetracks, but kicking that off at Homestead-Miami Speedway, the seemingly perfect home of the season finale for nearly two decades, but not since 2019. That move to Phoenix was done because fans had been demanding more short track racing. When people started asking, “Why did we leave Homestead?” it was moved back as the kickoff for the new finale model.
One foot always stepping forward, but with the other foot still planted in the past. It’s hard to do that and maintain one’s balance. So, stop worrying about falling down. Expect it. Instead of fearing a scraped knee or elbow, get back up and try again.
“I think there is a spirit that needs to exist behind decision making, of breaking new ground but also have that ground feel familiar, if that makes sense,” Ben Kennedy said in a conversation with Marty & McGee earlier this year. Kennedy, 33, is NASCAR EVP, chief venue & racing innovation officer, the great-grandson of NASCAR founder Bill France, and himself a former racer in Trucks and Xfinity. He is also the nephew of the man whom most blame for those ripped-out roots of the 2000s, former NASCAR chairman Brian France. “No one wants to forget where we came from. Especially not me, because that’s where I came from.”
See: Moving the Busch Clash from Daytona, where no one had cared about it or attended it for years, to the LA Coliseum. That was very much the brainchild of Kennedy. When all the juice had been squeezed from that event after three years, it was moved back home to North Carolina and Winston-Salem’s Bowman Gray Stadium, where there is never a lack of juice, especially the kind made from fermented corn. How deeply connected is Kennedy to NASCAR’s history? That’s also the racetrack where grandfather Bill France Jr. and grandmother Betty Jane France met, when he was being trained as the heir to the NASCAR throne and she was Miss Bowman Gray Stadium.
Still, one day, the Clash at the Madhouse will also run its course and the event will move to somewhere else, likely another location with a historic stock car backstory.
“That’s the difference, I think, between now and not so long ago,” says Chase Elliott, winner of this year’s inaugural Bowman Gray Clash. “Try it, and if it doesn’t work, fine. Next year, do something else. It seems like before decisions were made before, either they never made a decision at all, or if they did, everyone acted like, ‘Well, we’re stuck with this now forever.’ But you’re not. Other sports try stuff and if it doesn’t work, they move on. We do that now, too.”
When did that mentality change? Well, no one is ever going to put the words “pandemic” and “positive” in the same sentence, but in spring 2020, as NASCAR raced to become the first major sport to return to action, the only path back to the track was to employ a Mr. Fantastic-like flexibility when it came to scheduling. Back-to-back weekends and doubleheaders at the same racetracks. Midweek night races. Letting go of constant worry about what a not-full grandstand might look like on television and giving the audience at home the best show available.
By 2021 and a somewhat return to normalcy, NASCAR found itself freed from old habits. It also helped that old school yearslong contracts with racetracks had expired and a new, shorter-term race date business model had become the norm. Back in the day, the same tracks had the same two weekends for decades at a time, not because anyone in the garage wanted them, but because the contracts demanded it. As those lapsed, so did the “Well, we have to go there because we always have” mentality.
As August arrives and the release of the 2026 Cup Series schedule grows closer, we are putting into the rearview mirror NASCAR’s summer of experimentation. The remaining 14 Cup Series events are races we know on racetracks we know for the most part on weekends where we expect them to be, but only after this weekend’s second-ever Cup visit to the Iowa Speedway. It’s the period at the end of a summer sentence that has raced in Mexico City, swerved through the streets of Chicago, experienced a pair of still-new oval revivals in Nashville and Indianapolis, and in the middle of it all announced a 2026 Father’s Day street event that will be run at a San Diego Naval base.
Oh, and it spent a five-week chunk of that as part of the In-Season Challenge that most rolled their eyes at — Elliott didn’t even realize it existed until he was asked about it in a news conference — but ended up becoming a fun social media-fueled showcase for wunderkind winner Ty Gibbs and oft-forgotten third-generation racer Ty Dillon.
What’s next? No one is entirely sure. And that’s not scary. It’s exciting. As long as whatever new is still framed by the classic standbys. The Daytona 500 in February. The Southern 500 over Labor Day weekend. Martinsville Speedway as the fall chill begins to roll through the Appalachian foothills.
The ideas that worked — moving the Clash, reviving North Wilkesboro, occasional street racing — will stick around. The ideas that seemed to work but curiously went away — midsummer midweek night races and one dirt race per year — will hopefully return. The ideas that were groundbreaking at the time — the Charlotte Roval — will hopefully receive a revival through reimagining.
All of the above while an exploratory Playoff committee continues to discuss a possible points system reboot and the sanctioning body openly covets the addition of another manufacturer to join Chevy, Ford and Toyota. It feels like a lot because it is. However, it is not 2004 all over again. It is instead a thought-out series of ideas, leaning on lessons learned.
Shots taken. A lot of shots missed. But also, a lot of shots made.
The 2025 MLB trade deadline is almost here, with contending teams deciding what they need to add before 6 p.m. ET on Thursday.
The San Diego Padres shook up deadline day with a trade for Mason Miller and JP Sears. The Seattle Mariners made a blockbuster move ahead of deadline day with a late-night deal with the Arizona Diamondbacks for Eugenio Suarez — will Zac Gallen be next to leave the Snakes? Relievers began flying off the board Wednesday, to the New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies. As the deadline approaches, who among the Los Angeles Dodgers, Chicago Cubs, New York Yankees and Detroit Tigers will go all-in to boost their 2025 World Series hopes?
Whether your favorite club is looking to add or deal away — or stands somewhere in between — here’s the freshest intel we’re hearing, reaction to completed deals and what to know for every team as trade season unfolds.
More: Top 50 trade candidates | Trade grades | Fantasy spin | Traded prospects
Latest MLB trade deadline day buzz
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Mariners make big move in acquiring Suarez
The Diamondbacks sent Eugenio Suarez, among the most coveted players this deadline, to the Mariners for prospects, sources tell ESPN.
Reds get RHP Zack Littell in three-way trade
In a deal that swaps prospects among the Reds, Dodgers and Rays, the Reds get a new starter in Littell, sources tell ESPN.
The Houston Astros are acquiring infielder Ramon Urias from the Baltimore Orioles, sources tell ESPN.
Cubs acquire Soroka for rotation
The Chicago Cubs have acquired pitcher Michael Soroka from the Washington Nationals, sources tell ESPN.
Mets land another reliever, acquire Helsley
The New York Mets are finalizing a deal to acquire closer Ryan Helsley from the St. Louis Cardinals for shortstop Jesus Baez and right-handers Nate Dohm and Frank Elissalt, sources tell ESPN.
Phillies get Duran in deadline’s biggest deal yet
The Philadelphia Phillies have agreed to a deal to acquire closer Jhoan Duran from the Minnesota Twins for right-hander Mick Abel and catcher Eduardo Tait, sources tell ESPN.
The Seattle Mariners have acquired left-handed reliever Caleb Ferguson from the Pittsburgh Pirates, sources tell ESPN.
Mets bolster bullpen in deal with Giants
The New York Mets have acquired right-handed reliever Tyler Rogers from the San Francisco Giants, a source confirms to ESPN.
The Cincinnati Reds have acquired third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes from the Pittsburgh Pirates in exchange for reliever Taylor Rogers and prospect Sammy Stafura, sources tell ESPN.
The Atlanta Braves acquired RHP Tyler Kinley from the Colorado Rockies in exchange for minor league RHP Austin Smith.
Angels and Nationals swap pitchers
The Los Angeles Angels are acquiring relievers Luis Garcia and Andrew Chafin in a trade with the Washington Nationals, with left-hander Jake Eder one player heading back to the Nationals in the deal, sources tell ESPN.
Yankees add outfielder in deal with White Sox
The New York Yankees have acquired outfielder Austin Slater in a trade with the Chicago White Sox, sources tell ESPN.
Blue Jays get bullpen boost in deal with Orioles
The Toronto Blue Jays are acquiring right-handed reliever Seranthony Dominguez from the Baltimore Orioles for right-handed pitching prospect Juaron Watts-Brown, a source tells ESPN.
Rays deal catcher to Brewers, get one from Marlins
The Milwaukee Brewers acquired catcher Danny Jansen from the Tampa Bay Rays. The Rays are also acquired catcher Nick Fortes from the Miami Marlins.
The Detroit Tigers receive RHP Chris Paddack and RHP Randy Dobnak from the Minnesota Twins for C/1B Enrique Jimenez.
Braves add veteran rotation arm
The Atlanta Braves acquired veteran starting pitcher Erick Fedde from the St. Louis Cardinals for a player to be named later or cash.
Yankees make another deal for infield depth
The New York Yankees acquired utility man Amed Rosario from the Washington Nationals for two minor leaguers.
Royals get outfielder in trade with D-backs
The Kansas City Royals acquired veteran outfielder Randal Grichuk from the Arizona Diamondbacks in exchange for right-hander Andrew Hoffmann.
Yankees land infielder McMahon in deal with Rockies
The New York Yankees are acquiring third baseman Ryan McMahon in a trade with the Colorado Rockies.
Mets get bullpen help from O’s
The New York Mets have acquired left-handed reliever Gregory Soto from the Baltimore Orioles.
Mariners start trade season with deal for Naylor
The Seattle Mariners have acquired first baseman Josh Naylor from the Arizona Diamondbacks for left-hander Brandyn Garcia and right-hander Ashton Izzi.
Previous deadline buzz
July 31
After boosting bullpen, Mets looking to shore up lineup: After acquiring three rental relievers in five days, the Mets remain interested in adding an impact bat before today’s deadline. Two possibilities are Chicago White Sox center fielder Luis Robert Jr. and Tampa Bay Rays second baseman Brandon Lowe, sources told ESPN. The Mets prefer to upgrade in center field, and Robert, though having another down year, turns 28 next week and has star potential. Lowe, meanwhile, is a two-time All-Star who has played both corner outfield spots over his eight-year career but hasn’t played the outfield since 2022. — Jorge Castillo
Arizona has more to do after dealing Suarez to Mariners: The D-backs parted ways with their biggest trade asset Wednesday night, trading Eugenio Suarez to the Mariners. And now, with the deadline hours away, the focus shifts to their two front-line starting pitchers, Zac Gallen and Merrill Kelly, both of whom are eligible for free agency at season’s end. Kelly is expected to be traded Wednesday, sources said. Whether Gallen gets moved, though, remains to be seen.
The Yankees, Astros, Red Sox, Cubs and Blue Jays are among the contenders who could be in the market for a high-end rental starter. Kelly, a 36-year-old with a 3.22 ERA in 128⅔ innings, can fit all those teams.
But with Gallen, it’s unclear at this point whether the D-backs can net the type of return that would justify being able to extend him the qualifying offer over the offseason, whereby the D-backs would either (A) keep him on a one-year contract or (B) get draft pick compensation between Round 1 and Competitive Balance Round A (assuming the D-backs remain a revenue-sharing recipient and Gallen signs for at least $50 million). — Alden Gonzalez
Why relievers could be the talk of deadline day: The amount given up for relievers by the Mets and Phillies stunned rival executives, and the assumption within the industry is that this will embolden the potential off-loaders in the last hours before the trade deadline. There continues to be surprise in rival front offices that the Rockies aren’t taking advantage of this dynamic, because they have high-end relievers to offer and other teams think they could make a killing. The Tigers, Mariners, Dodgers, Yankees, Rangers, Blue Jays are among the contenders still looking for impact relievers in their bullpen — and at some point on Thursday, the teams dealing away players might outnumber the number looking to add.
Among the relievers who could be in play: David Bednar, Pirates; Mason Miller, A’s; Griffin Jax, Twins; Pete Fairbanks, Rays; Danny Coulombe, Twins; Kenley Jansen, Angels; Raisel Iglesias, Braves— Buster Olney
July 30
Angels switching to add mode: Small sample size can matter this time of year: The Los Angeles Angels had prepped for the possibility of trading away players (Taylor Ward, etc.), but after their win Tuesday night, they moved into add mode. They could still deal one or two players — notably closer Kenley Jansen — but the Angels want to make a push. — Buster Olney
A couple of Twins could be on the move soon: The market is picking up for Minnesota Twins closer Jhoan Duran, with many throughout the industry expecting him to be moved at some point Wednesday.
The Philadelphia Phillies have been heavily involved. But the Seattle Mariners are still looking for ways to aggressively augment their roster (even after trading for lefty reliever Caleb Ferguson), either by adding another late-game option such as Duran, upgrading at third base or both. The New York Yankees also are expected to be in the mix, as are the Los Angeles Dodgers, though it seems as if the reigning World Series champions prefer Minnesota teammate Griffin Jax over Duran at this point.
The Twins theoretically could pair Duran with super-utility man Willi Castro, who also is expected to be moved Wednesday. — Alden Gonzalez
Where Astros, Twins Correa talks stand: While the Houston Astros have interest in Minnesota Twins shortstop Carlos Correa and there has been dialogue on a potential trade, the sides are far apart at the moment and no deal is close, sources tell ESPN. — Jeff Passan
Why Mets, Mariners are among teams to watch: As deadline day nears, Seattle and New York are two contenders with the potential to go big before 6 p.m. Thursday arrives. Read more: Buster Olney and Jeff Passan’s latest trade deadline intel
July 29
AL East leaders linked to Kwan, but pitching’s the priority: The first-place Toronto Blue Jays have recently been linked to Cleveland Guardians outfielder Steven Kwan, who seems more likely to be traded in the wake of Emmanuel Clase‘s sudden absence — but Toronto’s priority remains pitching, sources with knowledge of the team’s thinking said.
The Blue Jays could use a top-end starter to complement a rotation fronted by Jose Berrios, Chris Bassitt and Kevin Gausman, with controllable arms such as Edward Cabrera and Mitch Keller making the most sense. But Toronto would also like to upgrade its bullpen — a unit that has lost Yimi Garcia, Paxton Schultz and Nick Sandlin to the injured list in recent weeks.
The Blue Jays entered this season with baseball’s 24th-ranked farm system, according to ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel. It would be difficult to envision them filling needs at the top of their rotation and in the back of their bullpen, while also adding an impact bat. The team might ultimately lean on the boost it should receive from Alejandro Kirk, Daulton Varsho, Andres Gimenez and, it hopes, Anthony Santander returning from injury. — Alden Gonzalez
Robert trade talk heats up: NL East rivals are vying for outfielder Luis Robert Jr. of the White Sox, with Chicago apparently resolute in the stance that it’ll either receive a trade return the equivalent of what Robert’s potential is or hang on to him beyond the deadline. The White Sox hold a $20 million option on Robert next season, and they have tons of payroll flexibility moving forward, meaning that there really is no financial stress in the decision; Chicago doesn’t have to dump the contract.
A lot of Robert’s career has been filled with injuries or underwhelming performance, but he has always been viewed as a superstar talent. Luisangel Acuna and Mark Vientos are among the names who have come up in conversations with the Mets, and the Phillies have a farm system loaded with pitching. The Padres have also inquired about Robert. — Buster Olney
Braves moving Ozuna? Possibly to Padres? With little more than 48 hours to go before the deadline, there is movement developing around Marcell Ozuna, who has the power to reject any trade proposal. At least one team has had internal conversations about trying to work out a deal for the slugger.
It’ll be interesting to see if the Padres emerge as a possible landing spot for Ozuna. San Diego has some of baseball’s worst DH production this year — wRC+ of 82, which ranks 28th — and presumably, the prospect-strapped Padres wouldn’t have to give up much to get him. — Olney
Cards looking to deal Helsley: For a lot of this season, rival executives weren’t sure if the Cardinals would trade players at the deadline, because their perception was the organization wanted to have as good of a season as possible in John Mozeliak’s last year running baseball operations. They weren’t sure if closer Ryan Helsley, a free-agent-to-be, would be dealt. As recently as a few days ago, it was still unclear to some teams whether Helsley would be moved.
But on Tuesday morning, multiple executives said the Cardinals are exchanging names and appear devoted to moving Helsley, though the offers for him might not be as robust as they had hoped. Helsley’s strikeout rate is down this season, he has given up a higher percentage of homers, and his ERA has climbed. “He’s not having the lights-out season we’ve seen from him before,” one evaluator said. The Tigers, Mets, Yankees, Mariners, Dodgers, Phillies and Blue Jays are among the contenders looking for relief help. — Olney
Ouch! HBP has teams concerned about Suarez: At the very least, Eugenio Suarez getting hit by a pitch Monday night has concerned some rival evaluators who have talked about dealing for him. “If you pay a price like that, you’re going to want to feel good about what you’re getting,” one staffer said. And generally, hand/wrist injuries linger for hitters. — Olney
Reds eye Suarez, but there’s a backup plan: The Cincinnati Reds are among the teams that have been in contact with the Diamondbacks about Eugenio Suarez, but if Arizona finds a deal elsewhere, the Reds might pivot to another third baseman on the market — Gio Urshela of the A’s, Isiah Kiner-Falefa of the Pirates, one of the Mets’ infielders (Brett Baty, Luisangel Acuna, Mark Vientos), etc. — Olney
Want one of these aces? It’s gonna cost ya: There are a number of contenders looking for a frontline starting pitcher — Mets, Cubs, Red Sox, etc. — but the cost on two of the most prominent starters, the Twins’ Joe Ryan and the Padres’ Dylan Cease, remain extremely high in the minds of some evaluators. — Olney
Are the Rays adding or subtracting? Even they don’t know: The market is still stalled somewhat by teams deciding what they want to do. Tampa Bay is at the top of that list. The Rays have pitchers — both starters and relievers — that teams want. But being just on the outside of the wild-card race is causing some hesitation for the Rays. — Jesse Rogers
Then again … Other teams think Tampa Bay, which slumped through a brutal July, has joined the Diamondbacks as one of the primary subtractors in the market. Following the trade of Danny Jansen to Milwaukee, other names include starting pitcher Zack Littell (“He’s going to be traded,” one evaluator said), relief pitchers Garrett Cleavinger and Pete Fairbanks, and position players Yandy Diaz and Josh Lowe. But one rival executive says they believe Diaz will have to be pried away from the Rays, given his $12 million option for next season. — Olney
Yankees seeking relief — and lots of it: The Yankees continue to look for relief help. They have resources deployed throughout the league in search of bullpen arms. If there is a closer or setup man available, New York is scouting him. Think Ryan Helsley and work down from there. — Rogers
Speaking of relievers: Other teams believe the Colorado Rockies could do very well in the current market if they dealt their best relievers — Seth Halvorsen, Jake Bird and Jimmy Herget. But some of those same teams view the current cost to make those deals as unreachable, and they wonder if the Rockies will bend as the deadline gets closer. — Olney
Rangers ready to rock at the deadline: The Texas Rangers have won nine of 11 and rival executives report that the Rangers are aggressively looking to upgrade their bullpen before the trade deadline. — Olney
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Chris Low
There isn’t much surrounding college football that isn’t in something of a state of flux.
The discussions surrounding the future playoff format bounce around like a pingpong ball. Schools are for the first time in history sharing revenue with athletes. Conference realignment marches onward, and the overhaul of rosters via the transfer portal continues at a dizzying pace.
All the while, the start of the 2025 season is less than a month away.
What that means is it’s time to take a magnifying glass to the 2025 schedule and hand out some superlatives, some flattering and some not so flattering. All rankings referenced are from ESPN’s post-spring Top 25, and Notre Dame, despite being an independent, will be considered a Power 4 school for our purposes.
Before we dive in, an annual reminder: Schedule strength tends to look a lot different in July than it does in late October.
Toughest overall Power 4 schedule: Florida
A year ago Billy Napier and his Florida football team epitomized resiliency. Despite an ugly 1-2 start, Napier never lost the locker room and guided the Gators to four straight wins to end the season with an 8-5 finish. But just like a year ago, Florida’s schedule is again brutal.
The Gators are the only team in the SEC facing the league’s three highest-ranked preseason teams (No. 3 Texas, No. 4 Georgia and No. 6 LSU), with the Georgia and LSU games away from home. The Sept. 13 trip to LSU is followed by a trip to No. 21 Miami the next week. In a five-week stretch from Sept. 13 through Oct. 11, which includes a bye on Sept. 27, Florida plays at LSU, at Miami, at home against Texas and at Texas A&M. The Gators’ annual showdown with Georgia in Jacksonville on Nov. 1 is followed by back-to-back SEC road games against Kentucky and No. 24 Ole Miss.
Wisconsin is a close second in this category. Luke Fickell and the Badgers could use a strong bounce-back season after losing five in a row to end 2024 and missing a bowl game for the first time in 22 years. Like Florida, Wisconsin faces six ranked teams, including four of the top 11 — at No. 9 Alabama on Sept. 13, home against No. 5 Ohio State on Oct. 18, at No. 8 Oregon on Oct. 25 and home against No. 11 Illinois on Nov. 22.
Easiest overall Power 4 schedule: Wake Forest
Jake Dickert takes over for Dave Clawson at Wake Forest and has his work cut out to get the program back into the upper tier of the ACC. But he faces only one preseason Top 25 team in 2025: SMU at home Oct. 25, with a bye the preceding week. The Deacons avoid Clemson, Miami and Louisville in the ACC. Their first four games are at home along with two of their last three games. A game at No. 24 Ole Miss was replaced by a trip to Oregon State, meaning there are no Power 4 nonconference foes on the Deacons’ schedule. Their only back-to-back conference games on the road are against Florida State and Virginia on Nov. 1 and Nov. 8, and those teams finished a combined 7-17 last season.
Missouri, coming off back-to-back seasons of at least 10 wins under Eliah Drinkwitz, has a schedule tailor-made to make it three straight seasons with double-digit wins. The Tigers’ first six games are at home, and they avoid Texas, Georgia and LSU in the SEC. Their toughest nonconference game is against Kansas at home.
Toughest overall non-Power 4 schedule: Kent State
This one doesn’t seem fair. Kent State went 1-23 over the past two seasons, fired coach Kenni Burns in April and replaced him with interim coach Mark Carney. Not only do the Golden Flashes have to play three Power 4 nonconference teams on the road, including No. 16 Texas Tech on Sept. 6 and No. 25 Oklahoma on Oct. 4, but they face MAC preseason favorite Toledo on Oct. 18 on the road.
South Florida’s schedule is equally daunting. The Bulls open the season against Boise State, Florida and Miami in successive weeks (Florida and Miami on the road) and face American Athletic Conference contenders Navy, Memphis and North Texas on the road.
Easiest overall non-Power 4 schedule: Liberty
The Flames are a repeat winner here, which means Jamey Chadwell’s club should be a prime candidate to be the Group of 5 representative in the playoff. Liberty doesn’t face any Power 4 nonconference opponents, although James Madison’s trip to Lynchburg on Sept. 20 will be a game to watch. The toughest Conference USA challenge might come in Week 2 against Jacksonville State on the road. Otherwise, Liberty received a favorable draw in the conference. In other words, not returning to the Conference USA championship game for the second straight season would be a big disappointment on the Mountain. Elsewhere, North Texas’ path to the American championship game is helped by avoiding Tulane and Memphis, and its toughest nonconference game is against Washington State at home Sept. 13.
Toughest Power 4 nonconference schedule: Clemson
This was a coin flip between Clemson and Stanford until quarterback Jake Retzlaff departed BYU. Now the trip to No. 10 BYU on Sept. 6 doesn’t look quite as daunting for the Cardinal, who end the season Nov. 29 at home against No. 7 Notre Dame.
So Clemson gets the nod. The Tigers open the season Aug. 30 at home against No. 6 LSU, then close the season Nov. 29 on the road against bitter rival South Carolina, which is ranked No. 13. Clemson also faces Troy, a top contender in the Sun Belt Conference, at home a week after the LSU opener.
Miami has three tough early-season matchups out of conference, albeit all three at home, against No. 7 Notre Dame on Aug. 31, South Florida on Sept. 13 and No. 19 Florida on Sept. 20.
Easiest Power 4 nonconference schedule: Penn State
It’s Penn State by a mile, or about as long as it takes to get to Happy Valley from just about any major airport. This should be James Franklin’s best and most balanced team, but one that will be untested when it rolls into Big Ten play against Oregon at home Sept. 27. The “warmups” come in the first three weeks of the season, all at home, against Nevada, Florida International and Villanova, followed by a bye week before facing the Ducks.
We can’t let Indiana completely off the hook. For the second straight season, the Hoosiers won’t play a nonconference game against a Power 4 foe. They open the season with three straight home games against Old Dominion, Kennesaw State and Indiana State (without Larry Bird). To be fair, Indiana is also the only Big Ten team that has to play Penn State and Oregon on the road.
Must-see nonconference games
To be clear, neutral-site games don’t count for this list:
• Auburn at Baylor, Aug. 29
• Utah at UCLA, Aug. 30
• Texas at Ohio State, Aug. 30
• Notre Dame at Miami, Aug. 30
• LSU at Clemson, Aug. 30
• Alabama at Florida State, Aug. 30
• Michigan at Oklahoma, Sept. 6
• Kansas at Missouri, Sept. 6
• Texas A&M at Notre Dame, Sept. 13
• Florida at Miami, Sept. 20
• USC at Notre Dame, Oct. 18
• Clemson at South Carolina, Nov. 29
Better be careful
Some sneaky good games matching Power 4 teams against Group of 5 teams:
• Toledo at Kentucky, Aug. 30
• James Madison at Louisville, Sept. 5
• UCLA at UNLV, Sept. 6
• Army at Kansas State, Sept. 6
• South Florida at Florida, Sept. 6
• Arkansas State vs. Arkansas, in Little Rock, Sept. 6
• Duke at Tulane, Sept. 13
• Arkansas at Memphis, Sept. 20
• Tulane at Ole Miss, Sept. 20
• BYU at East Carolina, Sept. 20
• San José State at Stanford, Sept. 27
• Boise State at Notre Dame, Oct. 4
Jeff Lebby, in his second season, will lead the Bulldogs against four playoff teams from a year ago at Davis Wade Stadium: Arizona State on Sept. 6, Tennessee on Sept. 27, Texas on Oct. 25 and Georgia on Nov. 8. If that’s not enough, the Bulldogs close the season at home Nov. 28 in their annual Egg Bowl matchup with No. 24 Ole Miss. Nearly 80% of Mississippi State’s roster is made up of first- or second-year players with 60 new players added for this season.
Easiest Power 4 home schedule: Texas
Only one preseason Top 25 team will visit DKR-Texas Memorial Stadium this season, and that’s at the very end when No. 23 Texas A&M makes the 105-mile trip to Austin. After opening against No. 5 Ohio State on the road, Texas plays San José State, UTEP and Sam Houston the next three weeks at home. Other than Texas A&M, Texas’ other two home dates the final month of the season are against Vanderbilt on Nov. 1 and Arkansas on Nov. 22. In an odd twist, Texas doesn’t play a game in Austin in the month of October. Florida, Kentucky and Mississippi State are all on the road, and the Red River Showdown game against Oklahoma, as always, is in Dallas.
Toughest Power 4 schedule away from home: Syracuse
Fran Brown was a first-year head coach last season, but he showed the poise and precision of a 20-year veteran in leading Syracuse to 10 wins, only the third time since 2000 that the Orange had won 10 games. As an encore, he faces an enormous challenge. Syracuse lost most of its key playmakers from a year ago and faces a brutal schedule away from home. The Aug. 30 opener against Tennessee in Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium will be a quasi-home game for the Vols, and that’s just the start. The Orange play at No. 2 Clemson on Sept. 20, at No. 15 SMU on Oct. 4, at No. 21 Miami on Nov. 8 and at No. 7 Notre Dame on Nov. 22.
Easiest Power 4 schedule away from home: Missouri
The Tigers play eight of their 12 games this season at Faurot Field, and only one of their four road games is against a ranked opponent, No. 25 Oklahoma on Nov. 22. The other three are against Auburn (Oct. 18), Vanderbilt (Oct. 25) and Arkansas (Nov. 29). It’s never easy on the road in the SEC, but the Tigers are avoiding some of the most treacherous stops.
Toughest close to the season: Rutgers
Granted, Rutgers’ schedule outside the Big Ten is cushy (home games the first three weeks against Ohio University, Miami (Ohio) and Norfolk State), but the close to the season — ouch! Rutgers’ last six games are No. 8 Oregon at home Oct. 18, at Purdue on Oct. 25, at No. 11 Illinois on Nov. 1, Maryland at home Nov. 8, at No. 5 Ohio State on Nov. 22 and No. 1 Penn State at home Nov. 29. The Scarlet Knights are the only Big Ten team this season that has to play Penn State, Ohio State and Oregon.
Easiest close to the season: Illinois
Illinois is poised for another banner season under Bret Bielema with most of its key players back from the 10-win season a year ago. The Fighting Illini’s schedule is front loaded as they play four of their final six games at home, and three of the last four are home games against Rutgers, Maryland and Northwestern. The only road game in that stretch is at Wisconsin on Nov. 22. Illinois won’t face a preseason Top 25 opponent the last five weeks of the season.
Toughest three-game stretch: Oklahoma
The criteria for this category are three games in three consecutive weeks with no byes. Brent Venables and the Sooners will have a chance to build some momentum, but they face an October grind that could break any team. It starts with No. 3 Texas in Dallas on Oct. 11, followed by a road game at No. 13 South Carolina on Oct. 18 and then a home game against No. 24 Ole Miss on Oct. 25. If you want to stretch it out to four games, things don’t get much better for the Sooners. They go on the road the next week to play Tennessee on Nov. 1 in Neyland Stadium. Three of those four games are away from home.
Basking in Florida’s sunshine
Miami doesn’t play a game outside the state of Florida until traveling to face SMU on Nov. 1. Six of the Hurricanes’ first seven games are at home at Hard Rock Stadium, and a seventh is in Tallahassee against Florida State on Oct. 4. Included are three straight all-Florida affairs against South Florida on Sept. 13, Florida on Sept. 20 and at FSU on Oct. 4
Dabo and the SEC
Clemson’s Dabo Swinney gets another shot at the SEC to open the season in the Battle of Death Valleys on Aug. 30 against LSU. Clemson is 18-12 vs. the SEC since the start of the 2012 season, but the Tigers have lost seven of their past 10 games to SEC opponents, beginning with a 42-25 loss to LSU in the 2019 national championship game.
Mountains are calling
From just east of Marys Peak, Oregon State will travel across the country to the Blue Ridge Mountains to take on Appalachian State in Boone, North Carolina, on Oct. 4. Talk about two places that are hard to get to, but two gorgeous campuses.
Taking Saturdays off
Houston plays three Friday games (Sept. 12 vs. Colorado, Sept. 26 at Oregon State and Nov. 7 at UCF). The Cougars open the season on a Thursday at home, Aug. 28 vs. Stephen F. Austin.
Ryan Silverfield has guided Memphis to 10 or more wins in each of the past two seasons, a first in program history, and enters his sixth season amid big expectations in the American Conference with a roster full of new faces via the transfer portal. The Tigers are 11-2 at home the past two years, which bodes well for 2025. Just about all of Memphis’ toughest games are at home, including Arkansas’ visit on Sept. 20. In conference play, top contenders South Florida (Oct. 25), Tulane (Nov. 7) and Navy (Nov. 27) all come to Memphis’ Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium.
Avoiding campuses
Tennessee, for the 11th straight year, will not play a nonconference regular-season game on an opposing team’s campus. The last time the Vols played a nonconference road game (not counting the playoff game last season at Ohio State) on the opposing school’s campus was Sept. 13, 2014, when they lost 34-10 to No. 4 Oklahoma in Norman. The Vols did win at Pittsburgh in 2022, a 34-27 overtime victory, but the Panthers play their home games at the Steelers’ stadium, Acrisure Stadium, formerly known as Heinz Field, which stands along the Ohio River on the north side of Pittsburgh. The opener against Syracuse in Atlanta will be Tennessee’s sixth neutral-site game in the past 10 years.
Power outages
Houston, Indiana, Maryland, Northwestern, Ole Miss, Penn State, Rutgers, Texas Tech, Wake Forest and Washington don’t play any nonconference games against Power 4 opponents in 2025. Every school in the ACC except Wake Forest plays at least one Power 4 nonconference team, and nine schools (Boston College, Miami, NC State, North Carolina, Pittsburgh, SMU, Syracuse, Stanford and Virginia Tech) play two nonconference games against Power 4 foes. As ACC commissioner Jim Phillips likes to say, “Go ACC!” There are a few caveats. Some of the teams not playing Power 4 opponents are playing Oregon State or Washington State, and that includes Ole Miss. Wake Forest pulled out of the back half of its home-and-away series with Ole Miss last season, and the Rebels had to scramble, adding Washington State at the last minute.
Jet-lagged Huskies
The only time all season Washington plays back-to-back home games is against Colorado State and UC Davis to open the season. From there, it’s back and forth and all over the map for the Huskies. Consider: After playing at Washington State in Pullman on Sept. 20 (not an easy trip), Washington comes back home on Sept. 27 to face Ohio State, then hits the road the following week to play Maryland on Oct. 4, then back home against Rutgers on Oct. 10 (a Friday), back on the road against Michigan on Oct. 18, back home against Illinois on Oct. 25, and then after a bye, back on the road against Wisconsin on Nov. 8. Thank goodness for charter flights.
Vols flopping Dawgs and Gators
Georgia and Tennessee meet Sept. 13 in Knoxville, the earliest the teams have met in a season since 1995 (Sept. 9) when Kirby Smart was a freshman defensive back for the Bulldogs. The Vols won 30-27 in the final seconds on a field goal. Smart never beat Tennessee as a player, but he has won eight straight in the series as a coach. Tennessee, meanwhile, doesn’t face Florida until Nov. 22 at the Swamp, the latest those teams have played (not counting the 2020 COVID season) since 2001 (Dec. 1) when Tennessee won 34-32 in the Swamp in a game that was postponed because of the Sept. 11 attacks. Tennessee is a combined 12-38 against Georgia and Florida since 2000, 2-6 under Josh Heupel.
Hogs debuting on the SEC road … again
For the third straight season, Arkansas opens its SEC season on the road, the only school in the league having to play three straight openers away from home. The Hogs won 24-14 last season at Auburn and lost 34-31 at LSU in 2023. Arkansas opens SEC play this season at Ole Miss on Sept. 13. In fact, Arkansas plays its first two SEC games on the road, traveling to Tennessee on Oct. 11. Arkansas, Auburn and Vanderbilt are the only three SEC teams that have to play their first two league games on the road. All five of Arkansas’ road opponents this season won at least nine games a year ago, and four (Memphis, Ole Miss, Tennessee and Texas) won 10 or more games.
Border War returns
Kansas and Missouri will renew their series Sept. 6 in Columbia, the first time they’ve played since 2011. It’s the first of a four-game agreement to bring back the series, which dates to 1891, and will be Kansas’ first visit to Faurot Field since 2006, when Missouri won 42-17. Their 2011 meeting was at Arrowhead Stadium, with Missouri winning 24-10. The teams had met 93 years in a row before the series was not renewed following the 2011 game; at the time, it was the second-most-played rivalry in Division I-A football history.
Catching up with old teammates
With full-scale free agency alive and well in college football, more and more players from the transfer portal are going up against their former schools and teammates. Some notable examples this season:
• Duke quarterback Darian Mensah at Tulane on Sept. 13
• Ole Miss offensive guard Patrick Kutas vs. Arkansas on Sept. 13
• Oregon cornerback Theran Johnson at Northwestern on Sept. 13
• Auburn quarterback Jackson Arnold at Oklahoma on Sept. 20
• Texas A&M receiver Mario Craver vs. Mississippi State on Oct. 4
• Ohio State tight end Max Klare at Purdue on Nov. 8
• Texas Tech defensive tackle Lee Hunter vs. UCF on Nov. 15
• Missouri receiver Kevin Coleman Jr. vs. Mississippi State on Nov. 15
• Oregon offensive guard Emmanuel Pregnon vs. USC on Nov. 22
• Oregon defensive tackle Bear Alexander vs. USC on Nov. 22
• LSU receiver Nic Anderson at Oklahoma on Nov. 29
Homecoming for Helton
Clay Helton gets a homecoming, sort of anyway. Helton, with a new five-year contract after winning eight games last season at Georgia Southern, returns to Los Angeles when the Eagles face USC on Sept. 6 in the Coliseum. With one game as interim head coach in 2013, Helton was USC’s official head coach for seven seasons before being fired early in the 2021 campaign. He was 46-24 overall and won the Rose Bowl following the 2016 season (52-49 over Penn State), which is the Trojans’ last appearance in the Rose Bowl. The next season, Helton guided the Trojans to the 2017 Pac-12 championship, which is their last conference championship.
They’re playing where?
It’s always interesting (and entertaining) to see Power 4 teams playing on the road at Group of 5 teams, especially when it’s on campus. Case in point: Bill Belichick’s second game as North Carolina’s coach will come Sept. 6 against in-state foe Charlotte in 15,300-seat Jerry Richardson Stadium. Some of the others this season: West Virginia at Ohio University on Sept. 6 and Oklahoma at Temple (Lincoln Financial Field), Iowa State at Arkansas State, SMU at Missouri State and Utah at Wyoming, all Sept. 13.
Not very Belichickian
Speaking of Belichick, he didn’t get a bad draw in his first season at North Carolina. And, yes, we know he’s not one to look ahead until it’s “on to whomever.” But the Tar Heels face TCU at home in the Sept. 1 Monday night opener, and if they win that one, it’s conceivable they could be 5-0 going into their home game against Clemson on Oct. 4. The Tar Heels get a bye week prior to the Clemson game after playing at UCF on Sept. 20.
Fear the Terps
Maryland dipped to 4-8 a year ago after three straight winning seasons under Mike Locksley. The Terps’ schedule in 2025 is manageable enough that they should have a chance to return to their winning ways. Their nonconference schedule consists of Florida Atlantic, Northern Illinois and Towson, all at home, and Maryland is the only Big Ten team that avoids Penn State, Ohio State and Oregon. The Terps have three ranked teams on their schedule, and two of those games (Indiana and Michigan) are at home.
Run-down Red Raiders
Texas Tech, ranked No. 15 in the preseason, is pushing all its chips in on this season and reportedly spent more than $28 million on its roster. Led by coach Joey McGuire, the Red Raiders are looking to reach double-digit wins for the first time since the late Mike Leach led Tech to 11 wins in 2008. But to do it, they’re going to have to push through a seven-week gauntlet of Big 12 games. That’s right, seven straight Big 12 games without a bye from Oct. 4 to Nov. 15 — at Houston, vs. Kansas, at Arizona State, vs. Oklahoma State, at Kansas State, vs. BYU and vs. UCF.
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