Welcome to the wild new SEC, where nothing — outside of Georgia dominating — makes much sense
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David Hale, ESPN Staff Writer
It was less than a month ago that Georgia slunk into the locker room at halftime against Alabama, trailing by 23, battered and dazed, a shell of the program that had dominated the previous three seasons of college football.
A lot has changed since then.
Georgia’s frantic second-half comeback attempt that night didn’t ultimately end with a win, but it was an awakening, and the rejuvenated Bulldogs marched into Austin, Texas, on Saturday night and delivered a stark reminder that they’re still the kings of college football.
Alabama survived that night against Georgia, but it has since felt like the plot of some bad “Final Destination” sequel. The Tide should’ve lost that one, and death has stalked them ever since — first with a loss to Vanderbilt, then a narrow escape against South Carolina, and finally a dagger on Saturday against Tennessee. The Vols broke out the victory cigars after an ugly 24-17 win, handing Alabama a second loss before Nov. 1 for the first time since 2007.
And when the dust settled on Week 8, it’s not Georgia or Alabama or Texas or Tennessee at the top of the SEC standings. Instead, it’s LSU and Texas A&M — two teams that lost in Week 1 — now the lone programs still undefeated in conference play.
It is perhaps fitting that the most memorable moment from Saturday’s SEC chaos was a meeting of officials on the field in Austin, with fans tossing trash from the stands and both coaches apoplectic on the sidelines. None of this makes much sense, and we’re all struggling to sort out what just happened.
Perhaps we should believe that Georgia is, in spite of that loss to the Tide last month, still the preeminent team in college football. The Bulldogs certainly looked the part Saturday behind a running game that, for the first time this season, flexed real muscle. Trevor Etienne carried 19 times for 87 yards and three touchdowns behind an O-line that looked dominant. And yet, there were still red flags, led by Carson Beck‘s three interceptions, including the one that resulted in that scrum of officials.
Initially, what looked like a pick by Jahdae Barron was overturned by a flag for defensive pass interference. The crowd erupted in a chorus of boos as replay seemed to show little evidence of a flagrant foul. Steve Sarkisian pleaded his case, Texas fans threw various condiments onto the field and the officials gathered to discuss their options.
1:26
Refs overturn crucial PI call after fans throw trash on the field
After the referees call a controversial pass interference play, Texas fans throw trash on the field and the call is reversed.
What was said in that huddle may never be known, but it’s entirely possible Matthew McConaughey wandered over from his place on the sideline, explained to the officials that the universe is filled with mystery and time is but a mirage and, in fact, that flag only truly existed in their minds.
After the officials picked up the flag, Texas scored to pull within eight, but Georgia never flinched. Nothing — not questionable officiating, Beck’s struggles or even a brief appearance by Arch Manning in which the crowd squealed like teenagers seeing the Beatles on “The Ed Sullivan Show” could keep the Bulldogs from an emphatic win.
It was a jarring setback for Texas, but what does that even mean in the SEC in 2024?
Alabama was king three weeks ago, and now the Tide have the same conference record as Florida.
Saturday’s performance in Knoxville was ugly. The offense managed just 314 yards. The Tide had 15 penalties in the game. King Mack‘s acting skills were atrocious.
What’s going on here? 🤔 pic.twitter.com/k2uDdF7puz
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) October 19, 2024
Three weeks ago, Tennessee was distraught. The offense was a mess, Nico Iamaleava couldn’t hit the broad side of a sun sphere, and an upset loss to Arkansas seemed to have the Vols’ playoff hopes on life support. But by Saturday evening, Iamaleava, Josh Heupel and Co. were enjoying the finest cigars 7-Eleven stocks behind the counter, and all was right with the world.
In Week 1, LSU couldn’t get off the field against USC. Now, it is riding high atop the SEC (while the Trojans, meanwhile, are such a disaster their season would be rejected as a plot line on “9-1-1” for being too unrealistic).
In Week 1, Texas A&M couldn’t find an offensive spark against Notre Dame. Now, the Aggies are 4-0 in conference and Mike Elko is the first A&M coach to start his tenure with six wins in seven games since an era when every college football coach was named Knute, Pop or Hoss.
And amid all of the zigs and zags of this SEC season, there’s still Vanderbilt, sailing along like a goalpost in the Cumberland River. Somehow the Commodores have a better shot at the SEC title game than the Tide or Ole Miss or Oklahoma because, in 2024, in this new SEC, there’s almost nothing that feels normal.
Well, OK, Auburn stinks. At least that’s a proper through line.
But the larger takeaway — from Saturday’s heavyweight fights, from the season to date — is that making sense of this year’s SEC is not for the faint of heart.
This is a new era, and what we knew to be true for the past 20 years — even for the past few weeks — can evaporate quicker than a defensive pass interference call in Texas.
Jump to:
We’re good now | Miami makes magic | Cook to the rescue
FSU loses … again | BYU stays undefeated | Vibe shifts
Dark days in Norman | Irish roll | Iowa State survives
Heisman five | Under the radar
We’re good now
Sometimes teams we’ve collectively dismissed in September use the time outside the spotlight to fix some problems and find their footing. With that in mind, we’re checking in with some surprising upstarts who’ve gone from afterthoughts to teams with real aspirations.
Washington State (6-1)
The Cougars dominated Hawai’i 42-10 behind QB John Mateer, who threw for three touchdowns and ran for two more. Mateer has developed into college football’s wildest ride — completing fewer than 60% of his throws, boasting three games with five touchdowns or more, winning a game while completing nine passes and losing one when completing 26. There’s virtually nothing about Mateer that seems off the table. He could throw for 600 yards or he could decide to live in a van and follow Maroon 5 on tour for a year. Anything is possible.
Colorado (5-2)
Travis Hunter left Saturday’s game after aggravating a shoulder injury, but it didn’t matter much for the Buffaloes, who romped past the Arizona Wildcats, 34-7. Deion Sanders’ squad is now just a win away from bowl eligibility, which would be a nice bit of validation for the oft-criticized coach if he were the type of person who looked for external validation rather than simply counting Instagram likes.
Cincinnati (5-2)
The Bearcats blew a 27-6 second-half lead against the Pittsburgh Panthers and missed a final-second field goal in a three-point loss to the Texas Tech Red Raiders, otherwise we’d be talking about an undefeated Cincinnati team. Either way, the Bearcats are 5-2 after beating Arizona State 24-14 on Saturday in a game in which the Sun Devils missed two late field goals that had head coach Kenny Dillingham saying he’d open up tryouts for a new kicker this week.
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ASU coach labels kicking game ‘atrocious,’ confirms tryouts for Monday
ASU coach Kenny Dillingham labels his team’s kicking game “atrocious” and says it will be hosting open tryouts on Monday.
Wisconsin (5-2)
After dropping back-to-back games to Alabama and USC, the Badgers have found their mojo with three straight wins in which they allowed a grand total of 16 total points. That those three wins came against Purdue, Rutgers and, on Saturday, 23-3 vs. Northwestern, undercuts a bit of the enthusiasm, but after enough Brandy Old Fashioneds, who’s really counting anyway?
Vanderbilt (5-2)
These are halcyon days in Nashville. Will Levis is doing shirtless mayo commercials. Sturgill Simpson is doing what amounts to an Eras Tour for middle-aged guys with beards. And Vanderbilt is 5-2 after Saturday’s 28-14 win over Ball State. Diego Pavia accounted for 357 yards and two touchdowns in the win, which puts the Commodores ahead of Alabama, Ole Miss and Oklahoma in the SEC standings because the world no longer makes any sense.
The entire state of Louisiana (22-5)
LSU rode Caden Durham for three touchdowns in a 34-10 win over Arkansas on Saturday. Tulane cruised to a 24-10 win over Rice, too. Louisiana upended Coastal Carolina 34-24 and ULM had an off week. Add it all up, and the state’s four FBS teams are a combined 22-5. It’s the type of overwhelming success that warrants daily parades, an endless array of cocktails and a party around every corner. Unfortunately, that’s just not Louisiana’s style, so it’ll celebrate with a cool glass of milk and a nice book.
Miami makes magic
In the second half of Miami’s 52-45 win over Louisville, the Hurricanes’ offense went with a silent snap count, ostensibly because of the hostile crowd but, in QB Cam Ward‘s estimation, it was simply because “it looks cooler.”
1:56
Cam Ward tosses 4 TDs as Miami stays perfect with win over Louisville
Miami QB Cam Ward goes off for four touchdown passes and 319 yards as the Hurricanes move to 7-0 with a win over Louisville.
This is the vibe Miami’s operating with right now. At 7-0, and despite three straight nail-biters, the Canes are basically just doing what they want offensively because Ward is all but unstoppable.
Midway through the second quarter, Miami went for it on fourth-and-1 from its own 25. Receiver Sammy Brown‘s explanation: “If a team can stop us four straight plays, kudos to them.”
Miami led by seven at the half, and Ward’s message to his teammates as they walked off the field: “Don’t worry. We ain’t done.”
Miami benefited from some controversial officiating for the third straight week, and all Mario Cristobal had to say was, “The head official’s cat has been returned safe and sound, and any perceived threats were taken completely out of context.”
OK, we made that last one up, but the rest of Miami’s secret formula seems unimpeachable. Ward threw for 319 yards and four touchdowns — to four different receivers. The ground game came to life to the tune of 219 yards. And the officials went to replay on a critical call that worked out for Miami. Rinse, repeat.
Cook makes heroic return
Missouri rallied past Auburn 21-17 on Saturday thanks to a legendary performance by QB Brady Cook.
Cook went down with an ankle injury on the first series of the game. He was taken to the hospital for an MRI, and Missouri said he was unlikely to return.
But Cook had other plans.
Drinkwitz said Cook went to the hospital for an MRI during the game. He told the team “I’ve only got 2 1/2 games left on Faurot Field, I’m not missing this one in the hospital.”
— Power Mizzou (@PowerMizzoucom) October 19, 2024
In what would be a central plot point in any football movie ever made, Cook emerged from the ER with little more than a sore ankle and $1,200 toward his deductible, then returned to the field in the third quarter, rescuing Missouri from a 17-3 deficit and engineering two fourth-quarter touchdown drives in the win. This marked the first game in SEC history in which a QB left a hospital bed to beat a team whose coach once won a game from a hospital bed.
Ultimately, the performance will be remembered in Missouri football lore and served as a reminder that a guy who spent half a game in an MRI machine is still better than anything Michigan can find at QB.
Noles dig below rock-bottom
This is not the first season that has gone horribly wrong for Florida State. Much of the past 20 years has been a roller coaster between 10-win seasons and utter misery. But at no point in 22 previous meetings had the Seminoles reached this depth: a loss to Duke.
But this year is something special. It isn’t just bad. It is cartoonishly awful, the type of ritualistic embarrassment typically reserved for Wile E. Coyote. On Friday, the receivers dropped nearly a half dozen easy catches, the offense turned it over on three straight plays and at one point, we’re fairly certain Mike Norvell was just standing on the sideline holding up a sign that read “Yikes.”
Florida State turned the ball over four times in the game, went 2-of-14 on third downs, and despite holding Duke to just 180 total yards of offense, still lost, 23-16. FSU could’ve tied it on its final drive after having a first down at the Blue Devils’ 38 with 1:23 to play, but the Noles proceeded to lose 24 yards over their next four plays before running into the side of a mountain that Manny Diaz had painted to look like a tunnel.
FSU’s decline from last season’s 13-0 ACC championship team is baffling, but there is one possible explanation for the precipitous fall, and it involves Norvell meeting the devil at the crossroads of I-10 and Thomasville Road before last season.
Devil: “How would you like it if I ensured you won every regular-season game en route to an ACC title?”
Norvell: “OK, but what’s the catch, an awful postseason game?”
Devil: “Oh, you’ll play Georgia in your bowl game — and everyone will be talking about it afterward.”
Norvell: “That actually sounds OK. But surely there’s a catch. Is the 2024 team going to be a mess?”
Devil: “Why, I’ll actually make sure you land a five-star QB and a bunch of Alabama players in the transfer portal.”
Norvell: “Wow, that’s great but, I’m still a bit dubious.”
Devil: “You’ll also have two legitimate All-America candidates on your 2024 team.”
Norvell: “Wait, it’s not going to be the kicker and punter, is it?”
Devil: “Look, are you going to sign the paperwork or not? I’ve got an 11:30 with Hugh Freeze, and if I’m late, he starts blaming his players.”
You mess with the bull …
BYU stayed undefeated thanks to a late rally by QB Jake Retzlaff, culminating in a 35-yard touchdown pass to secure the 38-35 win over Oklahoma State on Friday. The Cougars are 7-0, and after the game, Retzlaff called the win “spiritual,” adding “how can you not be romantic about this game?” Unfortunately for Retzlaff, it is against BYU’s code of conduct to be romantic about the game.
1:08
BYU fans go wild on late game-winning TD
BYU’s Darius Lassiter sends the crowd into a frenzy after hauling in a miraculous touchdown catch in the waning moments against Oklahoma State.
Alan Bowman came off the bench in relief of an injured Garret Rangel and helped ignite the Cowboys’ passing game, including a touchdown throw with just 1:13 to play that gave Oklahoma State the lead. But the Cowboys’ defense fell apart in the final minute, allowing BYU to march 75 yards on eight plays in just over a minute of action.
Oklahoma State is now 0-4 in Big 12 play, and Mike Gundy may be the only coach in the country who can rightly say being attacked by a cow wasn’t the worst thing that happened to him last week.
Week 8 vibe shifts
Each week, there are huge wins, massive upsets and astonishing plays that help define the college football season. But there are also plenty of smaller moments that subtly shift the landscape, and we try to track those moments here.
Trending down: Michigan‘s ranking
Despite two ugly losses and a complete lack of a coherent passing attack, Michigan remained in the AP poll this past week. That should change after Saturday’s 21-7 defeat at the hands of Illinois.
Michigan has now lost as many times in its past six games as it had in the prior three seasons, though Saturday’s mess was especially cruel. Illinois prevailed despite its starting quarterback, Luke Altmyer, completing just 9 of 18 throws for 80 yards, leading an incredulous Sherrone Moore to ask why that type of QB production never works for Michigan.
After Week 8, the two teams that played for last year’s national championship — Michigan and the Washington Huskies — are now 8-6 in 2024.
Trending down: Winless teams
And then there were two.
On Wednesday, UTEP scored win No. 1 by upending Florida International 30-21. That leaves just two FBS teams still in search of win No. 1.
Kennesaw State, which became an FBS member this year, is now 0-6 after a woeful 14-5 loss to MTSU on Tuesday. Thankfully, Atlanta-area fans are already so numb to October misery because of the Atlanta Braves that it doesn’t really matter.
Meanwhile, Kent State — next to Kennesaw State alphabetically and metaphorically — lost to Bowling Green 27-6. The Golden Flashes are now 0-7 and riding the nation’s longest losing streak at 16 straight games, which if you don’t count the Cleveland Browns, makes them Ohio’s most embarrassing football team.
Trending down: Men of Troy
Fun fact: Florida State isn’t the only 2023 conference champion that won double-digit games last season to open this one 1-6. Troy is also horrible, though unfortunately for Mike Norvell, far fewer people have noticed. After winning 25 games over the past two seasons, the Trojans dropped to 1-6 with a 25-9 loss to South Alabama on Tuesday.
But that wasn’t even close to the worst moment for the teams named after a people most famous for being catfished by a wooden horse.
USC blew a 21-7 second-half lead to Maryland, falling 29-28 in the latest of a series of brutal fourth-quarter defeats. The Trojans lined up for a potential game-sealing field goal with two minutes left, but Maryland’s Donnell Brown blocked it, and the Terps found the end zone with 53 seconds to play to win the game. It’s USC’s fourth loss this season, all coming after holding a lead in the final quarter.
USC is now 5-9 in its past 14 games, which proves that those Lincoln Riley voodoo dolls Barry Switzer has been selling outside Oklahoma Memorial Stadium really do work.
Trending up: Strategic use of the rulebook
This week, the NCAA moved to close the loophole in the rulebook that allowed Oregon‘s Dan Lanning to strategically put a 12th man on defense in order to take a small penalty but also run some time off the clock late in a win over Ohio State.
Lanning didn’t need to worry about running out the clock Friday in a 35-0 rout of woeful Purdue, but just to keep the NCAA on its toes, he did attempt to disguise a play by having Dillon Gabriel wear a fake mustache and sunglasses, gained an edge on rush defense by laying out those spikes police use in high-speed chases, and in the second half, used a golden retriever at wideout. The dog finished with six catches for 87 yards and a belly rub.
Trending up: Winning easy
Eight weeks into the season, not only are Army and Indiana undefeated, but neither team has trailed at any point this season.
On Saturday, the Black Knights cruised past East Carolina 45-28 behind Bryson Daily‘s six total touchdowns, while the Hoosiers drubbed Nebraska 56-7 in a game that feels like it had to be Scott Frost’s fault somehow.
Army has the nation’s longest winning streak at 11 games and hasn’t trailed in a game in almost a full calendar year — since Oct. 28, 2023, against UMass. For context, losing to UMass before going on an 11-game winning streak without ever falling behind is roughly the same as if Army had thwarted Mussolini in World War II only after losing a pivotal battle to the front-of-house staff at an Olive Garden.
Indiana’s rise is even more unexpected given that many people in Bloomington had been unaware the Hoosiers had a football team until a month ago, but Curt Cignetti has turned one of the country’s most moribund programs into a genuine Big Ten power, which raises the question: Can Cignetti also coach basketball?
Trending up: Mascot divorce
It was a rough day for the NC State Wolfpack‘s Mr. Wuf, who learned — like so many in the ACC have this season — that Oski is a smooth operator.
— Sickos Committee (@SickosCommittee) October 20, 2024
As for the action on the field, however, it was another brutal defeat for the California Golden Bears, who missed a chip-shot field goal with 1:34 to play that would’ve won it. Cal has now lost four straight by a combined total of nine points. Also, Oski now has to drive Mrs. Wuf’s kids to soccer practice every Thursday, which is going to really interfere with his bowling league.
Dark days in Norman
How bad are things at Oklahoma right now? On Saturday, South Carolina led 21-0 before the Sooners had finished putting on their cleats.
Oklahoma’s first play was an interception, which South Carolina turned into a touchdown. The Sooners’ fourth play was a sack-fumble that South Carolina scooped for another touchdown. Oklahoma’s ninth play was another interception, this one returned for a score.
The lack of QB production is stunning, however, given the pedigree of Michael Hawkins, who was benched, and Jackson Arnold, who burned a redshirt to come on in relief.
After the game, Venables said the decision to use Arnold — who had been benched earlier this season after appearing in four games — was an easy one, given that it was Oklahoma’s best chance to win and reminded angry Sooners fans that this is actually all Lincoln Riley’s fault.
Irish roll again
Riley Leonard struggled through a rough first quarter Saturday against Georgia Tech, completing just 2 of 5 passes for 8 yards and an interception as the Yellow Jackets jumped out to a 7-0 lead.
After that, however, Leonard was nearly perfect.
Leonard completed his next 12 straight passes, and Notre Dame scored touchdowns on three straight drives, marching past Georgia Tech 31-13. For the game, Leonard threw for 203 yards, ran for 51 and scored two rushing touchdowns.
Notre Dame is now 6-1, well positioned for the playoff and, after early offensive struggles, has now put up more than 30 points in three straight games. This could either be a sign the Northern Illinois loss was a complete fluke or, perhaps more likely, getting to play three straight ACC teams solves a lot of problems for anyone’s offense.
Cyclones survive
Iowa State escaped a near-catastrophe Saturday, squeezing out a 38-35 win over UCF thanks to a Rocco Becht touchdown run with 30 seconds left in the game.
That the Cyclones even had a chance late came largely because of UCF’s own incompetence. Braeden Marshall intercepted Becht in the second half and appeared to cruise into the end zone for a pick-six, only he forgot to bring the football with him.
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UCF player drops the ball before he reaches the end zone
Braeden Marshall drops the ball at the 1-yard line after picking off Iowa State’s Rocco Becht, forcing the pick-six touchdown to be called back.
In most years, this would qualify as the most embarrassing football performance by a team from Florida, but 2024 has been a rough one.
Regardless, the Cyclones survived despite trailing by 14 in the third quarter, allowing 354 yards on the ground and turning the ball over twice in the game. Iowa State is now 7-0 to start a season for the first time since 1938.
Heisman five
Travis Hunter left Colorado’s game with an injury for the second straight week, which knocks him out of our Heisman contenders for now but did allow him to focus on refining his punting skills so he can be used in all three phases of the game when he’s healthy again.
1. Boise State RB Ashton Jeanty
The Broncos were off in Week 8, which forced Jeanty to find other ways to embarrass Mountain West defenses and, long story short, Wyoming should’ve known better than to try to stamp out that flaming bag with its new boots.
Ward threw for four touchdowns in a rollicking win over Louisville on Saturday. More importantly, he helped the Canes secure the Schnellenberger Trophy, which is a bronzed pair of Howard Schnellenberger’s cowboy boots. It’s a fine trophy, but it would’ve been much cooler if the win meant Ward was forced to grow a distinguished-looking white mustache instead. That’s Schnellenberger’s real legacy.
3. Army QB Bryson Daily
Daily had six touchdowns in a win over East Carolina, including a 17-yarder that featured a video game spin move.
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Touchdown! Bryson Daily scores vs. East Carolina
Touchdown! Bryson Daily scores vs. East Carolina
For the season, Daily now has six passing touchdowns and 14 rushing touchdowns, and he has successfully thwarted Hydra’s attempts at world domination.
4. Navy QB Blake Horvath
Horvath threw for 117 yards and three touchdowns in a dominant 51-17 win over Charlotte on Saturday. Horvath now has 10 passing touchdowns this season — or the same as Navy’s total all of last year. It’s also more than Iowa has had in a season since 2021.
5. Clemson QB Cade Klubnik
In a Week 1 drubbing by Georgia, Klubnik threw an interception, averaged just 4.9 yards per pass and fell for the old “What’s that on your shirt?” trick before Mykel Williams flicked him in the nose. Since then, though, the Clemson QB has been borderline unstoppable, completing 67% of his throws with 24 total touchdowns, 2 picks and a 90.8 Total QBR, second only to Ward among FBS passers.
Under-the-radar play of the week
It’s entirely possible that half the pages in Idaho‘s playbook are taken up by this one play.
Backyard football 🤙@VandalFootball is going deep into their bag of tricks #ExperienceElevated pic.twitter.com/OPgmgwtEXG
— Big Sky Conference (@BigSkyConf) October 19, 2024
The Vandals ran the triple-reverse flea-flicker for a 21-yard touchdown against Cal Poly on Saturday and went on to win 34-29.
It seems unfair that Idaho should have so many players capable of properly executing a forward pass when Michigan doesn’t have any.
Under-the-radar game of the week
The Dakota Marker belongs to North Dakota State after Cam Miller hit RaJa Nelson for a 20-yard touchdown with 1:49 to play Saturday to give the Bison a 13-9 win over South Dakota State.
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Cam Miller finds RaJa Nelson for go-ahead North Dakota State TD
Cam Miller combines again with RaJa Nelson to give North Dakota State the lead late vs. South Dakota State.
The win marks the latest chapter in the ongoing rivalry between the two states, who’ve long battled for the moniker of “state least likely for the average ninth-grader to identify on a map.” It also snapped a five-game winning streak in the rivalry for South Dakota State, and it was the first time the Bison won the Dakota Marker on their home field since 2018. Miller threw for two touchdown passes — both to Nelson.
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David Hale
NEWARK, Del. — Russ Crook has a shirt he likes to wear to Delaware football road games. He’s a lifelong fan and the current president of the Blue Hen Touchdown Club, but he knows the jokes, so he picked up the shirt a few years back when he saw it at the historic National 5 & 10 store on Main Street. It’s gray with a map of the state across the chest and the ubiquitous punchline delivered succinctly: “Dela-where?”
Yes, the state is small, though Rhode Island gets the acclaim that comes with being the country’s smallest. In popular culture, Delaware often translates as something of a non-place — cue the “Wayne’s World” GIF — and it’s widely appreciated by outsiders as little more than a 28-mile stretch of I-95 between Maryland and Pennsylvania that hardly warrants mentioning.
It’s a harmless enough stereotype, but Cook is hopeful this football season can start to change some perceptions. After all, in 2025, Delaware — the football program — hits the big time. Or, Conference USA, at least.
“Delaware’s a small state, but the university has 24,000 students,” Crook said. “Many big-time schools are smaller than we are. There’s no reason we can’t do this.”
When the Blue Hens kick off against Delaware State on Aug. 28, they will be, for the first time, an FBS football team, joining Missouri State as first-year members of Conference USA — the 135th and 136th FBS programs.
Longtime Hens fans might not have believed the move was possible even a few years ago, as much for the school’s ethos as the state’s stature. The university’s leadership had spent decades holding firm in the belief that the Hens were best positioned as a big fish in the relatively small ponds of Division II and, later, FCS.
And yet, just as the rest of the college sports world is reeling from an onslaught of change — revenue sharing, the transfer portal, NIL and conference realignment — Delaware decided it was time to join the party.
“Us and Delaware are probably making this move at one of the more difficult times to make the move in history,” said Missouri State AD Patrick Ransdell.
All of which begs the question: Why now?
Many of Delaware’s historic rivals — UMass, App State, Georgia Southern, Old Dominion, James Madison — had already made the leap to FBS, and the Hens’ previous conference, the Colonial, was reeling. Economic conditions at the FCS level made life challenging for administration. The NCAA was making moves to curb future transitions from FCS to FBS, and the school felt its window to make a move was closing.
“We had no choice,” Crook said.
And so, ready or not, the Hens are about to embark on a new era — a chance to prove themselves at a higher level and, perhaps, provide Delaware with a reputation that’s more than a punchline.
“We talk about doing things for the 302 all the time,” interim athletic director Jordan Skolnick said, referencing the area code that serves the entirety of the state. “We want everyone in the state of Delaware to feel the pride in us being successful, and we want people to realize how incredible this place is. It’s not just a place you drive through on 95.”
BACK WHEN MIKE Brey was coaching Delaware’s men’s basketball team to back-to-back tournament appearances in the 1990s, he would often swing by the football offices to talk shop with the Hens’ legendary football coach Tubby Raymond, who won 300 games utilizing a three-back offensive formation dubbed the wing-T. Brey recalls pestering him once about the new spread schemes being run at conference rival New Hampshire by a young coordinator named Chip Kelly. Raymond was a beloved figure at Delaware, and he had helped mentor Brey as a head coach, but he was notoriously old-school.
Raymond huffed, dismissing the tempo offense as “grass basketball,” all style and finesse without the fundamental elements of the game he had coached for decades. The mindset was often pervasive at UD.
“It was in the bricks there,” said Brey, who went on to a 23-year stint coaching at Notre Dame. “Tubby had his kingdom, and nobody was telling him what to do. It was, ‘Leave us alone. We’re good. We’ve got the wing-T.'”
Brey’s contract in those days technically referred to him as a member of the physical education department, and he and his staff had to teach classes during the offseason on basketball skills. Despite Raymond’s retirement in 2001 and an FCS national title in 2003, not much changed. By 2016, when Skolnick arrived to work in the athletic department, a number of coaches were still considered part-time employees, and several programs had to source their own equipment.
But change was brewing.
Old rivals such as App State, Georgia Southern and JMU had left FCS without missing a beat. Delaware had often punched above its weight and churned out genuine stars such as Rich Gannon and Joe Flacco, but the chasm between the haves and have-nots in football was growing. It was clear the Hens needed to invest, though the goal then was to take advantage of the power vacuum among east coast FCS schools.
“I think a lot of people wondered if we’d missed the window,” Skolnick said. “But at that time, the goal was to win as many FCS national championships as we can and resource our teams to be able to compete.”
Delaware football did compete, earning a spot in the FCS playoffs in four of the past six seasons, but another national title eluded the program, and by 2022, with rival James Madison moving up to the Sun Belt, then-AD Chrissi Rawak began to test the waters of a jump to FBS.
The school partnered with consultants who studied the economics of a move, both for the athletic department, which stood to see a $3 to $4 million increase in annual revenue, and for the state, which could enjoy a 50% uptick in economic impact from football alone. Meanwhile, Delaware looked at each FCS school that had made the leap up to FBS in the past 10 years to see how the Hens might stack up. What did Skolnick say the school found? Programs that had already been investing, had a solid recruiting footprint and were committed to football had success.
“We started to check a lot of boxes,” Skolnick said.
There were concerns, of course. The landscape of college football was roiling, and the expense of running a successful program seemed to grow by the day. But the opportunity to generate more revenue was obvious.
In the playoff era, 10 schools have made the leap from FCS to FBS, and nearly all have tasted some level of success. Overall, the group has posted a .548 winning percentage at the FBS level, and seven of the 10 have had seasons with double-digit wins. James Madison, who went from an FCS championship to the Sun Belt in 2022, is 28-9 at the FBS level and enters the 2025 season with legitimate playoff aspirations.
That success, however, is the result of a decades-in-the-making plan, said former JMU athletic director Jeff Bourne. The Dukes kicked the tires on an FBS move as early as 2012 but held steady as the program grew its infrastructure and, when the time came to make a move in 2022, it was ready.
“Before we made that decision, we wanted to prove to ourselves that we could support it financially,” Bourne said. “You had to have the fan base and donor base grow, have our facilities in a place so we could recruit. Looking at it from a broad perspective, it made our move not only prudent but ultimately helped us be successful.”
Off the field, the move has proved equally fortuitous. In JMU’s final year at the FCS level, the athletic department had 4,600 total donors, according to the school. For the 2025 fiscal year, JMU had nearly 11,000. The Dukes have sold out season tickets for three straight years, and high-profile games, including two bowl appearances, have been a boon for admissions.
So, when Conference USA approached Delaware with a formal invitation to join in November 2023, the choice seemed obvious.
“It was pretty clear that, as a flagship institution in our state, we wanted to be aligned with schools that look like us,” Skolnick said. “We want to align our athletic aspirations with our academic ones. Academically we’re one of the best public institutions in the country. Athletically, we’ve had all these incredible moments of success — but they’re moments. They’re spread out. So we felt like this was an opportunity to bring all of it together in a way that will show people — the best way to give people a lens into how special Delaware is, is for our athletic teams to be really successful and create more visibility.”
Brey remembers reading the news of Delaware’s decision to make the jump, and he couldn’t help but think back to his conversations with Raymond nearly 30 years ago. This had been a long time coming, he thought, and yet it still seemed hard to believe.
“I was shocked,” Brey said. “Little old Delaware is finally going for it.”
THERE ARE AMPLE lessons Delaware and Missouri State administrators have learned in the past few months as they’ve worked to ramp up staffing and budgets and add scholarship players for the transition. But if there’s one piece of advice Skolnick would share with other schools considering a similar process, it’s this: Find a time machine.
Delaware announced its intention to jump to FBS in November 2023. Just weeks earlier, the NCAA, in an effort to stem the tide of FCS departures, made changes to the requirements for moving up that, among other things, increased the cost of doing so from $5,000 to $5 million, and Delaware would be the first team to pay it.
That was not a budget line the Blue Hens had accounted for, meaning the school had to raise funds to cover that cost on a tight timeline.
“We had six months to do it,” Skolnick said. “Fortunately, we had people who were really excited about this transition.”
Ransdell took over as AD at Missouri State in August of 2024, just months after the Bears announced their plans to move to Conference USA, and he inherited a budget that wasn’t remotely ready for FBS competition.
“We had to change some things, do some more investing,” he said. “We weren’t really prepared to be an FBS program with the budget I inherited.”
In other words, the buzzword at both schools is the same as it is everywhere in 2025: revenue.
But if budgets have to be stretched with a move up to FBS, there are benefits, too.
Ransdell said Missouri State has sold more season tickets than any year since 2016, buoyed by a home game against SMU on Sept. 13.
Delaware had faced hurdles selling tickets in recent years, thanks in part to a slate of games against opponents its fans hardly recognized. That has changed already, with ample buzz around future home dates with old rivals UConn, Temple and Coastal Carolina. Crook said membership in the booster club is up 10-15% after years of steady declines. This season, Delaware travels to Colorado, and Crook said a caravan of Blue Hens fans will tag along.
On the recruiting trail, Delaware coach Ryan Carty said the conversations are completely different than they were a year ago, and the Hens have been able to add a host of new talent. The Hens’ roster includes 14 transfers from Power 4 programs this year, including Delaware native Noah Matthews, who arrived from Kentucky.
When Matthews was being recruited out of Woodbridge High School, about an hour’s drive down Route 1 through the middle of the state, he never heard from Delaware. It’s not that his home-state school didn’t want him. It’s that, no one on staff believed the Hens had a shot to land a guy with offers in the SEC.
Four years later though, Matthews is back home, and there’s nowhere he would rather be.
“I wanted to come back and show people, this is what Delaware does,” Matthews said. “We can play big-time football, too. After this year, they’ll know exactly who we are.”
For all the hurdles to get their respective programs in a place to compete at the FBS level, the costs are worth it, Ransdell said.
Need proof? Look no further than Sacramento State, a school that has all but begged for an invitation from the Pac-12 or Mountain West, even dangling a supposedly flush NIL fund with more than $35 million raised. And yet, no doors have been opened for the Hornets.
Still, the old guard around Delaware might not be so easily swayed.
Brey has kept a beach house in Delaware since his time coaching in the state, returning the past couple of years to serve as a guest bartender at the popular beach bar The Starboard to raise money for the Blue Hens’ NIL fund. This summer, he was strolling the boardwalk in Rehoboth Beach, chatting with the locals and getting a feel for how fans felt about this new era of Delaware football.
Most were excited, he said, but one — a longtime season-ticket holder — had a different perspective.
“On the first day of fall camp,” the fan told him, “we always knew we could play for a national championship in [FCS]. That’s not possible anymore.”
In other words, Delaware sold its championship aspirations for an admittedly more financially prudent place near the bottom of FBS. And who’s to say FBS football even remains viable as power players in the SEC and Big Ten move ever closer to creating “super leagues?”
“There very well could be a super league,” Bourne said. “There are signs that could happen. But I think when you look at it from the standpoint of your peer group, it’s to be competitive with them. There’s probably going to be a day where there’s a shake-up and you have some existing [power conference] schools that end up being more aligned with [Group of 6] than they are with the upper tier.”
Brey recalls his old friend Bob Hannah, the former Delaware baseball coach who had long been a progressive among the school’s traditionalists, wondering if the Hens might have been a fit in the ACC, had the school just pursued athletics growth in the 1970s and 1980s. The irony, Brey said, is these days, with even power conferences struggling to keep pace with the rapid change and financial strains of modern college sports, that doesn’t seem like such a long shot.
For Skolnick, that’s a worry for another day. Getting Delaware ready for its chance to shine on some of the sport’s biggest stages in 2025 is the priority. Delaware — the school and the state — hasn’t had many of these moments, and it’s an opportunity the Hens don’t want to miss.
“We’ve got to be ready for what we’re moving into, but everyone in college athletics is dealing with change,” Skolnick said. “That part is comforting. It’s more of an opportunity for us to do it our way. We’re too great of a historical and successful and traditional team to not be part of the conversation.”
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