Who’s under pressure in 2024? Kalen DeBoer follows a legend and James Franklin looks to break through
Next season, the competitive landscape of college football will undergo some massive shifts. More teams than ever will have a shot to make a playoff appearance, but they’ll also be dealing with greater in-conference competition. Everybody in the sport will have more opportunities to look good — and bad.
So, we asked our staffers which coaches and players — transfers and non-transfers — will have the most to prove during the surely chaotic upcoming season. Here’s what they had to say.
What coach has the most to prove in 2024?
Kalen DeBoer, Alabama
DeBoer just took Washington to the national title game in only his second year — two seasons after the team went 4-8 — so this designation feels a bit unfair, but so are Alabama’s expectations after Nick Saban’s historic tenure. If the College Football Playoff remained at four teams, DeBoer could miss them during a transition year and be given somewhat of a pass. But Alabama expects to be part of the 12-team field every year, and if DeBoer falls short, the pressure and comparisons to Saban will reach nauseating levels in Tuscaloosa. — Adam Rittenberg
James Franklin, Penn State
Franklin’s tenure in State College has featured a lot of winning. He picked up where Bill O’Brien left off in compiling four 11-win seasons. However, in the Nittany Lions’ most prominent games under Franklin, there hasn’t been a lot of winning. With the College Football Playoff expanding from four to 12, Penn State has a great opportunity to break through with both Michigan and Oregon not on the schedule and Ohio State coming to Beaver Stadium in 2024. It just needs to find a way to close out against the better teams on the schedule. — Blake Baumgartner
Mack Brown, North Carolina
Brown is in the Hall of Fame, is one of just three active coaches with a national championship and has taken UNC to five straight bowl games, something the program hadn’t done since Brown’s last tenure there in the late 1990s, so perhaps he doesn’t really have all that much to prove. But when Brown returned to UNC in 2019, it was with the intent to take the Heels from a regular bowl team to a regular playoff contender. At times, he’s seemed close, but despite having two extremely talented quarterbacks in Sam Howell and Drake Maye, UNC still seems stuck on the margins. Brown brought in Geoff Collins this offseason as his third defensive coordinator, and he’ll turn to either veteran Max Johnson or sophomore Conner Harrell to replace Maye. Brown will be 73 when the season kicks off, and while age doesn’t seem to be slowing him down, the window to transform UNC into a real playoff threat won’t be open forever, and there’s certainly those who’ll wonder if he already missed his best chance with Maye. — David Hale
Billy Napier, Florida
In two years with the Gators, Napier is 11-14 and has not come close to beating rival Georgia, which means Florida hasn’t come close to challenging for the SEC East title. How much longer can that go on? Napier enters a crucial Year 3 with perhaps the most difficult schedule in the country, opening against rival Miami while also having to play Tennessee, Georgia, Texas A&M, LSU, Ole Miss and Texas in the SEC. He has to prove the program is headed in the right direction to have any shot at convincing the fan base he’s the right coach for the job. — Andrea Adelson
Lincoln Riley, USC
I was going to say Chip Kelly at UCLA, but that all changed when Kelly bolted Westwood to call offensive plays at Ohio State for another guy who has some heat on him, Ryan Day. So I’ll stay on the West Coast with Riley, who enters his third season at USC still looking for a College Football Playoff appearance and/or conference title. He’s also facing life without former Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Caleb Williams and brought in a new defensive coordinator, D’Anton Lynn, to replace Alex Grinch after the Trojans finished 121st nationally in scoring defense (34.4 points per game) in 2023. It’s premature to suggest Riley is on the cusp of losing his job after just two seasons at USC. But coming off a disappointing 8-5 finish and the playoff expanding to 12 teams in 2024, he needs to make a strong comeback in the new-look Big Ten, or the restlessness will ratchet up considerably in Year 4. — Chris Low
Ryan Day, Ohio State
Few schools have signed a more high-upside set of transfers (Alabama safety Caleb Downs, Ole Miss running back Quinshon Judkins, quarterbacks Will Howard for the present and Julian Sayin for the future) than Ohio State. After coming up just short of their goals the past couple of years, Day and the Buckeyes appear to be going all-in this year as Michigan undergoes massive turnover. The odds of success are high, but the perils of another year of missed expectations could be awfully damning. — Bill Connelly
What player has the most to prove in 2024?
Wisconsin QB Tyler Van Dyke
When Van Dyke won ACC Rookie of the Year honors in 2021 at Miami, the expectation was that he would be long gone to the NFL by now. But after two sometimes solid, sometimes choppy seasons with different coordinators under coach Mario Cristobal, Van Dyke entered the portal and sought a fresh start. He lands at Wisconsin, which enters Year 2 of its Air Raid-style offense under coordinator Phil Longo after finishing 91st nationally in scoring and 69th in passing last season. If Van Dyke can be the quarterback who makes the Air Raid go in Madison, he will not only boost his NFL chances, but bring Wisconsin closer to the 12-team CFP mix. — Rittenberg
Clemson QB Cade Klubnik
Fairly or not, DJ Uiagalelei carried the bulk of the blame for Clemson’s playoff absences in 2021 and 2022, so Tigers fans were eager to turn the page to Klubnik last season. The results, however, looked a lot more like the DJU era than the Trevor Lawrence era. Klubnik finished the season completing 64% of his throws with 19 TDs and nine interceptions to go with a Total QBR of 55, good for 11th out of 12 qualified ACC QBs. He flashed potential at times, but made frustrating decisions in losses to Duke, Florida State and NC State that overshadowed the intermittent success. Dabo Swinney brought in Matt Luke to rebuild the O-line, and Klubnik is entering his second year with offensive coordinator Garrett Riley. The clock feels like it’s ticking on Klubnik’s chances to prove he’s Clemson’s next star quarterback — and it may be ticking on the Tigers’ chances to return to the playoff, too. — Hale
Tennessee QB Nico Iamaleava
The good news for Iamaleava is that he certainly appears to have all the tools to be a difference-maker at quarterback and accounted for four touchdowns in his first start last season in Tennessee’s 35-0 victory over Iowa in the Citrus Bowl. But from the time Iamaleava signed with the Vols, he’s been under a bright spotlight — from the reported $8 million NIL deal he signed, to being hailed as the quarterback that would vault the Vols back into championship contention, to being at the center of the recent NCAA investigation into Tennessee’s program. No player since Peyton Manning has walked onto Tennessee’s campus with this much pressure to perform at an elite level. — Low
Oregon QB Dillon Gabriel
Expectations are going to be sky-high for the Ducks, who are still smarting about last season’s two losses to Washington and their College Football Playoff near miss. Oregon will bring a potent offense (531.4 YPG in 2023, second in the FBS) as it moves to the Big Ten. The faithful out in Eugene will be pinning their collective hopes on Gabriel, who led the Big 12 in passing yards (3,660) and touchdowns (30) last year. — Baumgartner
LSU OLB Harold Perkins Jr.
One of the biggest revelations of 2022 was one of the biggest disappointments of 2023, relatively speaking. After recording 13.5 tackles for loss, 7.5 sacks and 4 forced fumbles in only 498 snaps as a freshman, Perkins produced 15, 5.5 and three, respectively, in 746 snaps last season. Good? Obviously. But not quite as transcendent. If he rediscovers the per-snap dominance that he had in 2022 under aggressive new coordinator Blake Baker, that alone could transform LSU’s defense. — Connelly
Which transfer has the most to prove in 2024?
Ohio State QB Will Howard
No national contending team made a more aggressive offseason personnel push than Ohio State, which will seek its first CFP championship in a decade. Elite quarterback play has been the standard for most of Day’s tenure, though, and Howard must reach that level after a four-year run at Kansas State that included a Big 12 title and good production both as a passer and a runner, but also two seasons with 10 interceptions. Howard will have the nation’s best running back tandem (TreVeyon Henderson and Quinshon Judkins) and a gifted wide receiver group at his disposal. He doesn’t have to be the sole reason why Ohio State wins a national title, but he can’t be the reason the Buckeyes fall short, either. — Rittenberg
This is going to be quite the thought experiment. I found myself thinking, “Man, if Ohio State just had a top-20 level quarterback, they’d be the best team in the country with this defense” multiple times in 2023, and in Howard it has inked the quarterback who ranked 22nd in Total QBR last season, right on that top-20 borderline. He’s not C.J. Stroud, but he might be good enough, especially in such a transition year for quarterbacks overall. — Connelly
Ole Miss DT Walter Nolen
Nolen was the No. 1 recruit in the country when he signed with Texas A&M to headline the Aggies’ top-ranked recruiting class in 2022. He showed flashes of being an All-SEC performer with 11 tackles for loss and five sacks in his first two seasons in the SEC. The key now is being that kind of player on every down, as Ole Miss will look to Nolen to be an enforcer in its defensive line on what should be Lane Kiffin’s most talented defense yet in Oxford. The 6-4, 295-pound Nolen was one of the most coveted players in the 2023 transfer portal. If he plays to that level and becomes a more consistent player — along with some of the other key transfers Ole Miss brought in — the Rebels should be right in the middle of the 2024 playoff chase. — Low
Notre Dame QB Riley Leonard
All eyes are going to be on the latest ACC transfer signal-caller to come through South Bend. That’s just the way it is. Leonard showed glimpses of what he could do when healthy during the last two seasons at Duke (2,967 passing yards and 20 touchdowns for a nine-win Blue Devils’ team in 2022). After playing in only seven games because of injury last season, he now gets the opportunity to shine on a far bigger stage for perhaps the sport’s biggest brand. A third 10-win campaign in four years and a potential return to the CFP is well within reach if Leonard can effectively pilot the offense for Marcus Freeman. — Baumgartner
Florida State QB DJ Uiagalelei
At the risk of turning this into a pro-ACC quarterback fest, we have been waiting on Uiagalelei to play like an elite quarterback since his arrival at Clemson in 2020. That has not quite happened yet. Uiagalelei transferred to Oregon State for the 2023 season after a constant barrage of criticism during his two years as a starter with the Tigers. He played better in his one season with the Beavers, but now finds himself joining the reigning ACC champions with the belief he can put it all together. Uiagalelei has never thrown for 3,000 yards or more than 22 touchdowns in three years as a starter. “He’s been in some tough situations,” coach Mike Norvell said. “I don’t get too caught up on what other people’s perceptions are at quarterback, because we just lived it. Plenty of people didn’t perceive Jordan Travis to be a great quarterback, and I’m really glad that I got the opportunity to show that he was. I’m excited to work with him, excited about what he brings, and obviously where that can go.” — Andrea Adelson
Miami QB Cam Ward
A number of coaches viewed Ward as the crown jewel of this year’s quarterback class. Ward toyed with entering the NFL draft — even announcing his intent to do so at one point — but instead landed at Miami. It could be a match made in heaven. Mario Cristobal has been stockpiling talent in Coral Gables, and he believes this Canes team is close to fulfilling its potential. On the other hand, Miami’s QB play in two years under Cristobal has been mediocre at best, with many of Tyler Van Dyke‘s biggest miscues playing directly into inexplicable Miami losses. Can Ward be the long-awaited answer for Miami? His passer rating and Total QBR last year both trailed Van Dyke’s, so there’s a lot of big assumptions in play here. The upside is awfully high though, and a career year from Ward could be the missing ingredient that finally puts Miami over the top. Since joining the ACC, Miami has never had a first-team all-conference quarterback. — Hale
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Greg Wyshynski
The Dallas Stars‘ 3-1 win in Game 4 against the Winnipeg Jets on Tuesday night was a contrast in offensive efficiency. The Jets converted just once on 72 shot attempts. Dallas center Mikael Granlund, meanwhile, needed only three shot attempts in the game to score three goals. His hat trick was all the offense the Stars needed to take a commanding 3-1 series lead, moving one win away from their third straight trip to the Western Conference finals.
“Obviously, the job is not done. We’ve got a lot of work to do. [But] that was a good win,” Granlund said.
It was the first career hat trick for Granlund, a 13-year veteran whom the Stars acquired from the San Jose Sharks in a trade back in February. Three goals on three shots, all of them sailing past Jets goalie Connor Hellebuyck, who remained winless on the road in the 2025 postseason.
Granlund’s first goal came at 8:36 on the power play, as he skated in on three Jets defensemen and fired a snap shot past Hellebuyck from the top of the slot.
“I was just shooting it somewhere and it went in,” Granlund said.
“I got a clean enough look. It was just a damn perfect shot, just above my pad and below my glove,” Hellebuyck lamented.
“Obviously, he probably wants the first one back, the wrister,” Jets coach Scott Arniel said of Hellebuyck. “At the end of the day, we’ve got to get him some run support. Get him a lead.”
Granlund’s second shot and second goal came on a play started by Mikko Rantanen, whose league-leading point total now stands at 19 for the playoffs. His outlet pass found Granlund in the neutral zone, sparking a 2-on-1 with Roope Hintz. Granlund kept the puck and roofed it to give Dallas a 2-1 lead after Nik Ehlers had tied the game for Winnipeg earlier in the second period.
“When you pass all the time, you can surprise the goalie sometimes when you shoot the puck. It’s good to shoot once in a while,” said Granlund, who had twice as many assists (44) as goals (22) in the regular season.
Granlund’s third and final shot attempt of the game was on another Dallas power play in the third period, following a double-minor penalty to defenseman Haydn Fleury for high-sticking Hintz.
Defenseman Miro Heiskanen, in the lineup for the first time since Jan. 28 after missing the last 32 regular-season games and first 10 playoff games because of a knee injury, collected the puck after Matt Duchene rang it off the post. Heiskanen slid it over to Granlund for a one-timer that brought him to his knees on the ice. After the shot beat Hellebuyck at 7:23 of the third period, waves of hats hit the ice in celebration of Granlund’s three-goal night.
It was fitting that Rantanen and Heiskanen had points on Granlund’s hat trick. This was the first game that the Stars’ so-called “Finnish Mafia” played together, as Heiskanen was injured before Granlund and Rantanen joined the team. Those three skaters joined countrymen Hintz and defenseman Esa Lindell in helping Dallas to victory.
“It was fun for sure. Fun to finally be on the ice with them,” Heiskanen said.
Goaltender Jake Oettinger did the rest with 31 saves, many of them on dangerous Winnipeg chances. But in the end, all the Stars needed were three shot attempts, while the Jets’ voluminous offensive night produced only one goal.
“Oettinger made some big stops. But we had 70 shot attempts. We have to get more than one goal,” Arniel said. “If we can’t find more than one goal, we’re not going to win hockey games, especially [against] this team.”
Dallas will attempt to close out the series on Thursday night in Winnipeg.
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David Schoenfield
Pete Rose, Joe Jackson, seven other members of the 1919 Chicago “Black Sox”, six other former players, one coach and one former owner are now eligible to be voted on for the Hall of Fame after commissioner Rob Manfred removed them from Major League Baseball’s permanently ineligible list.
Hall of Fame chairwoman Jane Forbes Clark said in a statement: “The National Baseball Hall of Fame has always maintained that anyone removed from Baseball’s permanently ineligible list will become eligible for Hall of Fame consideration. Major League Baseball’s decision to remove deceased individuals from the permanently ineligible list will allow for the Hall of Fame candidacy of such individuals to now be considered.”
Due to Hall of Fame voting procedures, Rose and Jackson won’t be eligible to be voted on until the Classic Era Baseball committee, which votes on individuals who made their biggest impact prior to 1980, meets in December of 2027.
Let’s dig into what all this means.
Why were these players banned?
All individuals on the banned list who were reinstated had been permanently ineligible due to accusations related to gambling related to baseball — either throwing games, accepting bribes, or like Rose, betting on baseball games.
Most of the banned players, including Jackson and his seven Chicago White Sox teammates who threw the 1919 World Series, played in the 1910s, when gambling in baseball was widespread. As historian Bill James once wrote, “Few simplifications of memory are as bizarre as the notion that the Black Sox scandal hit baseball out of the blue. … In fact, of course, the Black Sox scandal was merely the largest wart of a disease that had infested baseball at least a dozen years earlier and had grown, unchecked, to ravage the features of a generation.”
The most famous player, of course, was Jackson, one of baseball’s biggest stars alongside Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker in the 1910s. While many have tried to exonerate Jackson through the years, pointing out that he hit .375 in the 1919 World Series, baseball historians agree that Jackson was a willing participant in throwing the World Series and accepted money from the gambling ring that paid off the White Sox players.
While the White Sox players were acquitted in a criminal trial in 1921, commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis banned the eight players in a statement that began with the words “Regardless of the verdict of juries …”
If there was an innocent member in the group, it was third baseman Buck Weaver, not Jackson. Weaver had participated in meetings where the fixing of the World Series was discussed, and Landis banned him for life for guilty knowledge.
As for Rose, he was banned in 1989 by commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti for betting on games while he was manager of the Cincinnati Reds, including those involving his own team. While Rose denied the accusations for years, he eventually confessed. He died last September at age 83.
Who else is impacted?
Phillies owner William Cox was banned in 1943 and forced to sell the team for betting on games. Cox had just purchased the team earlier that season. None of the other non-White Sox players are of major significance, although Benny Kauff was the big star of the Federal League in 1914-15, winning the batting title both seasons. The Federal League was a breakoff league that attempted to challenge the National and American leagues.
When is the soonest Rose and Jackson could go into the Hall of Fame?
The Hall of Fame voting process for players not considered by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America — such as Rose and Jackson, who never appeared on the ballot due to their banned status — includes two eras: the Contemporary Baseball Era (1980 to present) and the Classic Baseball Era (pre-1980). The voting periods are already set:
December 2025: Player ballot for the Contemporary Era.
December 2026: Contemporary Era ballot for managers, executives and umpires.
December 2027: Classic Era ballot for players, managers, executives and umpires.
Each committee has an initial screening to place eight candidates on the ballot, so Rose and Jackson will first have to make the ballot. While it’s unclear how a future screening committee will proceed, it’s possible that both will make the ballot. While comparisons to players with PED allegations aren’t exactly apples to apples — since they were never placed on the ineligible list — it’s worth noting that Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Rafael Palmeiro were included on the eight-player Contemporary Era ballot in 2023.
Once the ballot is determined — a 16-person committee consisting of Hall of Fame players, longtime executives and media members or historians — convenes and votes. A candidate must receive 12 votes to get selected. In the most recent election in December, Dave Parker and Dick Allen were on the Classic Era ballot.
Which players have the best HOF cases?
Obviously, Rose would have been a slam-dunk Hall of Famer had he never bet on baseball and had he appeared on the BBWAA ballot after his career ended. The all-time MLB leader with 4,256 hits, Rose won three batting titles and was the 1973 NL MVP. And while he’s overrated in a sense — his 79.6 career WAR is more in line with the likes of Jeff Bagwell, Brooks Robinson and Robin Yount than all-time elite superstars — and hung on well past his prime to break Ty Cobb’s hits record, his popularity and fame would have made him an inner-circle Hall of Famer.
Whether he’ll get support now is complicated. Bonds and Clemens both received fewer than four votes in 2023. The committee usually consists of eight former players, and they may not support Rose given the one hard and fast rule that every player knows: You can’t bet on the game.
Jackson, meanwhile, was a star of the deadball era, hitting .408 in 1911 and .356 in his career, an average that ranks fourth all time behind only Cobb, Negro Leagues star Oscar Charleston and Rogers Hornsby. He finished with 62.2 WAR and 1,772 hits in a career that ended at age 32 due to the ban. Those figures would be low for a Hall of Fame selection, although the era committees did recently elect Allen and Tony Oliva, both of whom finished with fewer than 2,000 hits. And again, it is hard to say how the committee will view Jackson’s connection to gambling on the sport.
The only other reinstated player with a semblance of a chance to get on a ballot is pitcher Eddie Cicotte, who won 209 games and finished with 59.7 WAR. While his final season came at 36, the knuckleballer was still going strong, having won 29 games for the White Sox in 1919 and 21 in 1920 before Landis banned him.
For what it’s worth, the top position players in career WAR who made their mark prior to 1980 and aren’t in the Hall of Fame are Rose, Bill Dahlen (75.3), Bobby Grich (71.0), Graig Nettles (67.6), Reggie Smith (64.6), Ken Boyer (62.8), Jackson and Sal Bando (61.5).
Pitching candidates would include Luis Tiant (65.7), Tommy John (61.6) and Wes Ferrell (60.1). John was on the recent ballot and received seven votes. Others on that ballot included Steve Garvey, Boyer, Negro Leagues pitcher John Donaldson, Negro Leagues manager Vic Harris and Tiant.
Other potential pre-1980 candidates could include Thurman Munson, Bert Campaneris, Dave Concepcion and Stan Hack.
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