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Like many of the state’s most colorful tales, the story of Texas’ Big Bertha and a decades-long rivalry over the biggest drums in college football began with the bravado of a wealthy oilman.

In 1954, Longhorn Band benefactor Col. D. Harold “Dry Hole” Byrd, a man who had earned an unfortunate nickname for drilling wells that produced nothing before eventually making a fortune in the East Texas oilfield, directed UT band director Moton Crockett to procure the largest drum he could find.

Like Byrd, Crockett started out on his own expedition before striking it big. Really big. His discovery of one of the largest drums in the world languishing in an Indiana warehouse and his subsequent acquisition rekindled one of the great off-field rivalries in sports history between Purdue and Texas.

Purdue had the World’s Largest Drum. Texas had Big Bertha. Both claimed to be the biggest, with Purdue claiming its dimensions were a “trade secret,” willfully and somewhat fancifully obscuring the real dimensions to keep the mystery alive.

But on Oct. 15, Texas declared an emphatic victory when the Longhorn Band introduced Big Bertha II, a worthy successor to their 100-year-old gargantuan bass drum. Bertha II — an even Bigger Bertha — was unveiled to the world during a centennial celebration for its predecessor, announced at a hefty 9 ½ feet tall and 55 inches wide.

The Longhorns issued a press release headlined: “Big Bertha II, Largest Bass Drum in the World, Debuted at Texas-Iowa State Game.” Texas’ drum was larger than the World’s Largest Drum. It was larger than Missouri’s Big Mo, introduced in 2012 (which, incidentally, was the Rodney Dangerfield of drums, dwarfing both of them at 9 feet tall and 54 inches wide, but never really claiming a spot in the debate).

Obviously, Bertha II is a booming source of pride for Longhorn Band director Cliff Croomes, himself a former snare drummer in the Texas band.

“Absolutely,” Croomes said. “When we say everything’s bigger in Texas, we mean it. Texas had the tallest drum and Purdue had the widest drum. There was a claim to be made on both sides. And that has now been settled with Big Bertha II being both taller and wider than either of those drums.”

Bertha II’s surprise debut was a blow to a rivalry a century in the making, reverberating since 1921, when Purdue’s band director, Paul Spotts Emrick, enlisted the Leedy Manufacturing Company in Indianapolis, Indiana, to build a drum of “impossible proportions” according to newspaper reports. The result was a behemoth known as the World’s Largest Drum, about 8 feet tall and 48 inches wide, at a cost of $800. The drum made its debut when Purdue visited the University of Chicago for a Big Ten game pitting the Boilermakers against legendary coach Amos Alonzo Stagg and the Maroons.

But as is the case in college football, there’s always a booster looking to do something bigger and better for their school’s bragging rights. A Chicago alum, Carl D. Greenleaf, who was the president of a rival Indiana music company, C.G. Conn, Ltd., had a son named Leland who played in the university band. He embarked on a plan to build a bigger drum for the Maroon Marching Band. In 1922, Big Bertha was born, named for a famed German howitzer from World War I. Much like at Purdue, it became a huge attraction at football games and parades.

So how did Texas enter the mix? It involves a saga that began with Chicago dropping football and leaving the Big Ten in 1939, the drum being mothballed in storage in the stadium that eventually became the home of the Manhattan Project experiments by Italian physicist Enrico Fermi, the architect of the atomic bomb, leading to concerns the drum could’ve been radioactive.

“There’s no evidence that the drum was any more contaminated than anything else that was stored in that stadium,” said J.P. Kirksey, Texas’ Bertha historian, who noted that it eventually passed a Geiger test.

The drum was ultimately abandoned back at C.G. Conn before Texas rescued it.

As Texas celebrated its new showpiece, the drum debate went from regional to national. Fans of both schools have bantered back and forth for years, including a planned 1961 fraternity meetup to decide once and for all whose drum was bigger. The Boilermaker contingent arrived in time with their drum while the Longhorns did not, allowing Purdue to claim a mythical title. Meanwhile in 2012, Missouri introduced Big Mo, and Texas band officials even claim to not know much about its dimensions.

Purdue, whose drum is so big that they weren’t able to fit it through the visitors’ tunnel for a game against Notre Dame last year (and weren’t allowed to use the home tunnel to bring it in, raising the Boilermakers’ hackles), didn’t engage on Texas’ new claims. But they did have one message for the new Bigger Bertha, keeping the spirit of petty rivalries alive.

“Tell them our good friends at Notre Dame would love to see it,” said Aaron Yoder, spokesman for the Purdue “All-American” Marching Band.

First, we should note, that there are larger drums that would also not fit in either tunnel at Notre Dame. The Guinness Book of World Records gives that nod to a “traditional Korean CheonGo drum” in Simcheon-Meon, South Korea that is 18 feet, 2 inches in diameter, 19 feet, 6 inches tall and weighs 7 tons. A scientific study, meanwhile, says the largest drum in the universe is actually the magnetic field that surrounds the Earth, calling it a “complicated musical instrument.”

But this debate is about bass drums. Not space magnets or giant Korean bongos. Thus, Purdue won’t be changing the name of their drum anytime soon. It’s all part of the fun. The Boilermakers have long tried to deflect and obscure the actual dimensions of the drum, only giving out measurements when it’s mounted, saying it is over 10 feet tall on its trailer.

“Purdue won’t tell anyone the size of the drum,” said Neil Boumpani of Boumpani Music Co. in Georgia, who built Missouri’s Big Mo as well as a six-foot drum for the Harvard band. “They just keep claiming the biggest drum in the world and they’re full of it — now, especially.”

Hayleigh Columbo knows the truth. In 2013, as a 23-year-old newspaper reporter in Indiana, a city editor named Dave Smith indulged her curiosity about the mystery of the size of the Purdue drum, setting her off on a quest to find out why no one would tell her its size.

“Why are you saying it’s the World’s Biggest Drum if you don’t want to be asked about it?” Columbo said. “It says it on the drum.”

She wrote a story that ran in the Indianapolis Star with the headline, “Purdue’s ‘World’s Largest Drum’ claim a giant exaggeration.” It was meant to be a lighthearted “investigation” to uncover the truth, but Purdue denied her Freedom of Information request for the drum’s dimensions, claiming they were exempt from records that contain “trade secrets.” After using several unusual methods and sources to calculate the size, Smith dispatched her to the Tippecanoe County Public Library, where she found a 1921 newspaper with an article on the front page the day after the drum was unveiled, with it spelling out right there that it was “Seven feet three inches in diameter and three feet nine inches wide.”

She was delighted she had gotten to the bottom of the case. The readers were not.

“We were like, ‘Oh, this is so clever. People are gonna take this in good fun,’ she said. “And that is not … people were so offended by it. Someone made a parody Twitter account of me saying, ‘I enjoy long walks on the beach and slandering universities.’ It got really intense.”

Purdue fans had been playing defense since 1922, when Bertha I was built in Chicago as a challenge to their title. It was tough to go much bigger, because Greenleaf ran into the same issue as Leedy did when trying to build a bigger drum: The “heads,” or the material on the surface of the drum, were made from cow hides at the time, and thus you had to find a cow large enough.

“Our purchasing department made a trip to the Union stock yards of Chicago,” one of the company’s officials told an Illinois newspaper in the 1920s, saying the drum cost $1,100. “[We] spent three days at the stock yards looking over the cattle for these hides, and as the bass drum had two heads, it was necessary to find two just alike. … The skin which was used for the head of this drum measured, when trimmed ready for mounting, 102 inches.”

And yet, the rivalry only lasted for 17 years before Chicago bailed out of major college football and sent the drum packing.

That is, until Crockett set out to fulfill Byrd’s vision of a showpiece for the band, and heard talk of a very large abandoned drum in Elkhart, Indiana. He visited Greenleaf in C.G. Conn’s warehouse later that year — 32 years after Greenleaf had built it — and worked out a blockbuster deal.

“He told me he wanted the largest university in the largest state to have the largest drum in the world,” Crockett wrote in an essay published in a centennial booklet by J.P. Kirksey, a former member of the Longhorn Band and Bertha’s unofficial historian. “He said he couldn’t give it to me. But he could sell it to me — for $1.00. I was happy to pay him the dollar and he wrote out a receipt and gave it to me.”

Crockett rented a U-Haul trailer, covered the drum in a tarp and towed it behind a borrowed 1954 Ford Fairlane all the way back to Austin, a three-day December road trip. The next summer, Crockett restored Bertha, removing the unsightly maroon lettering and replacing it with the Texas seal painted on the original heads.

Bertha became a fixture at Texas, serving the Longhorns from 1955-2022. She was used in John F. Kennedy’s inaugural parade, saw three AP national championships in 1963, 1969 and 2005 and is considered as much a Texas icon as Bevo or the UT Tower.

She was known as “The Sweetheart of the Longhorn Band,” and despite its wooden frame and the wear and tear of being wheeled around, spun on its trailer, and with generations of students wailing on it, she held up for a century. It even survived the original leather heads being slashed after a last-second 7-3 win over Arkansas in 1962 and an accident on I-35 between Austin and Dallas when the vehicle towing Bertha in a trailer was involved in a rollover crash. She emerged unscathed, but future travel was severely limited.

Bertha was forever linked with Crockett, who directed the Longhorn Band from 1950 to 1955 and the Longhorn Alumni Band from 1983-1994. He loved the drum so much, he set up an endowment for care and maintenance and looked after her the rest of his life, until his death in 2019.

“Mr. Crockett paid $19,000 in 2007, sent the drum to Remo Drum Company in California and had it completely restored,” Kirksey said. “I mean, everything on it was redone. A lot of the wood was replaced because it failed and was rotting. Moton’s comment to me was, ‘I want to get her ready for another 100 years.'”

In 2017, Texas reached out to Ramy Antoun, a longtime drummer who had moved to the Austin area from California and was building drums at a studio next to his house. As someone who played drums — he had just finished four years of touring with Seal — and studied the evolution of drum manufacturing, including when the Purdue and Chicago drums were built, he was thrilled to get to work on a piece of history.

But he was worried about what he saw, particularly the exterior wood construction, saying there was “ovaling” of the drum due to the straps pushing it down to hold it on the trailer, causing the wood to flex. While the renovations had given Bertha new life, Antoun was still concerned any crack in the outer shell could cause it to collapse inward, and was most likely to happen in front of 100,000 people during a game.

“I just honestly kept praying that that drum would survive, that nothing could go wrong on the field,” Antoun said. “It could happen any day. If you hit it hard, if you spun it weird. And it could happen on the field. So I told them you might want to look at maybe a new option.”

Antoun started dreaming big of another Bertha. But drums this big don’t come cheap. No one will say what the replacement cost of Bertha II was, but donors saw their “Sweetheart” as a worthwhile cause. The Bertha Centennial Fund was launched to send her off in style.

“Anybody who’s 100 years old deserves to retire,” Croomes said.

In January of this year, Antoun got the official go-ahead to begin building Bertha II. He had fallen in love with Texas in his five years in the hills outside Austin. Antoun’s house and the A&F Drums studio where he built Bertha II are located near Willie Nelson’s ranch, Luck, and are built on plots of land that were formerly owned by Nelson. In addition, Antoun has played drums on a few of Nelson’s studio recordings.

That might’ve been enough to qualify him as an full-fledged Texan. But now, by building the Longhorn Band its new signature showpiece, that’s no longer in doubt.

“I just felt like we really got adopted by Texas,” Antoun said. “We can’t let Texas down. We can’t let Bertha down. We’ve got to do this in a way that this drum will last another 100-plus years.”

Boumpani, who formerly was the Duke band director for many years before creating his own company, says drums this size are extremely difficult to build. Ten years ago, when he got the call to build Big Mo, the only bass drum in the world that approaches the size of Bertha II, he thought it would take him six weeks. He had the shell fabricated from fiberglass, which was an expensive shipping nightmare to keep it from getting bent out of shape. He ended up working it all out, but there was a lot of trial and error, eventually meeting locals who could help him fabricate their own materials, and got the shell painted at an auto body shop.

“It took me close to six months,” Boumpani said. “Everything that could go wrong went wrong.”

Antoun said in the five years since he started working on Bertha, he’d already begun imagining and experimenting with how he’d build a new one, which allowed him to hit the ground running along with his friend Eric Spille of Kentex Metals, a fabrication shop just a bit down the street from him. Together, they studied a video about how Leedy built Purdue’s drum in 1921.

“They talk about their team of engineers that got together. This right here is our team” Spille said, laughing and gesturing to himself and Antoun. “It’s like, ‘Hold my beer. Let’s engineer.'”

First, they developed a proprietary aluminum similar to the materials used on airplanes and rockets for Bertha’s outer shell.

“We chose a quarter-inch aluminum,” Spille said. “If you were to lay a sheet out it’d be four feet wide by 30 feet long. Then wrap it into a circle and that’s inevitably how it became Bertha II’s shell.”

Then Spille built an extremely low-profile trailer that carries the drum, complete with handles as wide as the drum that look like the horns of a Longhorn steer, and a gearbox designed to look like the UT Tower that allows the drum to be rotated on its side to prevent incidents like Purdue’s at Notre Dame.

“Maybe Purdue will call and ask us to build a trolley for their drum so it can go sideways,” Antoun joked.

Luckily, the carriage was low enough that Texas didn’t have to remodel the so-called “Bertha door” in the university’s band hall.

“We’ve got a door that’s 12 feet tall that was built for Big Bertha to fit through,” Croomes said. “Big Bertha is 10 feet. Big Bertha II, is right at 12 feet [on the trailer]. So we were concerned that it wasn’t going to fit in the door. But it clears the door by maybe an inch.”

Boumpani and Antoun both used heads made by Remo, a California company started by drummer Remo Belli, described in his 2016 New York Times obit as “a precocious musician who was credited with developing the first commercially successful synthetic drumheads — saving the hides of countless animals.” The evolution in the materials meant that they could go even bigger than the original drum makers did 100 years ago.

Boumpani said it was a challenge to get Remo to make a head as large as Big Mo’s, at 108 inches, which was the largest they had ever made. Antoun, who was signed to the company as an artist, had to do his own cajoling to get them to go even bigger.

“I told them, ‘It’s time to make history,’ Antoun said. “‘We have an opportunity to create another 100-year-old legacy. You want to be a part of this. I’m telling you, as a friend, as a business I believe in and as the only people in the world that can do it.’ And they figured it out, man.”

At 114 by 55 inches, it’s the largest drum head the company has ever created, a no-doubt signifier it’s the biggest bass drum in the world.

For Spille, who is originally from Kentucky but has been in Texas for more than 20 years, it was a chance for his own love letter to the Lone Star State.

“One of the thrilling things for me is my wife of 24 years graduated from UT,” Spille said. “So up until this point, I really wasn’t that cool, but now I’m a little cooler in her book. “[Bertha I] was Chicago’s drum. This wasn’t 100% meant for Texas,” he added. “This drum was built here in Texas, with Texas connections, built for Texas.”

Aside from being the biggest, Bertha II strikes another claim: It can play the lowest note ever played on a drum. And with a new wireless microphone inside it connected to the stadium speakers (another first), it’s going to shake things up.

“The bigger the diameter, the lower the note. That’s drums,” said Antoun. “If this is the biggest bass drum in the world, then it’s going to be the lowest note. I don’t know what kind of subwoofers they have in that stadium. But it has the ability to break windows. Everybody’s gonna be feeling like there’s an earthquake in there. It’ll rumble.”

Holden Logan, a Longhorn Band member at Texas who is the section leader for “Bertha Crew,” will be the guy doing the rumbling for the TCU game this weekend when he swings away for Bertha II’s first appearance in pregame festivities and during the national anthem.

“It’s just such a cool honor to be in this position when it’s the 100-year anniversary of a drum that has so much history with the school,” Logan said. “I’m only going to get two home games with her but I’m hoping that she’ll make some new memories just like the old Bertha has plenty of memories of her own.”

Bertha I has moved to a permanent home on display in the school’s Athletics Hall of Fame under the north end zone at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium.

Kirksey, who played in the Longhorn Band in the 1960s and was good friends with Crockett, the man who bought, delivered and maintained Big Bertha I for so many years, is a bit wistful about the old drum being a museum piece.

“I am glad that Mr. Crockett is not alive today just because that was his baby and he would like to have seen that drum used forever and that’s why he paid the money 15 years ago,” Kirksey said. “But that’s all history now. I’m OK with her retirement.”

Even if he still would like to settle one old score.

“[The original] Bertha clearly still is the biggest drum ever built using leather heads,” Kirksey said. “I don’t think there’s any doubt about that among anybody anywhere except Purdue with their foibles and fakery.”

Croomes is excited for the new era, including that fans can once again see the original Bertha on display.

“We’re extremely happy to have both girls in the family,” he said.

As far as the former champ, Boumpani heard the news last week from a reporter that Big Mo had been eclipsed. As a member of such a small fraternity, he wasn’t disappointed so much as he was excited to know all the details and dimensions, and was impressed that it was fashioned from metal.

But, after his own experience successfully learning to build big drums on the fly — including hand-delivering Harvard’s new drum just 45 minutes before their celebratory concert to unveil it — Boumpani hopes the drum wars never end.

“Maybe somebody will want me to make a bigger one now,” he said. “Tell ’em I’m willing to take the challenge.”

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Connelly’s Week 1 overreactions: Belichick, Arch Manning, Bama’s debacle and more

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September 2, 2025

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Connelly's Week 1 overreactions: Belichick, Arch Manning, Bama's debacle and more

  • Bill ConnellySep 1, 2025, 11:35 PM ET

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      Bill Connelly is a writer for ESPN. He covers college football, soccer and tennis. He has been at ESPN since 2019.

The 2025 college football season opened in earnest with incredible weather in most locales (Lubbock, Texas, aside), exciting and jam-packed environments … and very few points. No one topped 17 points in either of Saturday’s top-10 matchups, FBS teams averaged only 23.5 points per game against other FBS teams, and throughout the country, rebuilt offensive lines and new quarterbacks seemed at a disadvantage against rebuilt defenses.

What did we learn about how 2025 will play out? Not a ton. The season doesn’t end for almost four more months, after all. As LSU coach Brian Kelly said to ESPN’s Molly McGrath after his Tigers’ win over Clemson, the only statement his team made Saturday night was “that we got to 1-0. I mean, this is a long season. This is a journey, and this wasn’t our destination. We have to play better … but that’s why I love playing games like this, on the road, against a top-five team. It just gets you better for the rest of the season.”

Kelly is right, of course. But that’s absolutely no fun. From Thursday evening through Monday night, there were so many games and a lot to react to. It wouldn’t be fun if we didn’t let ourselves overreact a bit. We might even be right about a thing or two!

I’m not a “hot takes” person by nature, but Week 1 is the perfect time to fire off a few. So from Arch Manning, Bill Belichick and Alabama having really bad times to Tulane and Iowa State looking like playoff teams and Jonah Coleman looking like a Heisman contender, here are some (perhaps foolish) overreactions to everything we just saw.

Arch stinks! Matt Patricia for the Broyles Award!

OK, there might be a little hyperbole there. But it’s like Saturday’s Texas–Ohio State game — a 14-7 win for the defending national champs over the visiting Longhorns — was designed in a lab to maximize the potential takes emanating from it. New Ohio State defensive coordinator Matt Patricia looked like the greatest defensive coach in the history of the sport, and new Texas starting quarterback Arch Manning, after an offseason of limitless hype, laid an egg on national television.

First things first: My apologies to Chip Ferguson. In the intro to my Friday preview column, I referenced the 1988 Florida State-Miami game, in which preseason No. 1 FSU entered the game as just four-point favorites over the defending national champions — the narrowest point-spread for a preseason No. 1 since at least 1978 — and got rocked by the Canes 31-0. Ferguson started for FSU and was benched by the third quarter because of poor play, and I mentioned that Manning would almost assuredly clear the Ferguson bar.

He did. Barely.

Ferguson vs. Miami (1988): 10-for-16 for 121 yards and two interceptions — 101.0 passer rating

Manning vs. Ohio State (2025): 17-for-30 for 170 yards, one TD and one INT — 108.6 passer rating

Manning completed three passes for 65 yards late in the fourth quarter in Texas’ lone TD drive of the game. That allowed him to narrowly clear the bar. But it was about the only one he cleared. Manning was nervous and inaccurate for large portions of Saturday’s affair, and when he had time to look for an open receiver, none came open. With Ohio State’s all-world safety Caleb Downs lurking in the back, leading returning receivers DeAndre Moore Jr. and Ryan Wingo combined to catch four of 12 passes for 41 yards, and the Buckeyes secondary blanketed Manning’s options.

I got a lot of mileage out of the “Matt Patricia hasn’t been successful in a job since 2016” line this offseason — what can I say, I enjoyed saying it — but any time I said it, I also acknowledged that it might turn out that nothing but raw talent matters. Ohio State clearly has a lot of that.

I couldn’t tell if Patricia was doing anything impressive schematically; all I knew for sure was, wherever Manning and Texas looked for a matchup advantage, they failed to find one. It seemed like they thought they’d run the ball behind their interior line, and they created some rushing efficiency overall, but they got stuffed on fourth-and-short twice, including once on fourth-and-goal from the OSU 1. And wherever Manning was looking downfield, he rarely saw what he wanted. He was forced to check down repeatedly: Only five of his 17 completions gained double-digit yardage, and when he tried to force the issue in the third quarter, his pass was picked off by Jermaine Matthews Jr.

There are quite a few differences between coaching at the pro and collegiate levels, but the biggest one might be that, at the right school, you can lean heavily on talent advantages than you can in the pros and put players where they need to be to exploit those advantages. What we saw Saturday certainly suggests Ohio State will have massive advantages over just about any offense it will face over the next three months.

The major question for the Buckeyes, at this point, is what advantages will they find on offense? Because, for as poor as Texas’ offense might have been Saturday, it was the more successful unit of the two.

Total yards: Texas 336, OSU 203
Yards per play: Texas 5.0, OSU 3.8
Success rate: Texas 43.3%, OSU 33.3%
First downs: Texas 16, OSU 11

Ohio State won because its defense stopped Texas inside the OSU 10 and forced the game’s only turnover. The Buckeyes offense finished only two drives inside the Texas 40, running backs CJ Donaldson Jr. and James Peoples averaged just 3.0 yards per carry, and in his first collegiate start, Julian Sayin went just 13-for-20 for 126 yards. Jeremiah Smith, the No. 1 player heading into the season, caught six of 10 balls for just 43 yards, and Carnell Tate‘s 40-yard touchdown catch early in the fourth quarter was very well timed and OSU’s only gain of more than 16 yards all game.

Neither of these teams is a finished product, and with both teams’ overall inexperience, especially on offense, it will take a while for them to become their finished versions. But while I billed this game as a fantastic opportunity to answer a lot of my questions about these two teams, I think I finished the game with more questions than when I started.

I was wrong about Alabama

The most disappointing thing about Alabama’s performance Saturday wasn’t quarterback Ty Simpson, though he wasn’t good enough (4.9 yards per dropback and as many negative plays as 20-yard gains). It wasn’t receiver Ryan Williams dropping multiple passes and catching just five of 11 targets for 30 yards. It wasn’t an experienced offensive line that I thought would hold the biggest advantage in the ballgame, but it did no such thing. It wasn’t even a Bama secondary that gave up a couple of big plays to speedy receivers Squirrel White and Jaylin Lucas. That stuff happens.

The most disappointing thing about the Tide’s performance in Tallahassee was how totally unprepared they looked.

When FSU’s Mike Norvell hired Gus Malzahn as offensive coordinator and brought former Malzahn recruit Tommy Castellanos aboard to run the offense, it was fair to make a few assumptions about how things would go. Malzahn has built lots of fun rushing attacks around mobile quarterbacks through the years, and Castellanos is similar to Kyler Murray with his legs and running style (and very much not like Murray with his arm). It was easy to craft a vision of a motion-friendly FSU offense occasionally utilizing misdirection and giving Castellanos freedom to run and make things happen.

FSU drove 75, 65 and 52 yards and scored 17 points in its first three drives, then began the second half with a 68-yard TD drive. The progress slowed from there, but the Noles uncorked a 10-play, 75-yard drive to ice the win midway through the fourth quarter. Castellanos rushed for 86 yards, and five FSU ball carriers had at least one 10-yard rush. (Micahi Danzy had gains of 26 and 32 yards among his three carries.) When Castellanos was at Boston College last season, opponents quickly learned that, instead of attempting to sack him when he dropped to pass, it was best to corral him and force him to make plays with his arm. It was as if Bama’s defenders hadn’t watched any film. Time and again, they flew in for the sack, only to see him spin away and make a play with his legs.

Almost everyone on the Bama offense — including a few somewhat known players like Williams, who is expected to make big contributions this year — performed poorly, aside from receiver Germie Bernard and tight end Josh Cuevas (though even they combined to catch only 11 of 21 passes). But when the defense was getting bullied and Bama needed its offensive stars to keep up, they instead disappeared for swaths of time. FSU went 7-for-14 (50%) on third and fourth downs, while Bama went only 8-for-22 (36%), and though the Tide looked like they might come back from down 17 points, they never got the ball with a chance to tie.

My general approach to Bama heading into this season was pretty simple: If Simpson is good, Bama is great. Coach Kalen DeBoer’s pre-Bama track record was almost flawless, and I thought if Simpson was solid and the pass rush improved a little, the Tide would have everything they needed. But neither Simpson nor Bama’s pass rushers (in either sacks or containment) performed well enough, and the units I wasn’t concerned about also failed to come through. It was an all-around dud, starting with the coaching staff, and it’s not like they lacked motivation. This is a long season, and the Tide have time to recover. But it takes your GPA a while to rebound from an F on the first test of the semester.

This section is primarily about Bama, but Castellanos & Co. deserve massive praise. They made the Tide look unprepared. I’m still not sure what to expect from the Seminoles in 2025, and I still have the memory of Castellanos running out of steam after a lovely start to 2024. The crowd at Doak Campbell Stadium was loud enough to almost drown out Joe Tessitore on the TV call, and the team looked like it had all the motivation it lacked last season. And when you’re already 50% to last year’s win total after one game, you’re doing something right.

I was right about Clemson (and Miami is winning the ACC)

As questionable as it may have been to buy lots of Bama stock this offseason, I certainly felt justified in not buying Clemson stock. The Tigers led the nation in returning production in 2025 and were extremely likely to improve, but I struggled with the idea that a team that has averaged an 18.5 SP+ ranking and 3.5 losses per season over the past four years could suddenly become a top-five team, as poll voters suggested.

Clemson is obviously talented and will threaten to win the ACC this year. But a 17-10 home loss to LSU on Saturday night certainly threw doubt on the Tigers’ supposed top-five bona fides.

The Clemson run defense, a liability in 2024 despite loads of blue-chippers on the line, was mostly solid Saturday. Of course, the visiting Tigers were terribly inefficient on the ground last season, and LSU’s Caden Durham and Zavion Thomas still combined for 100 yards in 20 carries. Still, when you hold LSU — a team that hasn’t ranked in the defensive SP+ top 20 since 2019 — to 17 points, you should like your chances, and the experienced Clemson offense simply couldn’t move the ball. Only two of Clemson’s 58 snaps gained more than 20 yards, and half gained one or fewer. And with the game in the balance, Cade Klubnik‘s final 14 dropbacks netted 47 yards and a dreadful 14.3% success rate. Clemson has now lost its past seven games against ranked SEC foes.

Like any other Week 1 disappointment, the Tigers obviously have time to rebound and grow. But the whole point of buying stock in a team with actual experience — as opposed to all the highly ranked teams with major continuity and/or experience issues heading into 2025 — was that it would be pretty fully formed when the season began. The Tigers might not have that much room to grow, and within the ACC they now have to worry about a Miami team that actually has its act together.

Well, maybe. Miami looked really good to start 2024, too, so we know it can backfire to fully buy in on the Hurricanes. But with a 27-24 win over Notre Dame on Sunday night, they scored their first victory over a top-10 team in nine tries and nearly eight years. The Miami offense fell into a second-half funk as the Irish came back from 14 down to tie the game, but Georgia transfer Carson Beck threw for 205 yards and two touchdowns, North Dakota State transfer CharMar Brown moved the chains twice in short yardage on Miami’s final drive, and Carter Davis‘ 47-yard field goal provided the winning points. And against what is supposed to be an excellent Notre Dame offensive line, Miami sacked CJ Carr twice on the Irish’s final possession.

It was an excellent start against what is, on paper, the best team Miami will face in the regular season. LSU transfer CJ Daniels and freshman Malachi Toney combined for 11 catches, 128 yards and 2 touchdowns, including the single best play of Week 1. And at the very least, Miami erased the bitter taste from its poor 2024 finish.

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CJ Daniels makes jaw-dropping 1-handed TD grab for Miami

CJ Daniels goes full extension for a one-handed touchdown grab to put Miami up late in the first half.

Rapid-fire overreactions

The big games were the big games, but we had so much else to overreact to. Here are some quicker takes:

A defensive player is winning the Heisman

Don’t ask me which one, though if Ohio State let Caleb Downs line up on offense a few times, I think we might have our answer. But some defender needs to get on a roll because offenses stunk in Week 1 — OK, some didn’t, but go with me here — and there has never been a better chance for an Ndamukong Suh-like charge from a defender (only, with the proper respect from Heisman voters this time).

Indeed, all the major offensive measures are down compared to where they were this time last year. In Week 1 of last season, in FBS vs. FBS games, teams averaged 2.11 points per drive and 5.52 yards per play; this year it was 1.9 points per drive and 5.4 yards per play. Efficiency numbers actually improved — success rate rose from 40.6% to 41.2%, completion rate rose from 61.0% to 61.3%, sack rates fell from 6.0% to 5.1% and overall turnover rates improved slightly from 2.0% to 1.7%.

So what’s the problem? Big plays vanished: The percentage of completions gaining at least 20 yards fell from 16.3% to 14.7%, and despite the uptick in completion rate (and the downtick in sacks), average yards per dropback fell from 6.4 to 6.0. You know how pro defenses adapted to force Patrick Mahomes to settle for checkdown after checkdown because they were basically forming an umbrella at the back? It appears college defenses are doing the same thing. They’re forcing quarterbacks — who, on average, are less experienced than in recent years — to dink and dunk and score points before making a crippling error or coming up short on third down. It’s working.

Somehow, scoring plummeted in Week 1 even as coaches got much more aggressive on fourth down. Or perhaps because of it. Teams went for it on fourth down in opposition territory 44.0% of the time in Week 1 (again, looking only at FBS vs. FBS games), up from 33.1% in Week 1 last year. And despite this increase, fourth-down conversion rates also went up, from 49.6% to 54.7%.

Coaches increasingly understand when going for it is to their advantage, but might that be further tamping down their willingness to take shots downfield, since it’s now more OK to come up just short of the line to gain and utilize fourth downs? “Nerds ruined college football” is quite the overreaction, especially coming from a nerd, but consider that food for thought as we advance further into the season.

At one point Saturday, the Under was 17-3 for the weekend; it ended up 29-14 (67.4%), a solid improvement over last year’s 26-16 (61.9%) in Week 1. Offenses eventually picked up steam a bit in 2024, and they probably will this season too. But damn, were points hard to come by this weekend.

Iowa State is winning the Big 12

ISU and Kansas State returned from Ireland just a few days ago, and both scheduled Week 1 games against FCS opponents. Perhaps somewhat predictably, K-State had to labor significantly against both jet lag and a solid North Dakota team, but against South Dakota, a top-five FCS team on paper, Matt Campbell’s Cyclones cruised.

Projected to win by 21.4 per SP+, they rolled 55-7. Rocco Becht completed 19 of 20 passes for 278 yards and 3 scores, and after giving up 80 yards in 12 plays on USD’s opening drive, the Cyclones allowed just 129 from there. Kicker Kyle Konrardy crushed a 63-yard field goal at the end of the first half.

ISU couldn’t have been more dialed in, and though plenty of other potential Big 12 teams looked the part — especially TCU (def. North Carolina 48-14), Utah (def. UCLA 43-10), Arizona (40-6 over Hawaii), BYU (69-0 over Portland State) and Texas Tech (67-7 over Arkansas-Pine Bluff) — the Cyclones passed a particularly unique test and blew me away.

The kids are alright

For as much as QBs seemed to struggle in Week 1, some particularly young ones looked the part of future stars. Michigan’s Bryce Underwood, the most touted freshman in the country, was solid in his debut against New Mexico, weathering a couple of mini-funks and finishing 21-for-31 for 251 yards and a touchdown. But a couple of others did even better.

No one made more of an out-of-the-gate impression than Cal’s Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele. In Cal’s surprisingly easy 34-15 win at Oregon State, the blue-chipper completed his first nine passes for 146 yards and 2 scores and finished with 234 yards and 3 TDs, no sacks and 2 rushes for 30 yards. It was one of the more poised and mistake-free debuts from a true freshman.

Maryland’s Malik Washington went about similar numbers differently: He started 3-for-11 for 19 yards, and the Terrapins were tied with Florida Atlantic 7-7 after one quarter. But from there, he went 24-for-32 and threw three touchdown passes in a 39-7 romp.

Thanks to offseason attrition, Cal and Maryland were forced to undergo youth movements of sorts, handing the reins to youngsters and hoping they could get enough help from transfers and random incumbents to get by. Both more than got by in Week 1.

While we’re at it, a couple of redshirt freshmen looked outstanding at the Group of 5 level: North Texas’ Drew Mestemaker went 24-for-32 for 329 yards, 3 touchdowns and 30 non-sack rushing yards in a 51-0 blowout of Lamar, while Texas State’s Brad Jackson, with help from a rampant run game, went 18-for-26 for 214 yards and 4 TDs (plus 57 rushing yards) as the Bobcats rolled 52-27 over Eastern Michigan. Quality quarterbacking was rare in Week 1, but these teams found plenty of it with youngsters.

Tulane to the CFP

A football game lasts a long time. About 45 minutes or so into the USF–Boise State game Thursday evening, things had loosely gone as BSU would have hoped. Sure, the Broncos had lost a costly fumble at the USF 20 on the opening drive, but they were moving the ball efficiently, and USF was not. Boise State had a 46% success rate to USF’s 10%, and the Bulls’ first nine snaps had lost 10 yards.

Then came the final 2 hours, 45 minutes. USF put together a couple of good drives, and BSU stalled. After looking strong early, the Broncos trailed 10-7 at halftime. Then it was 17-7. And 24-7. Boise State kept turning the ball over on downs, and USF kept scoring. And after about 3½ hours, the Bulls had won 34-7 — somehow BSU finished plus-6 in yardage and minus-27 in points — and completely flipped the race for the Group of 5’s guaranteed CFP spot on its head.

Now, Boise State remains a contender. The Broncos are still very talented and will likely be favored in every game besides their Oct. 4 trip to Notre Dame. But the upset opened a door, and above all others, Tulane walked through it.

The Green Wave were 6.5-point favorites against Northwestern on Saturday, but that was a bit of an insult to the home team. SP+ projected Tulane as a 15-point favorite, and even that eventually undersold the Green Wave in a 23-3 win that was more dominant than the final score indicated. They converted most of the game’s big plays and made new Northwestern quarterback Preston Stone‘s life hell, picking off four of his passes and sacking him three times. Green Wave QB Jake Retzlaff threw for 152 yards and rushed for 113, including a 69-yard touchdown sprint in the second quarter. Tulane was basically bigger, stronger, faster and angrier than the Wildcats at every position. The Green Wave could also be favored in all but one remaining game — their Sept. 20 trip to Ole Miss being the exception — and unlike BSU, they haven’t used a mulligan yet.

Rice will bowl

Because I didn’t include a “how sexy is your offense?” component in preseason SP+ projections, Rice was projected only 116th, with an average projected win total of 4.8, heading into Scott Abell’s first season in charge. But that offense did something sexy Saturday.

It took the Owls no time to spin an opponent into the ground with Abell’s option offense. Rice rushed for 206 yards, and thanks to a surprisingly spry defensive effort, the Owls upset Louisiana 14-12. They’ll probably need another upset or two to get to 6-6, but this is overreaction territory! I say they get to at least 6-6!

North Carolina won’t

If nothing else, Bill Belichick’s first North Carolina team won the scripted portion of its first game. TCU’s defense had no way of really knowing what the Tar Heels, with almost completely new personnel and a coaching staff heavy in pro influences, were going to attempt when their Monday night affair started. And sure enough, UNC carved the Horned Frogs up for 83 yards and a touchdown in just seven plays. TCU quickly went four-and-out, and everything was sunshine and moonbeams in Chapel Hill.

Unfortunately, the game continued. Over the next 30 minutes and change, TCU outgained the Heels 402-39 and outscored them 41-0. UNC briefly perked up when backup quarterback Max Johnson came in and threw a touchdown pass to his brother Jake Johnson — unfortunately not the same guy who starred in New Girl — but the Horned Frogs rolled, 48-14.

When Michael Lombardi, UNC’s general manager and a longtime NFL front-office guy, would talk to the media this offseason, you would hear a lot about running an NFL-style organization at North Carolina, with all sorts of scouting and cap knowledge. That’s great, and maybe that know-how will benefit the program in future seasons as it learns some lessons from 2025. But 2025 doesn’t look like it’s going to go particularly well. The roster Belichick and his NFL staff compiled this season simply doesn’t have enough talent, especially in the trenches, to aim for anything higher than 6-6 in year one. This isn’t the NFL, and you can’t draft talent — there’s still a recruiting element to the college game that goes with all the cap math. We’ll see what happens in future seasons, but in 2025 it looks like the college game, with all its quirks and oddities, is going to get the best of the best coach in NFL history.

But on the bright side, just think of how many Super Bowls TCU’s Sonny Dykes might win if he gets the chance!

Who won the Heisman this week?

I am, once again, awarding the Heisman every week of the season and doling out weekly points, F1-style (in this case, 10 points for first place, 9 for second, and so on). For the first time last season, I had a different winner than the actual winner — Boise State’s Ashton Jeanty took the crown with a slight advantage over the actual winner Travis Hunter and Miami’s Cam Ward. How will this Heisman race play out, and how different will the result be from the real Heisman voting?

With almost no preseason Heisman favorites really looking the part in Week 1, this race hasn’t begun. But we still had some standout performances.

Here is this week’s Heisman top 10:

1. Jonah Coleman, Washington (24 carries for 177 yards and 2 touchdowns, plus 22 receiving yards against Colorado State)

2. Rocco Becht, Iowa State (19-for-20 passing for 278 yards and 3 touchdowns against South Dakota)

3. Parker Navarro, Ohio (21-for-31 passing for 239 yards and 3 touchdowns, plus 93 rushing yards and a touchdown against Rutgers)

4. Taylen Green, Arkansas (24-for-31 passing for 322 yards and 6 touchdowns, plus 53 rushing yards against Alabama A&M)

5. Mekhi Mason, Louisiana Tech (9 tackles, 4.5 TFLs, 2 sacks, 1 pass breakup against Southeastern Louisiana)

6. Marcel Reed, Texas A&M (22-for-34 passing for 289 yards and 4 touchdowns, plus 39 rushing yards against UTSA)

7. Robert Henry Jr., UTSA (16 carries for 177 yards and 2 touchdowns against Texas A&M)

8. Devon Dampier, Utah (21-for-25 passing for 206 yards and 2 touchdowns, plus 87 rushing yards and a touchdown against UCLA)

9. Dani Dennis-Sutton, Penn State (5 tackles, 2.5 TFLs, 1 sack and 2 forced fumbles against Nevada)

10. KC Concepcion, Texas A&M (three catches for 72 yards and a touchdown, plus an 80-yard punt return TD against UTSA)

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KC Concepcion with a spectacular touchdown vs. UTSA Roadrunners

KC Concepcion (Texas A&M) with a spectacular touchdown vs. UTSA Roadrunners on Saturday, Aug. 30, 2025.

Jonah Coleman’s “beast mode” run late Saturday night was one of the best plays of the weekend, and without his efforts, the Huskies would have been in trouble against Colorado State. And though plenty of QBs posted good stat lines against FCS opponents, only Rocco Becht went 19-for-20. He and his Cyclones were almost perfect against a solid South Dakota squad.

Honorable mention:

• Jackson Arnold, Auburn (11-for-17 passing for 108 yards, plus 151 rushing yards and 2 touchdowns against Baylor)

• Bryson Donelson, Fresno State (23 carries for 167 yards and a touchdown, plus 25 receiving yards against Georgia Southern)

• Jordan Dwyer, TCU (nine catches for 136 yards and a touchdown against North Carolina)

• Justice Haynes, Michigan (16 carries for 159 yards and 3 touchdowns against New Mexico)

• Jayden Maiava, USC (15-for-18 passing for 295 yards and 2 touchdowns, plus a rushing touchdown against Missouri State)

• Garrett Nussmeier, LSU (28-for-38 passing for 230 yards and a touchdown against Clemson)

• Beau Pribula, Missouri (23-for-28 passing for 283 yards and 2 touchdowns, plus 72 rushing yards and 2 touchdowns against Central Arkansas)

• Braylan Shelby, USC (4 tackles, 3.5 TFLs, 2 sacks against Missouri State)

• Evan Simon, Temple (19-for-25 passing for 248 yards and 6 touchdowns against UMass)

• Steven Soles Jr., Kentucky (3 tackles, 2 sacks and 2 forced fumbles against Toledo)

My 10 favorite games of the weekend

We can admit that Week 1 wasn’t exactly overloaded with great games … or close games of any kind. But here’s where college football’s endless depth kicks in. There’s always a great game and a heart-stopping finish somewhere, even if you have to search a bit.

1. No. 10 Miami 27, No. 6 Notre Dame 24. Loud crowd, late drama and a jaw-dropping one-handed touchdown catch? Yep, this game was awesome.

2 and 3. NAIA: No. 2 Keiser 38, No. 6 Indiana Wesleyan 31 and No. 4 Benedictine 38, No. 3 Morningside 34. The NAIA’s top-10 doubleheader produced a pair of thrillers. First, Keiser traveled from Florida to Marion, Indiana, and led most of the way. But Arjun Lothe scored on a keeper and threw a 21-yard touchdown pass to Isaac Smith to tie the score at 31-31. But then Jaden Miller ripped off a 70-yard touchdown run, his fourth score of the day, and Keiser prevailed. Meanwhile, in Atchison, Kansas, there were some long touchdowns and nine lead changes, the last of which came with 12 seconds left: Jackson Dooley’s 2-yard keeper allowed Benedictine to open the season with a thrilling win over NAIA royalty for the second straight year.

4. Tarleton State 30, Army 27 (2OT). On Friday, I wrote that Tarleton State jumping to second in FCS SP+ last week might have been a bit of a small-sample overreaction. Whoops. The Texans forced three Army turnovers, got a combined 196 rushing yards and two scores from Caleb Lewis and Tre Page III, overcame a 14-point second-half deficit and took down the defending American Conference champs with better late-game place-kicking.

TSU is one of the most ambitious programs in the country; the Texans moved up from Division II recently and are almost openly pining to move up further. They’ve certainly looked like an FBS team in 2025.

5 and 6. No. 9 LSU 17, No. 4 Clemson 10 and No. 3 Ohio State 14, No. 1 Texas 7. Great games with huge plays from all the big-name guys? Not really. Down-to-the-wire battles with electric atmospheres? Absolutely.

7 and 8. FCS: Gardner-Webb 52, Western Carolina 45 and Monmouth 42, Colgate 39. We got two enormous comebacks at the FCS level Saturday evening, both from visiting teams. First, Gardner-Webb spotted Western Carolina a 35-7 lead in the second quarter, then scored 45 of the next 52 points. WCU kicked a late field goal, but the Bulldogs recovered the onside kick and survived. Then, in upstate New York, Colgate took a 31-7 lead midway through the third quarter, but watched Monmouth score 35 points in 14 minutes to take a stunning 42-31 lead. The Raiders responded with a touchdown, but Monmouth moved the chains three times and ran out the clock.

9. Kent State 21, Merrimack 17. Kent State entered the game with a 21-game (and nearly two-year) losing streak, and it looked like that streak could continue for a while when Merrimack took a 17-14 lead with 5:40 left. But Da’Realyst Clark — DA’REALYST CLARK! — returned the ensuing kickoff 100 yards for a score.

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Merrimack Warriors vs. Kent State Golden Flashes: Full Highlights

Merrimack Warriors vs. Kent State Golden Flashes: Full Highlights

10. Prairie View A&M 22, Texas Southern 21. The HBCU universe did its best to provide. Howard upset Florida A&M 10-9 with a Matt Conord field goal at the buzzer, and NC A&T missed a tying field goal at the buzzer in a 24-21 Tennessee State win. In Orangeburg, South Carolina, SC State blew a fourth-quarter lead against Wofford but scored late to win anyway. And after a weather delay at Shell Energy Stadium in Houston, Prairie View gave up a go-ahead touchdown to Texas Southern with 1:15 left but drove 84 yards and won the game on a 14-yard walk-off touchdown pass from Cameron Peters to Rodny Ojo.

(Also, a quick shoutout to Presbyterian: The Blue Hose knocked off their highest-ranked FCS opponent ever, No. 11 Mercer, with a 16-yard Zach Switzer touchdown run and a late stop. Blue Hose 15, Bears 10.)

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Five months from Olympics, here’s what you should know about Team USA men’s hockey

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September 2, 2025

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Five months from Olympics, here's what you should know about Team USA men's hockey

The 4 Nations Face-Off last February was a smash hit and set the stage for an even more competitive 2026 Olympics in Milan in February. With NHL players participating for the first time in 12 years, USA coach Mike Sullivan said “the stakes have never been higher” for the 12-team tournament.

As Team USA gathered for an orientation camp last week in Plymouth, Michigan, the players and management did not shy away from the pressure .

“The expectation is to go to Milan and win the gold medal,” Vegas star Jack Eichel said Wednesday at the camp. “I think anything short of that, it would be disappointing.”

With the U.S. looking to win its first Olympic gold in men’s hockey since the 1980 Miracle on Ice team, the talent pool is deeper than ever. General manager Bill Guerin and his staff have a series of difficult decisions.

“The guys that played in [4 Nations] did a great job, but we have to go back to the drawing board and start over again,” Guerin said. “Guys have to be playing well. They’ve got to be healthy. So it’s really tough to say how much is the roster going to change. I don’t know. We will see as time goes on, but having the two extra spots is huge.”

Five months out, here’s what you should know about how Team USA is being constructed.

THE TWO-DAY CAMP — about three weeks before NHL training camps open — featured no on-ice sessions, and no systems and strategy were discussed. The focus was building camaraderie and setting expectations. Guerin gathered the 44 players in a ballroom for a talk once they arrived. According to players, the message was this: Team USA had a good showing at the 4 Nations but fell short. The Olympics are a bigger stage, with more tradition. The 2026 Games are a prime opportunity to make a statement on how far the United States has come as a hockey country.

“I think the message is that we can play any style,” said Lightning defenseman Ryan McDonagh, joined by Patrick Kane as the only holdover invitees from the 2014 Olympic team in Sochi. “We can go against any team, how they’re built and we feel confident that we can win.”

“They had a good talk with us,” Devils defenseman Brett Pesce said. “The expectation is gold and nothing else — and I completely agree. Whoever makes the team, the talent pool is insane.”

ALL 23 PLAYERS who were named to the 4 Nations team were in attendance except Matthew Tkachuk — plus Jake Sanderson, Tage Thompson and Pesce who were later brought on as injury/illness replacements. Tkachuk tore his adductor muscle and suffered a sports hernia injury during 4 Nations, which sidelined him for most of the final against Canada, then Florida’s last 25 regular-season games before he returned in the playoffs. He had offseason surgery and is expected to sit out the start of the NHL regular season.

This summer was a big one for Tkachuk: he got married back home in St. Louis, then underwent surgery. Guerin said he was “planning and expecting” for Tkachuk to be ready for Milan. Tkachuk’s brother, Brady, was even more emphatic. “I think it’s a full expectation of him not just to play but be at his best,” he said. “It goes back to the injuries that he has had and he’s played through, he’ll just give you absolutely everything that he has. I know with his preparation and his work ethic that he’ll probably be in the best shape he’s ever been in after this surgery.”

Matthew and Brady talked constantly during the two-day camp, which Matthew didn’t attend because it wasn’t a good idea for him to travel. “He’s had the most FOMO that I’ve ever seen him have,” Brady said.

THE 44-PLAYER camp roster featured some notable omissions — but also some surprising additions: young players such as Jackson LaCombe, Frank Nazar, Shane Pinto and Alex Vlasic, all long shots to make the team. What they have in common: they were on the roster in May for the world championships, which the U.S. men’s team won for the first time in 92 years. That commitment was rewarded.

“We’re doing things differently now, and the world championships are absolutely connected to this. If you’re saying no and you don’t have a legit excuse, it will hurt you,” Guerin said. “I am not afraid to say that we don’t look at that with the Olympics coming up. That’s the biggest stage. The world championships are huge. They might not be as popular in the United States, but in Europe, in Canada, it is, and it has to be important for us. … We need to know what you’re all about. We need to know that you want to help USA Hockey win.”

TAGE THOMPSON SAYS he believes he should have been on the 4 Nations team.

The Sabres star said Guerin called him well before the roster was released to let him know he was on the outside. “When I received the news, obviously it sucked,” Thompson said. “That was a big goal of mine and I wanted to be on the team. To be honest with you, I felt like I would do a good enough job last year.”

The 6-foot-7 forward says he adds an element Team USA covets: versatility. “In the early stages of my career, I was in a different role and was playing more of a fourth, third line checking, defending role,” Thompson said. “As I’ve progressed in my career, I’ve been given opportunities to move up, with the ability to score and create plays. If that’s something they already have and they don’t need, then I also believe with my size and my speed, I can play pretty much any role that they need me to. PK, power play, whatever.”

Thompson said he didn’t want to project it out loud but acknowledged he did use the snub as motivation. After his call with Guerin, Thompson scored 33 goals and 54 points over his final 57 games. Thompson says he’s putting an extra emphasis on consistency and cleaning up some of his game in the defensive zone. But the 27-year-old remains confident.

“You’re looking at the 25 best players in the country,” Thompson said. “So now it’s, what role are you going to play and who is going to do their job the best? I believe I can do any of those roles the best.”

JOHN TORTORELLA WAS an unsung member of Team USA’s coaching staff at 4 Nations. Sullivan asked his former mentor to take on a different role. “I don’t want you to be the hammer,” Sullivan told Tortorella. “I’ll be the hammer. I want you to be the old wise man. I want you to reveal yourself to the players and the other coaches, to show the John Tortorella that I know, that my wife knows, my kids know, that your kids know. The side you don’t show the world very often.”

While the younger players loved having Tortorella around, Sullivan credited the former Flyers coach for being his sounding board; it was Tortorella who gave affirmed to Sullivan that they should put the Tkachuk brothers together on a line halfway through the opening game against Finland — which changed the complexion of the tournament.

Since Tortorella is not on an NHL bench this fall, Guerin has tasked Tortorella with another new role. The 67-year-old will be hitting the road early in the NHL season to scout, with an extra focus on bubble players.

BEFORE 4 NATIONS, it had been a long time since NHL players competed in a best-on-best competition, and even the stars were taken aback by the intensity.

“The game really didn’t translate to the NHL game; it was a different skill level, different speed,” goalie Connor Hellebuyck said. “When I got back to my NHL game, first I had to shake off losing. Then I had to get back into my routine.”

Quinn Hughes, watching at home while injured, noted: “I don’t want to say you couldn’t notice anyone, but it felt like everyone was just fitting in because guys were so good. I felt like no one could really stand out or you couldn’t really put your imprint on the game too much. You might’ve had one chance or two chances and it’s either you take advantage of those chances or you don’t, but no one was getting six, seven chances, which you might get in an NHL game.”

HUGHES WAS GUTTED to miss 4 Nations because of injury.

“Obviously I feel like I could have made a difference. I mean there’s still moments in the game where I feel like I could have taken advantage of some things, but you never know,” Hughes said. “The beautiful thing is that I’ll hopefully have the chance in February again, so really test myself there.”

It was a challenging season for the Vancouver captain, as he managed several different injuries.

“I tore my oblique, then came back a little too early and hurt my groin because my oblique was probably weak,” Hughes said. “And then I hurt the ligament in my hand in late December off a one-timer, and I’ve taken two million one-timers in my career, and for whatever reason that happened.”

He was able to play with a cast on his hand, which he said “actually worked out great.” It was the oblique, Hughes said, that kept him out of 4 Nations. The good news heading into important season — both for the Canucks, and Team USA — is that Hughes said he had a great summer, which he called a mental and physical reset.

THE TRADE FROM Chicago to Florida changed Seth Jones‘ hockey life. When the 4 Nations roster was submitted in December, Jones was on the Blackhawks and it seemed nobody talked about the 30-year-old as a notable omission. Fast-forward a few months and Jones played the most of any Panther (outside goalie Sergei Bobrovsky) in Florida’s dominant 23-game Stanley Cup run. Jones is now firmly back on the radar.

He’s careful to compare his situation with the Blackhawks and Panthers, but believed he played “more confidently” with Florida.

“I’m comfortable with where I’m at; over a long playoff run you can show you can play with that physicality, and in different situations over those 2½ months,” Jones said. “Hopefully they saw that.”

With Hughes, Charlie McAvoy, Jaccob Slavin and Zach Werenski basically locked into the top four, the final spots on the blue line are fierce. Adam Fox is coming off a down season, but talk at USA camp was that the Rangers’ defenseman is poised for a major comeback. Sanderson, an up-and-comer, earned his way into a more regular role after being thrust into 4 Nations as a 22-year-old.

“I’m not sure what my chances are,” Jones said. “But I’m going to do my best to make it.”

IT’S GOING TO be an intense start to the season. With dozens of players across several countries and NHL teams fighting for bubble spots on Olympic rosters, there’s a common prediction among players: games over the first three months are going to have extra juice.

“Obviously it’s going to be interesting playing for your team, your personal team, then in the back of your mind, you’re kind of playing for this as well, right?” Jones said. “Usually you have the first 20 games after training camp, everyone’s getting settled into their system. I think you’re going to see a lot more guys look faster early on this season, because they’re fighting for something.”

4 NATIONS MARKED the first time Brady and Matthew Tkachuk were teammates, outside of an All-Star game. “It was the little moments — going back to the hotel and going to each other’s rooms, hanging out, getting dinner, I felt like we were just inseparable for the two weeks. It felt like we were kids again,” Brady said. “It was just so special in the locker room, looking across the room and seeing him and hearing what he has to say and his Stanley Cup experience of giving it to everybody.”

Now, the Hughes brothers, who are good friends with the Tkachuks, have a chance to do the same. Quinn Hughes has already been named to the team; Jack and Luke hope to join him. Quinn and Jack were teammates for a World Juniors team. Jack and Luke are teammates in New Jersey. But Quinn has never played with Luke, who is 23.

“It’s something we’ve always dreamed of, to play with each other and wear the crest,” Luke Hughes said. “The three of us to do that together would be such an honor. So it will happen someday. I think it will happen someday.”

The Hughes brothers enjoyed being together at camp last week, and they were together … a lot.

“It’s like three brothers, they bicker back and forth,” said Pesce, Luke’s defense partner in New Jersey. “And then you add Quinn, he’s the older brother. I feel like he’s kind of the middle man. They’re always barking at each other. Sometimes it’s hockey, sometimes it’s the Chipotle bill. They’re always goofing on each other; it’s fun.”

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MLB September predictions: From best record to playoff races and more

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September 2, 2025

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MLB September predictions: From best record to playoff races and more

Sep 2, 2025, 07:00 AM ET

Welcome to September! Five months into Major League Baseball’s 2025 season, a number of things seem to be settled — from a few divisions to some award races — but plenty of intrigue remains entering the homestretch.

Which of the current contenders will reach the playoffs? How will the closer division races play out? Which teams will secure first-round byes? And how many games will the Colorado Rockies lose?!

To discuss what the final month of the regular season might bring, we asked 16 ESPN baseball experts some of the game’s biggest questions, covering September and beyond, and to explain their answers. We also asked them to make bold predictions about what will happen over the final stretch.

Let’s get into it.

Which team will finish with the best record in baseball?

Milwaukee Brewers: 14
Detroit Tigers: 1
Los Angeles Dodgers: 1

What makes the Brewers the favorite to secure the majors’ best record? Besides the buffer the Brewers have built as we enter the final month of the regular season, there’s just nothing to suggest a falloff. They are on track to win about 100 games and their run differential supports that pace. The remaining schedule is friendly. And Milwaukee’s production has come from every position and category. It’s just a really complete team. — Bradford Doolittle

How many of the current 12 teams projected for the playoffs will be in the postseason field?

All 12: 15
11: 1

You have the Royals ousting the Mariners from the playoff field. Why do you think that will happen? The Kansas City Royals will make the playoffs. Crazy? Not so. They’ve played great in July and August. Vinnie Pasquantino is mashing home runs, Bobby Witt Jr. is red hot and the players they added at the trade deadline have chipped in to make this a good offense. The Royals also have a pretty easy schedule the rest of the way. But which team can they catch?

It might hinge on a three-game series at home against Seattle in mid-September. The Mariners have a recent history of falling just short of the postseason — including last year, when the Royals clinched a wild-card spot with 86 wins and the Mariners won 85 (the Mariners blew an 8-0 lead against Kansas City in June, which loomed large at the end of the season). Seattle has struggled on the road, so the aforementioned series can catapult the Royals back into the postseason. — David Schoenfield

Who will be the No. 1 seed in the AL: Toronto or Detroit?

Detroit Tigers: 14
Toronto Blue Jays: 2

The Tigers were the overwhelming choice. Why did you take them? For me, this was mostly a schedule play. The top seed, based on the standings, is likely to be the Tigers or the Blue Jays, with the Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees, Houston Astros and Seattle Mariners all within plausible striking distance. Toronto doesn’t have an easy series left. Detroit’s schedule isn’t nearly as rigorous. In a race this close, with teams this close in talent and production, little things like schedule luck often determine the outcome. — Jeff Passan

You were one of two voters to pick the Blue Jays. Why do you think they top Detroit? The Tigers are a wonderful story, but not so much since the All-Star break, as they have played .500 ball, struggled to score runs and their ERA is among the bottom 10 in baseball. The Blue Jays are peaking at the right time, scoring plenty of runs, and Max Scherzer and Shane Bieber make the rotation formidable. Frankly, all three AL East contenders are better than the current Tigers, and it should show in the final standings. — Eric Karabell

Assuming the Brewers get one, who will get the second bye in the NL?

Los Angeles Dodgers: 9
Philadelphia Phillies: 5
San Diego Padres: 2

Despite dealing with star players slumping and a mountain of injuries this season, the Dodgers are still the slight favorites for the No. 2 seed in a stacked NL. Explain why. Because those are the very reasons why the Dodgers firmly believe their best baseball is still ahead of them. Their bullpen will soon be as close to whole as it has been all season. The same can be said about the lineup. The rotation already is, and the four-man group they’ll put together in October will be scary if the starters remain healthy.

That’s a big “if,” considering the pitching ailments that have plagued them the last couple years. But at the end of the day, the Dodgers possess the most depth and talent in the sport. They feel as if they’re on the verge of truly showcasing it. — Alden Gonzalez

The Phillies also received a fair number of votes. What makes them your pick? The Phillies seem to be flying under the radar for a team that has spent most of the season on a 95-win pace. Maybe it’s the Zack Wheeler injury, maybe it’s their struggles against the New York Mets — or maybe it’s just that this is about what we’ve grown accustomed to seeing from Philly over the past few seasons.

But there is plenty to like here over the final month and into October as well. Even without Wheeler, the Phillies have the best Game 1 starter of any NL contender in Cristopher Sanchez. Kyle Schwarber has a real shot at Ryan Howard’s franchise home run record (58). They acquired the best reliever to move at the deadline in Jhoan Duran and filled their biggest hole by trading for outfielder Harrison Bader. Oh, and they currently hold that second spot in the NL — with a 1 1/2 game cushion over the Dodgers. — Dan Mullen

Will the Dodgers or Padres win the NL West?

Los Angeles Dodgers: 13
San Diego Padres: 3

The Dodgers were our voters’ overwhelming favorite to win the division. Why — and how — do you think San Diego can overtake L.A.? More than any other team, I think the Dodgers look at their seasons from 30,000 feet, rather than succumbing to the concerns of the moment. They demonstrate this every year with their handling of pitching injuries — they essentially rest veteran starters through long stretches of the season, rather than push them in May and June, in order to do what they can to ensure that the players will be relatively fresh in October. This is why we’ve seen such a deliberate ramp-up with Shohei Ohtani.

That’s why I think the Padres will wind up winning the division. They bolstered their bullpen with Mason Miller at the trade deadline, and since then, it feels like they’ve been playing a series of Game 7s. And, let’s face it, San Diego is all-in in trying to win right now, with its top-heavy roster and the likes of Dylan Cease and Michael King headed for free agency in the fall. The Dodgers, on the other hand, won’t go to the whip in September in the same way. No matter how their own division plays out, they’ll make the playoffs and have a shot to repeat as World Series winners, while it feels as if San Diego is going to go all-out down the stretch to win the NL West.

Different pressures, different styles, different context. — Buster Olney

Who will win the AL West?

Houston Astros: 8
Seattle Mariners: 8

Make the case for the Astros: Picking Houston to win the West isn’t going out on much of a limb: They’re currently in first place, just got slugger Yordan Alvarez back from injury and simply have more pedigree than Seattle. The Mariners have a slightly easier schedule the rest of the way but their road woes are for real — and will likely prevent them from going on an extended run. Picking against the Astros would be the headline-scratching move. They’re the division champ once again. — Jesse Rogers

Make the case for the Mariners: The Mariners aren’t playing their best baseball, but they are healthy and within striking distance of the Astros for the division entering September. Their starting rotation is elite. The bullpen and offense should be better. Meanwhile, the Astros have recently gotten Yordan Alvarez back from injury, but they’re without Josh Hader and Isaac Paredes, among others. The division could come down to the three-game series between the two rivals in late September. — Jorge Castillo

How many games will the Rockies lose?

119: 1
118: 3
117: 1
116: 3
115: 3
114: 3
113: 1
112: 1

We got quite the breadth of answers to this question, but you were one of three to say 118 losses — our second-highest loss total. Why is that your prediction? The Rockies aren’t far removed from being on a modern record-setting pace for losses, and they’ve been especially awful against the current 12 teams in the playoff field: 9-50 (.153). They play 13 of their final 24 against that group, at a time when they’re increasingly leaning on younger and less experienced players. Their September isn’t going to be pretty. — Tristan Cockcroft

Make one bold prediction about the final stretch

Tim Kurkjian: Seattle Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh will finish the season with 60 home runs.

Matt Marrone: With most of the playoff field set — other than last-minute jockeying for seeds — all eyes will be on the Mariners over the final days of the season, as Raleigh sets a new AL home run record.

Kiley McDaniel: Between hitting and pitching, Shohei Ohtani catches Raleigh in total WAR.

Passan: Athletics first baseman Nick Kurtz will finish in the top five of AL MVP voting.

Karabell: The Phillies call up top pitching prospect Andrew Painter on Sept. 7 and he goes 3-0 with a 1.50 ERA.

Mullen: Nolan McLean will be the NL’s best pitcher not named Paul Skenes over the final month and take the mound in October — as the Mets’ Game 1 playoff starter.

Paul Hembekides: Boston’s Garrett Crochet will overtake Detroit’s Tarik Skubal and win the AL Cy Young Award.

Schoenfield: The Red Sox will catch the Blue Jays and win the AL East.

Gonzalez: Actually, the Yankees will win the AL East.

Cockcroft: Not only do the Yankees overtake Toronto for the division title, but they also grab a first-round bye, even if they can’t quite catch the Tigers for the No. 1 seed.

Olney: The Yankees have such a soft schedule in the final weeks that they wind up with the second-best record in the AL … but because Toronto holds on to win the division, New York is the No. 4 seed and faces Boston in the wild-card round.

Tim Keown: The Padres, with the easiest remaining schedule in baseball, will go 7-0 against the Colorado Rockies in September to win the NL West and take the second first-round bye spot.

Castillo: The Mets will overtake the Phillies and win the NL East.

Doolittle: If we started the playoffs tomorrow, the bracket would look exactly the same as it will after we’ve played out the season.

Voters: Dan Mullen, Liz Finny, Paul Hembekides, Jeff Passan, Eric Karabell, Alden Gonzalez, David Schoenfield, Tim Kurkjian, Kiley McDaniel, Tim Keown, Jorge Castillo, Matt Marrone, Bradford Doolittle, Jesse Rogers, Tristan Cockcroft, Buster Olney

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