I am officially issuing a self-imposed moratorium on Mid-Game Hot Takes. 

I didn’t think Alabama belonged in the College Football Playoff so I started doing posts about how I didn’t think Alabama belonged in the College Football Playoff when they fell behind 17-0 against Oklahoma.

I should not have done that.

– Rodger Sherman

Ole Miss 41, Tulane 10
Oregon 51, James Madison 34

Two weeks ago, I wrote about how happy I was that two teams from non-power conferences snuck into a playoff that was clearly designed to allow just one.

I did not realize my opinion was so unpopular. The last few weeks, voices big and small have expressed their outrage that two of the 12 College Football Playoff spots went to teams from lesser leagues. (I get why people who are actively employed by the SEC and Big Ten say stuff like this … I didn’t realize everybody else would be so eager to help them out!)They said Tulane and James Madison would be mismatched, that their presence in the Playoff was a waste of time, and that their games would be total blowouts.

And sadly … they were right.

Tulane and James Madison were thoroughly beaten by their power conference opponents. Tulane moved the ball well in the first half against Ole Miss, but couldn’t convert those drives into points. James Madison was a lot less competitive against Oregon, falling behind 34-3 before finding their gear in garbage time (and covering the 21-point spread!) In short: Both teams got wrecked.

When it feels lonely on Little Guy Island, I retreat to my talking points.

Nobody sounds more wrong than someone who has to fall back on talking points.

I have long believed that the best teams outside of power conferences are good enough to play with anybody … but it’s getting increasingly hard to justify myself. The last NCAA Tournament had no upsets, making me look like a damn FOOL on the internet.

And college football no longer seems like a sport in which the lower-tier teams can compete with the upper crust. Just look at James Madison: So many of the best players from the 2023 squad that went 11-2 are now on Indiana, the #1 seed in this tournament. When Indiana beat Oregon a few months ago, their leading receiver and tackler were JMU products. Meanwhile, the Dukes couldn’t retain enough talent to challenge Ducks. The biggest beneficiaries of the transfer portal and NIL are once-forgotten schools in power conferences — Indiana, Vandy, etc. — while life for the best teams in non-power conferences has gotten a lot harder.

We already know that we’ll never see another Playoff with two non-power teams like this again. Yahoo’s Ross Dellenger reported that an agreement to assign Playoff bids to the champions of specific conferences rather than “the five highest-ranked conference champions” was made in 2024, although it wasn’t widely noticed at the time. (If implemented in 2025, this would have inserted Duke, a team which lost to Tulane.)

But Saturday’s results could create an even bigger impact. The people in charge of the sport are always eager to consolidate their power. They just received two strong data points to help them justify leaving out the Little Guys. They’ll get two more when the TV ratings come in. (And isn’t that what really matters?) I suspect they’ll stop allowing teams like Tulane and JMU into the playoff at all.

We’re staring at a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we keep telling half of the sport that they don’t belong in the Playoff and there’s no point to their seasons, it will become true. Their fans will become less interested, their TV ratings and attendance will tank, they’ll generate less money, they’ll get worse players, and they’ll be less equipped to ever win big games.

It’s a hard day to be a fan of the underdog. But I’m gonna keep on believing. For a few decades, it looked like no 16-seed would ever beat a 1-seed. Then it happened. (Twice!) If it were easy, they wouldn’t be underdogs, would they?

One of the great cheat codes in college athletics: If you make the Rose Bowl, you get to put a little rose on your athletic gear.

It looks SICK. Every logo looks better with a little rose on it.

Our friends at Homefield Apparel are celebrating that tradition by putting roses on basically every Indiana item they can.

And guess what.

It looks SICK.

I don’t even root for Indiana and I want that bomber jacket (pictured), corduroy hat, and romantic bison shirt.

Montana State 48, Montana 23

Montana-Montana State was probably my favorite stop on my 62-game road trip in 2023. Montana features a lot of wide-open space, but when Montana and Montana State play, it feels like the whole damn state crowds into one 20,000-person stadium. Then suddenly, Montana feels very crowded.

Well, it’s supposed to be a 20,000-person stadium. Yesterday, more than 25,000 people crammed into Bobcat Stadium in Bozeman, which was 22 percent over capacity, setting a new stadium record. Oh, you wanna tell the fire marshal? He’s been at the tailgate in an “FTG” t-shirt since six hours before kickoff.

After all, this wasn’t just any Montana-Montana State game. (MSU fans call it the Cat-Griz game. Montana fans call it the Griz-Cat game. And while “Brawl of the Wild” is maybe the coolest rivalry name ever, saying it out loud marks you as one of those OUTSIDERS who seem to be everywhere in Montana these days.)

Saturday’s FCS playoff semifinal was the biggest sporting event in state history. Montana and Montana State have been playing since 1897, but Saturday was the first time they had ever met in the postseason. And while both schools are considered among the better teams in FCS football, North Dakota State and South Dakota State have utterly dominated the division for roughly 15 years. Neither the Cats nor the Griz have won a national championship since 2001, but with NDSU and SDSU already knocked out of the playoffs, the winner of Cat-Griz 2 would have a real shot at winning it all.

Montana State took a 20-3 lead. Bozeman was going nuts. Then Montana scored 20 straight to flip the lead, 23-20. You could feel the state tectonically shifting through your TV screen.

But then Montana State closed out the game with four straight touchdowns, including this 87-yard score by Taco Dowler:

Wanna hear a crowd louder than their stadium’s speaker system? Here’s Billy Idol’s “Mony Mony” getting drowned out by MSU fans.

Sorry to dismiss this weekend’s College Football Playoff games, but those games will probably be forgotten as the tournament rolls on. But up in Big Sky country, nothing will ever be bigger than Montana State beating Montana for the second time in one year to get to the national championship.

🛣️ Illinois State 30, Villanova 14: THE ULTIMATE ROAD WARRIORS! Illinois State is heading to the FCS national championship after becoming the first team ever to win four straight road games in the FCS playoffs, including an historic upset over #1 North Dakota State. The Redbirds went 9-0 on the road this season. Unfortunately for them, the championship game is technically at a neutral site in Nashville. I guess we’ll see whether they’re specifically activated by opposing fans or just the general concept of travel.

🧀 Wisconsin-River Falls 48, Johns Hopkins 41: One of the worst programs in Division III has suddenly become one of the best. After 19 straight losing seasons from 2001 to 2019, the Wisconsin-River Falls Falcons developed one of the best offenses in the sport and are headed to their first national championship game. They won their semifinal 48-41 on this 80-yard touchdown pass in the final minute:

🎡 Ferris State 42, Harding 21: Ferris State won its fourth Division II national championship in five seasons at roughly the same time former Ferris State quarterback Trinidad Chambliss was playing for Ole Miss in the College Football Playoff.

🎮 Arkansas State 34, Missouri State 28: Easily the highlight of Week 1 of the bowl season was when Master Chief, star of the Halo series, presented the Xbox Bowl trophy to Arkansas State head coach Butch Jones, who gamers will remember as a minor antagonist in the best-selling video game EA Sports College Football 2026:

Now that the first round of the Playoff is out of the way, we know our quarterfinal schedule. We’ve gotta wait almost two weeks, but they’re ALL BANGERS:

🤠 December 31, 7:30 p.m. ET, Cotton Bowl: Miami-Ohio State

🍊 January 1, noon, Orange Bowl: Oregon-Texas Tech

🌹 January 1, 4 p.m., Rose Bowl: Alabama-Indiana

🍨 January 1, 8 p.m., Sugar Bowl: Ole Miss-Georgia

Most importantly, this is the week when bowl season really gets kicking. Starting Monday with the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl, we get DAYTIME COLLEGE FOOTBALL because it’s Christmas week. Tell your kids: If you don’t watch the Hawai’i Bowl on Christmas Eve, Santa won’t show up.

I’ve been plugging my YouTube channel, and this week I made what I think is my best video yet. It’s a topic that’s been bugging me all season long:

Why the hell are college football programs still paying coaches so much money?

The way I see it, high coaching salaries made sense when they were essentially a proxy for spending money directly on players. But now you can just spend money directly on players! It feels like the schools that are paying only $6 million for its coaches and spending as much money as possible on players (and picking the right players to pay) have a big advantage on teams that spend twice as much on coaches and haven’t figured out the player-paying thing yet.