What happened Saturday night in Death Valley was a pretty good microcosm of the state of college football today.
On one sideline, you had Lane Kiffin, who has basically embraced every bit of chaos this sport has to offer and was trying to recruit recently cut NFL players back to college.
On the other sideline, you had Dabo Swinney, who has spent years resisting the transfer portal and called the state of college football “embarrassing.”
The only embarrassing part of the two Tigers facing off on the gridiron was the 41-point blowout staring back at Clemson from the scoreboard.
College football has changed. NIL, the portal, eligibility rules — all of it is complete chaos now. You can complain about what the sport has become, or you can evolve with it.
Clemson has become a dinosaur in the current college football landscape, and if Dabo doesn’t adapt soon, they might just go extinct.
What Week 1 Taught Us
The first Saturday was a good reminder that you don’t have to get cute just because you’re playing a tournament.
Cam Cook was nearly 50% owned and smashed. Nate Sheppard was almost 30% owned and showed up in more than 80% of top-1% lineups. Even Byrum Brown + Cook + Sheppard — three of the more popular plays on the slate — went from just 9% of the field to 24% of the top 1%.
WR in the FLEX also remained the preferred path, showing up in 71.9% of top-1% lineups compared with 68.7% of the field.
The lesson isn’t that every popular play is good; it’s that ownership alone isn’t a reason to fade a play you think is great.
Week 2 in 60 Seconds
Week 2 gives us another 12-game DraftKings slate, and it feels much flatter than last Saturday. There isn’t a Brown/Cook combination that everything revolves around. Instead, we have a deep quarterback pool, several strong running back plays — including one clear workhorse back who looks badly mispriced — and plenty of cheap wide receivers who should open up a lot of different roster constructions.
There also isn’t one game total that really jumps off the page. What we do have is a bunch of games sitting in that mid-50s range without much separation between them. That should spread ownership out a bit and create some really interesting spots, where a lower-owned game can absolutely nuke if it turns into the shootout of the slate.
My first read: There isn’t one obvious way to build this week. That gives us a lot more room to tell different stories.
What’s the Field Going to Do?
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