With Seattle beating up on New England in the Super Bowl, the 2025 football season, both professional and college, has come to a close. Fans will have to wait seven months, till September, for the return of games that count.
So this is the perfect time to spout off some opinions about football, right? I actually planned to write this column three weeks ago, but the legislative bill proposing to turn Southwest Mississippi Community College into a Co-Lin satellite commanded everyone’s attention that week, including mine.
Back to football. The first thing to say is I think the college playoff system is heading in the right direction. Most of the playoff games were good, and the Ole Miss come-from-behind Sugar Bowl victory over Georgia was the best game of the year, either college or pro.
Ole Miss would have been the football story of the year, rising from the Southeastern Conference’s middle of the pack to the playoff semifinals. Except the Rebels got eclipsed by Indiana, who rose from the true depths of the Big Ten to produce a 16-0 season and a national championship that no one could have predicted.
I am fine with a 12-team playoff, though I’m sure the NCAA will soon go up to 14 or 16 teams to get the TV money from a couple more games. Not only that, but in the last two years, teams that got a first-round playoff bye have a record of 1-7. Indiana is the only team seeded 1 to 4 that has won a playoff game. Nobody should want a bye in this playoff, and that may lead to a 16-team tournament.
My big proposal is to create a second playoff for the six conferences in the so-called Football Bowl Subdivision. The “Power Four” conferences, especially the SEC and the Big Ten, but also the Atlantic Coast Conference and the Big XII, simply have too many resources to give schools from the other “Group of Six” conferences a real chance in a playoff.
This year was a good example. Two Group of Six teams, Tulane and James Madison, got in the playoff. Both got beaten badly in the first round, which was no surprise.
It’s always good to have underdogs — see the 64-team NCAA basketball tournament — but in football, that cost better teams a spot in the playoff.
Some of you will think I’m writing this because Notre Dame, my alma mater, got left out of the playoffs. But so did other teams like Texas, Vanderbilt and BYU.
To me, it would be better to set up a separate playoff among the Group of Six conferences and give more of those schools a real shot at winning a championship.
It would give those schools, and their players who have NFL potential, some valuable exposure. And if any of those schools punches above its weight to a high ranking, it would be easy to include them in the top-level Power Four playoff.
Something like this might affect the college bowl games, but they are already out of control. Most of the bowl games mean nothing, and in recent years several top players have skipped a bowl to prevent injury.
The biggest challenge for a Group of Six playoff is when the games would be scheduled. The Power Four games, not to mention the NFL, would rightly get most of the TV attention. Still, it’s an idea worth considering, and I hope somebody does.
Now onto pro football, with some observations about my favorite team, the New Orleans Saints.
I am cautiously optimistic about 2026 because of the consistent play of rookie quarterback Tyler Shough. He became the starter midway through the season and the Saints got better. He can throw, he’s mobile and has extra experience from college. For now, it appears the Saints have their man.
But what Shough needs is more weapons. We need a second wide receiver to go along with Chris Olave, but we also need a top-flight, game-changing running back. And this year, one is available.
With the eighth pick in the 2026 NFL Draft, I hope the Saints choose running back Jeremiyah Love from — here we go again — Notre Dame. He would be an excellent successor to Alvin Kamara, who turns 31 this year.
I think other teams want Love too, especially Kansas City, who picks at No. 9. It would not surprise me to see Kansas City move up in the draft to get him, the way they did Patrick Mahomes several years ago. So the Saints may need to move up first to get him.
If they miss Love, I hope they pick a receiver in the first round. Our problem in 2025 was the offense. We scored 20 points or more in only six of 17 games, and four of those were in December. Without more points, we’re nothing, and it’s time to be something again.
