Free Republic

Preseason polls aged like dead fish in the Miami sunshine. Every August, the NCAA preseason football poll arrives like a back-to-school catalog: glossy, overconfident, and bearing no resemblance to the reality that will unfold by late September, if not sooner. In this age of the transfer portal and Name Image and Likeness (NIL) how could it not? It remains the perfect spark that ignites greatness or the business end of a rifle aimed squarely at your hopes. Not convinced … ask any Penn State fan. The poll is a tradition as old as that annual donation to the Nittany Lion...

Cam Newton was the No. 1 pick in the NFL Draft. Barack Obama was still in his first presidential term. The iPhone 4 was just released. That was also the last year Michigan defeated Ohio State in football... until Saturday. The Wolverines, after 10 years of frustration, finally defeated their bitter rivals, 42-27. Michigan (11-1), which entered at No. 5 in the College Football Playoff rankings, will now jump into position to make its first playoff appearance. A win in the Big 10 championship game next weekend would nearly guarantee it. Ohio State (10-2) moved up to No. 2 in...

The defending national champion Clemson Tigers start the season the way they finished in January -- atop the Amway Coaches Poll. The Tigers received 59 of 65 first-place votes in the poll, released Thursday, giving them the top spot in the preseason coaches ranking for the first time in school history. No. 2 Alabama received the other first-place votes. The 1-2 ranking for Clemson and Alabama comes as little surprise heading into the season, as both teams are favorites to make it back to the College Football Playoff, with the potential to meet for the fifth straight time in the...

I'm suspecting some enterprising Navy fan hacked the Heisman Trust website to more prominently display Navy QB Keenan Reynolds name atop the list of Heisman aspirants. I first visited this page early today, 17 NOV. The list of aspirants were listed in alphabetical order by last name. Midshipman Reynolds was the last aspirant listed. I subsequently revisited the page and noticed Reynolds was relisted separately at the top of the page with slightly different formatting. I'm not smart enough to decipher the source code, but can anyone investigate and expound on this change?