From the ashes

Some of college football's most infamous bottom-dwellers are having a season for the ages in 2025, and it doesn't feel like smoke and mirrors.

Today’s newsletter will be brief, as I’ve got two bigger features I need to get wrapped up running this week, but in Saturday’s Game Day Final, I dug into the surprising rises of some of the worst programs of the playoff era.

A school that several Big Ten ADs kept confusing with Iowa’s JV team for the better part of the 2010s is now in line for the playoff.

A job that Bronco Mendenhall once quit because he wanted to go fly-fishing is now one of the best in the ACC.

A place where buskers playing country songs on the sidewalk garnered more respect than the local team’s QB1 is now a true college football town.

This is not supposed to be how any of this works. If there was one eternal truth to the college football universe, it was that Charlie Weis would get another $1 million check 30 years after he quit coaching. But if there was a second incontrovertible truth, it’s that the rich stayed rich, and the commoners weren’t supposed to punch above their weight.

Indiana, Virginia, Georgia Tech, Texas Tech and sweet little Vanderbilt were all here to play the part of the Washington Generals. They were supposed to play along while the Alabamas and Ohio States of the world used Velcro and duct tape and an enchanted monkey’s paw to win by 100 each week.

But this is a new era in college football, a time when the field has been leveled, and all we once knew to be true has evaporated like so many UNC revenue share dollars.

A quick accounting:

These five teams -- Virginia, Georgia Tech, Indiana, Vanderbilt and Texas Tech -- had played just 36 games while ranked in the playoff era before this season (and 11 of those were Indiana last year). They’ve already played 29 in 2025.

From 2015-2024, Georgia Tech was 52-69, the second-worst record in the ACC.

The worst record belonged to Virginia, who’d been 56-75 in the playoff era prior to 2025.

Indiana was 60-72 in the playoff era before this year, which only counts as the fifth-worst mark in the Big Ten during that span -- surely a mark against the Big Ten as much as it is about Indiana. Still, it’s notable that from 1995 through 2020, the Hoosiers never sniffed the top-25.

Texas Tech was 65-71 in the playoff era before this year, the second-worst mark in the Big 12 in that span, ahead of only the historically awful Kansas.

And then there was Vanderbilt, the default punchline for all bad football programs. The Commodores were 43-89 in the playoff era before this year, easily the worst mark in the SEC.

Yes, we’d seen each of these schools -- perhaps with the exception of Virginia -- marching toward this point last year, but even then, even as Indiana reached the playoff and Vandy beat Alabama, I don’t think any of us were truly bought in. If anything, the opposite was true. We viewed Indiana’s playoff berth as somewhere between a quaint perk of an expanded field or an objectionable theft of a postseason space that surely Ole Miss or Alabama or Miami deserved more.

Exactly how this has come to be -- or how Florida State, Clemson, Oklahoma State, Wisconsin, Penn State, Florida, Auburn and, lately, LSU have all struggled -- is perhaps coincidental, perhaps temporary, perhaps befitting a true change in how the sport exists. We won’t know for sure until we’ve collected a larger sample size.

But what’s true is that this doesn’t feel like a blip. To watch Indiana or Vandy or Georgia Tech go to work has no pretense of smoke and mirrors. These are good teams. Very good teams. Teams that deserve the hype they’re getting.

Ain’t that crazy?

What’s David reading?

Answer: A lot of Dr. Seuss with my kids. Which inspired my section of Game Day Final on North Texas and its star QB.

Deep in the heart of the city of queens
Played a team from Texas called the Mean Green.

They brought Wesloskis and Sibleys with a Poffenbarger in tow
But it was the fantabulous Drew Mestemaker who stole the whole show.

He’d not played in prep nor transferred from Whoville Tech
Not been coached by a Dabo, a Kiffin nor Fleck.

But Drew was mean and he was green and he wore 17
And he played better that fine day than the crowd’d ever seen.

The Niners led early, but there were no screams and no shouts
For the mysterious Mestemaker left nothing in doubt.

He threw long, he threw short, he threw starboard and port
He hit receivers and backs, even a clabtrabulous gallort.

As the game played on, the Mestemaker was divine
By halftime he’d thrown a flurdiforous 329.

But his job wasn’t done; there was more ‘round the corner
Like TDs to shazwallers, tabdablers and Cameron Dorner.

They gasped and guffawed, shouted “Flamdoozle!” on each play
For the Mestemaker’s arm grew three sizes that day.

By the end of the night, when the hour’d grown late
The Mestemaker had thrown for a school record -- 608.

North Texas departed with a win, a grin and an iconic pic
To dream the sweet dreams of the Mestemaker’s next trick.

Now his legend lives on, throughout the land of college ball
The Mestemaker at North Texas ‘twas the greatest of all.

This week on Inside ACCess

We’ll be back on ACCN on Thursday at 5 p.m. with guests to be determined because I’ve been too busy to figure any of that out yet.

That said, there are some fun games on the docket, including perhaps UNC’s best chance at a win (at Syracuse), Duke facing off against Clemson, and Miami traveling to SMU.

And boy oh boy does FSU need a win against Wake Forest, but the Deacons have blossomed into one of the best surprises of the season so far.

Anyway, keep tabs on the show by subscribing to the podcast version HERE.

This week’s rankings

Here’s my ballot for this week’s ESPN power rankings. I think we’re severely under-appreciating BYU. I’m also not entirely sure why we’ve got Oregon clearly ahead of Miami. It’s odd that the Canes and Georgia Tech won handily and dropped a spot in the AP poll this week.

As for my ACC tiers, the wheel in the sky keeps on turning..

.And I think it’s really worth taking some time to appreciate just how batshit crazy the “Separate Ways” video is.