The CFB Degenerate's Newsletter: Week Seven
Apologies for sending multiple versions, there were a few corrections made...
A wizard is never late, nor is he early, he arrives precisely when he means to.
- Gandalf, Lord of the Rings: FOTR (2001)
Hello pigs, welcome back. Here are a few stats I found interesting:
Some Interesting Stats
Baylor TE Michael Trigg and New Mexico TE Dorian Thomas lead CFB in targets, Trigg with total targets (50 in six games, or an average of 8.33), and Thomas with an average of 8.6 targets per appearance (43 in five games).
Baylor’s QB Sawyer Robertson is the first 2000 yard passer of the 2025 season. He also leads the FBS in attempts with 248 (over 20 more than the next passer, Duke’s Darian Mensah).
There are five teams currently averaging 21 seconds per play (these are the five fastest teams in the FBS currently), and they include: FAU, Tennessee, South Florida, Tulsa, and Baylor. If you can believe it, Ohio State is currently the slowest FBS team on a seconds per play basis with 32.4.
Four teams currently average over 80 plays per game: Missouri (85), FAU (81), Texas Tech (81), and Syracuse (80).
Someone will have to cross validate this, but I believe of the top five leading receivers currently in terms of yardage (Danny Scudero, Makai Lemon, Chase Hendricks, Trent Walker and Hank Beatty), four of them are slot receivers.
There are 11 RBs who have hit 100 carries to this point in the season, and the only one who isn’t in the top 42 of rushers is Oregon State’s Anthony Hankerson. Only three of those 11 fall outside the top 13 of rushers thus far (#33 Kewan Lacy at Ole Miss, and #42 Al Jay Henderson at UB). Note that the difference between #42 and #13 in rushing currently is about 70 yards.
Auburn has as many 7+ loss seasons in the last 4 years as Georgia has since 1953.
There are 11 QBs in the top 100 of rushers currently, and the top two of those QBs are both service academy players (Horvath, Navy & Szarka, AF).
Where Else to Start
Look, I may have ranted about James Franklin and his predictable bed shitting against ‘real teams’ last week, but I in no-way foresaw the outcome last weekend. I mean, it was actually counterfactual to my theses that when PSU plays a roster of vastly inferior talent, they always win, often by a lot.
UCLA does have one former five star prospect at QB, so maybe that was enough to tip the scale? Nonetheless, as someone who chose to believe in Nico and that offence this year, it was somewhat of a vindicating moment to see him put in five scores and top the CFF leaderboard that week.
It’s always been the case that Nico posses well above average running ability (it’s those long strides and his cat like balance), and if he could just marry that with some solid passing than we’re cooking with gas. Well, on Saturday we got a rare glimpse into that potential. It’s really mind boggling to consider what this program put on the field vs. New Mexico, Northwestern, and UNLV the weeks prior, considering what we saw this past weekend.
Oh and one other thing, I really like that Jerry kid. He’s bringing good vibes. I really appreciate that he looks like he’s still in university. He looks like someone I’d see partying at a bar on Friday night in here in King West, Toronto.
In fact, with his long blond hair, he looks exactly like I want the UCLA coaches to look. His facial structure kind of reminds me of an old buddy of mine, who’s name is Han. Han is Chinese, but his face is basically like the Chinese version of Jerry Neuheisel. I honestly can’t unsee it every time I see the UCLA coach.
I don’t know how many of you have seen the 80s classic, Bloodsport, with Jean Claude Van Damme, but, there’s a scene in it that I love—mostly because I can’t wrap my head around where production found this actor and why they chose him. In this scene there is a kid they have playing young frank, who—in perhaps what is the most shamelessly delivered line in cinema history—catatonically says “Not yet” shortly after Tanaka tells his son to stop training young Frank (2:07).
It’s a great sequence of scenes, delivering so many classic lines, for example: “How come you coach him BUT NOT ME?!” There’s a charm to it… the horrendous acting, bad lines, orgasmic 80s synth wave…
Anyways, in the offseason I thought about incorporating a segment with this scene for the CFF weekly newsletter. The basic premise is that whenever there was a perceived dead CFF asset (e.g., Nico Iamleava), I’d bring out the ol’ NOT YET segment to highlight a revival.
Indeed, every year there are some players that, just when you give up on them, they pull you right back in.
Will Nico and UCLA be able to continue the momentum initiated vs. PSU? Probably not, but they do get a really good matchup this weekend vs. Michigan State. I hesitate to say that if there is another game where Nico will thrive, it would be this one, considering that it was actually UCLA’s easiest games that have been Nico’s worst so far.
The Worst First Round in CFF History?
This has been an anomalous year for RB injuries to say the least. In fact, I was thinking about this the other day, are there are any RBs from the first round that have been consistently good this year?
Ironically, the only one that has delivered fully was the one I was fading in ND’s Jeremiyah Love, who is seeing much more consistent volume now. The next best one is probably Baylor’s Bryson Washington, or UB’s Al Jay Henderson. After that, they’ve all been injured, or busted (Hankerson). That’s pretty amazing considering first rounds of CFF drafts almost always involved at least nine RBs drafted.
Desmond Reid and Darius Taylor, the top two consensus RBs by ADP, are on milk cartons. Taylor at least has returned but was on a pitch count vs. OSU. Reid has a high ankle sprain (from reading the tea leaves on Pitt message boards) and probably won’t be back until Syracuse at the earliest, and who knows how good he’ll even be on his return considering the type of injury with his play style.
Demond Claiborne has battled injury since week one and left WF’s game once again this past weekend. Isaac Brown and Dylan Edwards are playing, but have clearly been compromised. Jaheim White is out for the year.
Makhi Hughes was not a first round RB in the Golden Pig Invitational this year, but I know he was selected in the first in many leagues.
All in all, it’s been a pretty disastrous year, mostly due to injury, for the first two rounds of RBs taken.
UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD PRIVATE EQUITY BE IN CFB
*Look, I know I rant all the time about what CFB should do, but this is a tumultuous time and these sentiments bear repeating. This is a non-CFF section so feel free to skip if that’s your sole interest.*
It was announced this week that a bill has been introduced from the US government that would block investment from Private Equity firms in collegiate athletics. I view this as a very positive thing, and I hope it will actually be enforced.
To explain my feelings on the constant profit seeking of CFB executives, I will paint a quick picture for you. A few weeks ago my dad was visiting Toronto for a conference. I met up with him after work one day at a snazzy little restaurant not far from my place with my wife.
During this dinner, he broke the news to us that a McDonalds was coming to my parents’ neighbourhood. There’s been a lot of development in recent years, much of it bringing welcome changes, such as a bakery, and a Thai food takeout restaurant. So, there was a lot of optimism and excitement about which business would fill the last remaining opening.
He told me that my mom was disappointed, but he was actually happy. He loves McDonalds, you see, so this was just more convenience for him.
I had to hold my tongue—I couldn’t disagree more—but my wife agreed with him. I chalked it up to my wife being naive/ignorant, and my father being intoxicated (he was multiple whiskies deep at this point, and also tried to argue with us that McDonalds breakfasts are actually really healthy). I mean, yeah, sure, if you believe really salty, carb heavy, and processed food is healthy, then definitely.
I then had a very serious conversation with my wife when we got home. It was a moment I could not let slip past—in fact, I viewed it as a teaching moment.
I mapped out what angle I’d use, and stored a series of analogies to unveil for just this moment when we were walking home.
It basically went like this: there’s an Italian grocery story we like to go to in a neighbourhood right next to my old hood. The store is called Alimentari, and the neighbourhood is called Roncesvalles. When we go to this place, it’s a one hour walk, or like a 30 minute streetcar journey. Either way, we usually make a trip of it, because it’s sort of a special occasion.
If you click on the link to their instagram page, you’ll get a pretty good idea of the vibe of this shop—high quality goods, a lot of which you can’t find elsewhere— small, charming place, it’s a not a chain, and the people are friendly and will recognize you if you come in more than twice. Your experience may very, but I personally enjoy having a rapport with people at the shops I like to go to.
The place is special, for many of the reasons I listed above, and because you have to go to Roncesvalles to shop there, now all of a sudden the neighbourhood is special too. Now imagine if you replaced Alimentari with a McDonalds, I said to my wife, why on earth would we go to Roncesvalles for that? There’s a McD’s everywhere—a bunch of locations closer to our place. Certainly I’m not walking one hour to go to a fucking McDonalds.
One-off shops like Alimentari not only create more charm in the neighbourhood, they increase its gravitational pull of people from surrounding areas. If they like the shop, they have to go there. This in turns helps bring more vibes to the neighbourhood and also has spill-off effects for the other businesses.
I couldn’t be happier as I saw the light bulbs turn on through her eyes. She now recites this take as if it were hers these days, but I don’t mind. And look, I like McD’s as much as the next guy, who doesn’t love a good Big Mac, but if you’re trying to preserve or upgrade the charm and vibe of a neighbourhood, McDonalds is not it bruv.
The sport of College football, to me, has a lot of charm and magic to it too. It’s actually what makes it special. It’s not the quality of football being played (despite the barn burners you may witness on Tuesday and Wednesday night MACtion), it’s not about big brands, and it’s for damn sure not because I want to know who wins the national championship every year.
The problem is that arguments based on ‘charm’ and ‘vibes’ come off as very wishy-washy, and are hard to quantify. Meanwhile, “increasing profits by X” is very concrete and easy to absorb. Business executives understand these concepts, whereas charm and vibes are anathema to their mode of being, I imagine.
Neighbourhoods like Roncesvalles don’t happen by accident. They are the result of many decades of intentional decision making—meticulously curating the vibe to protect its charm.
In my opinion, letting big business PE into the realm of collegiate of athletics would be like replacing Alimentari in Roncesvalles with a McDonalds. Sure, maybe McD’s would be an even bigger commercial success than some of these one-off shops, pulling in more profits etc. etc., but it would be a fucking disaster in the minds of those who live in the neighbourhood and for those of us who like to visit for the charm.
And I’m sure there are some executives in this city who look at the foot traffic and spending data in a neighbourhood like Roncesvalles and think “if we could only get our fast food chain in there we’d be killing it” but what they fail to recognize is that by putting fast food chains into that neighbourhood, they’d be directly counteracting what people like about that area in the first place. The golden goose here is the charm and vibe.
It’s the same deal in CFB. The charm and vibes are what makes it unique; and they are a big reason why people will watch CFB over professional sports. The introduction of a bill to block PE investment is a positive development in my mind, but the fact that a bill has to be introduced in the first place signals to me that there are agents within the system who are hellbent on destroying what makes this sport great in the first place, so long as they get a promotion at the end of the year.
I wish I could sit down for dinner with each of these nefarious actors and tell them a story about one of my favourite neighbourhoods here in Toronto. ◾
If you enjoyed this content and would like to read more, I recommend joining the Pigpen, a community of thousands of degenerate college football fans: