Mandel's Mailbag: What rivalry games should we get back? Is it best for Jim Phillips to 'fight'? (2024)

Even with the season fast approaching, realignment seems to be back on peoples’ brains. So, for the second straight week, I begin with a realignment-related question (and there are a couple of more after that).

But further down, I get into Week 0 and possible FCS-over-FBS upsets. Enjoy.

Note: Submitted questions have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Realignment often is blamed for the demise of longtime rivalry games. It seems the real reason is the childish reaction to the conference changes by one or both of the schools involved. Oregon-Oregon State and Washington-Washington State demonstrate that doesn’t have to be the case. What other schools should get over their hurt feelings and give their fans the rivalry games they want? — Gerry S.

All of them. Every single rivalry that has been discontinued because of a realignment move easily could be brought back as a home-and-home, or, as with this year’s Apple Cup, a neutral-site game. But, this being college sports, schools let pettiness and pride get in the way of what should be a logical, cut-and-dried business decision.

For example, as soon as Oklahoma announced its SEC decision, Mike Gundy and Oklahoma State wanted nothing to do with the Sooners. “Oklahoma State is not going change what we do because Oklahoma chose to go to the SEC,” Gundy said at Big 12 Media Days last year. “They need to change what they do because they are the ones that made their minds up to go to the SEC.”

I get the hurt feelings. But ask yourself: Who exactly benefits from Oklahoma State no longer playing Oklahoma in football? What program are the Cowboys going to replace the Sooners with on the schedule that will get their fans even halfway as interested? Because no other blue-blood program is signing up to play in Stillwater every other year. And how many million TV viewers will they lose on that Saturday by playing a lesser program instead?

Don’t tell me it’s not possible because their schedules are already booked up through 2036. Do you know how easy it is to get out of those nonconference contracts? Schools do it all the time.

I’m sure in a dozen years or so, both sides will come to their senses.

Of all schools, you would think Washington State would be too ticked off at Washington to keep playing the Apple Cup. The Huskies, along with Oregon, delivered the final blow to the Pac-12, relegating the Cougs to purgatory. When the two left-behind schools filed for a temporary restraining order to retain control of the conference’s board, Washington was the lead petitioner asking to intervene and get the suit dismissed. (That did not work.) And then, oh yeah, Washington poached Wazzu’s athletic director, Pat Chun.

But it’s game on at Lumen Field on Sept. 14. Note, I heard from Cougs fans last year who did NOT want to play the game. The pain was still raw. But it’s probably good that they did, given they would otherwise be playing just one Power 4 opponent this season, Texas Tech. Speaking of which, the Red Raiders were not initially on the Cougs’ schedule this season, but Oregon essentially traded Texas Tech to Wazzu to make room for Oregon State.

See what’s possible when everybody works together?

What are the optics of ACC commissioner Jim Phillips repeatedly saying that the conference is going to “fight,” when that means fighting conference members who are trying to get out of the league? Good? Bad? — Phil T.

Does he have any other choice? The league is facing an existential crisis because of the actions of two of its members. Beyond just trying to win lawsuits, he needs to show his other 15 members that the conference is not going to bow down to Florida State and Clemson at their expense and to try to prevent others from defecting as well. Frankly, it’s about time Phillips embraced the cutthroat nature of his job, because Greg Sankey, Brett Yormark and Tony Petitti certainly have.

While Phillips’ “fight” comments made the headlines at ACC Media Days, another tidbit of his caught my eye. We knew the conference this year was beginning its new performance-driven incentive model, which will distribute postseason and certain other money based on College Football Playoff participation, Top 25 rankings, bowl appearances and NCAA Tournament performance. But I was a bit floored to see that an individual school can earn as much as “$20 to $25 million.” That’s a lot!

Were Florida State or Clemson to pocket $25 million on top of the $45 million ACC schools received last year, they would surpass what the Big Ten ($60.5 million) and SEC ($51.2 million) gave their schools last year.

What are Georgia Tech’s chances of catching Florida State by surprise and starting the year off with some chaos? — Bret C.

I like the way you’re thinking.

Brent Key, who took over four games into the 2022 season, quietly has done a remarkable job turning around the Yellow Jackets. They’re 9-7 in ACC play the past two seasons, with a pair of upsets over ranked UNC teams and that wild win at then-17th-ranked Miami last year when Mario Cristobal failed to run out the clock. While it didn’t feel that close in the moment, Tech did lose by one score (31-23) to No. 1 Georgia last year, before beating a decent UCF team in the bowl.

The last time Key’s team faced Florida State, however, it did not go well. On Oct. 29, 2022, the Noles routed the Yellow Jackets 41-16 behind a career day from star QB Jordan Travis. But that was ancient history in football terms. Tech had not yet landed Texas A&M quarterback Haynes King, who led the offense’s dramatic improvement from 115th to 27th nationally in yards per play (6.34). King is back, as is 1,000-yard rusher Jamal Haynes, four starting offensive linemen and top receivers Eric Singleton Jr. and Malik Rutherford.

In terms of pure talent, FSU will still hold a distinct edge. But experience matters too, and the Noles will be trotting out a largely unproven lineup on both sides of the ball. No one should be too surprised if DJ Uiagalelei and the new-look offense are a bit disjointed in their first game together.

I just hope we get a good one. Last year’s Week 0 Ireland game was a dud, with Notre Dame routing Navy 42-3. It’d be great if the Noles and Jackets could reprise the drama of that Northwestern-Nebraska classic in 2022 when the stadium was giving out free beer because the cash registers stopped working. Scott Frost called a wild onside kick and blew a 28-17 lead, and Pat Fitzgerald earned what inexplicably became the last win of his Northwestern tenure.

With the Playoff expanding this year, will merely making the field be enough for elite programs? Or will it move to “Playoff wins,” “semifinal appearances,” “quarterfinal appearances” etc.? — Kevin R.

Expectations always have varied quite a bit from one school’s fan base to the next, and I’m sure that will be true in this iteration, too. It will be similar to college basketball, where Duke and Kentucky expect to reach the Final Four almost every year but most programs just want to get to the Dance and win a game.

Currently, the football version of Duke and Kentucky mostly consists of Georgia, Alabama, Ohio State and LSU (because those people are wild). It’d be naive for any of them to think they’re going to reach the final every year, but I could see an Ohio State or Georgia fan getting pretty ticked if their team doesn’t at least make the final four.

Others may view themselves that way in a specific season. This year, for example, Texas likely would view making it but losing in the first round as a failure. Maybe Oregon, too, although the Ducks haven’t made the CFP in a decade, so making it this year but getting upset in the first round would still be a big step.

Then there are fan bases that might be mostly content in a given year with just making the Playoff but would start getting angsty if they repeatedly get bounced in the first round. I’m thinking of Notre Dame, Michigan, Penn State, Florida State, Oklahoma and USC.

Next up on the food chain, we have fan bases that don’t necessarily expect to make the Playoff every year but will be miffed if they miss it more than two years in a row. This will include roughly two-thirds of the SEC (Florida, Tennessee, Auburn, etc.) and Clemson.

Most everyone else will be thrilled with reaching the CFP in any given year. I think.

Please assign a percentage likelihood to the following possible landing spots for Washington State and Oregon State factoring the $255 million war chest at their disposal: 1) An invite from the Big-12; 2) An invite from the ACC; 3) A reverse merger with the MWC to reconstitute the Pac-12; 4) Reconstituting the Pac-12 with some MWC teams and some AAC teams; 5) Remaining independent beyond Year 2. — Mark K.

I appreciate all the lengths the Pac-2 have taken to avoid official “relegation.” Holding their own media day in Vegas was creative. But it’s all just kicking the can down the road. Rightly or wrongly, Wazzu and Oregon State are unofficial Group of 5 programs now, and all roads lead to that reverse merger.

Chris Vannini laid out the scheduling agreement the Pac-12 reached with the Mountain West makes it quite expensive for the former to poach schools from the latter. Per Vannini, it would cost $67.5 million to add six MWC programs. And while they’d still have more than $150 million left in the war chest, they still need that money to fund their athletic departments, including the extra $22 million or so a year in House payments.

It would be in the best interests of both parties if the MWC could find a way to shed some of its lower-tier programs like New Mexico and San Jose State. The TV money is going to be roughly the same either way, but you’d have fewer mouths to feed. And it’s unclear whether that’s doable politically. It would require nine of the 12 MWC schools to vote to dissolve the league.

I’m not ruling out a Power 4 invite for the Beavers and Cougars, but it seems increasingly unlikely. The FSU/Clemson holding pattern could continue for some time, and the Pac-12 situation will need to be resolved in the next year or so to have a deal in place for fall 2026. And the Big 12, as we know, has its eyes on bigger fish than Oregon State and Washington State.

My percent chances:

Reverse merger: 54 percent

Pac-12 expansion: 29 percent

ACC invite: 9 percent

Big 12 invite: 6 percent

Independent post-2025: 2 percent

What should the (former) Big Ten West teams even hope for with the four West Coast schools joining the conference? They went from a 50 percent chance of winning the conference to like 10 percent or even less. — Tom B.

Did they have a 50 percent chance of winning before? If so, those schools have had incredibly bad luck, given the East went 10-0 against the West in conference championship games, often by lopsided margins. That includes a 5-0 mark by Ohio State and 3-0 by Michigan. The divisions, while geographically sensible, were incredibly uneven.

The more profound change will be how rarely, if ever, schools like Iowa and Northwestern make the championship game going forward. Five of the past six Big Ten West champs were ranked No. 13 or lower going into the game. That’s not going to cut it in an 18-team league.

But while that goal may be evaporating, a new one comes into play. The goal now is to reach the 12-team Playoff, and you can do it while being the third- or fourth-best team in the conference. Based on the past two decades or so of history, that’s certainly attainable for Wisconsin, which has finished 12th or better in the AP poll six times since 2006, or Iowa, which has done so five times since 2002. For the others, it may take a perfect storm-type of season. Minnesota, Purdue, Illinois, etc., just don’t recruit at nearly the same level as Ohio State, Oregon, Penn State, Michigan, USC or Washington.

This is not unique to the Big Ten, by the way. No more ACC Coastal may mean no more Virginia or Pitt making it to the title game at 9-3. No more underwhelming Jim McElwain Florida teams making the SEC title game as champs of a pre-Kirby Smart SEC East. The elimination of divisions should make for much more competitive championship games on the whole, but it will result in a smaller pool of schools getting a chance to participate in them.

Are there any FCS-FBS matchups this year where you see a real upset possibility? How many more years do you think we’ll get games that could be upsets where the FCS team is paid to “shock the world?” — Daniel K.

Yes, I do. Most obviously, Colorado is playing North Dakota State on the opening Thursday night, in which the early point spread is only minus-8.5 for the Buffs. If the Bison hadn’t lost coach Matt Entz to USC this offseason, I’d have zero hesitation picking that upset. If you told me North Dakota State is going to come out and grind CU into the ground, I’d believe you. But If you told me Shedeur Sanders and Travis Hunter run laps around the Bison, I’d believe that, too.

I’ll give you a few under-the-radar possibilities as well. Richmond, which reached the FCS playoffs second round last year, opens at Virginia, which has been fairly dreadful in Tony Elliott’s first two seasons. I do think the Cavs, who did knock off UNC and Duke amidst a 3-9 campaign last season, will continue improving, but the Spiders are no gimme.

Sacramento State has built a solid program over the past several years, knocking off former coach Troy Taylor’s Stanford team last season. The Hornets open with two FBS foes, San Jose State and Fresno State, both of whom lost successful coaches, Brent Brennan and Jeff Tedford, respectively. I could see them winning one of those.

And how’s this for a potential Week 1 shocker: Chattanooga at what likely will be a top 20 Tennessee team. The Mocs, who finished 17th in the coaches poll last season, have been picked to win the SoCon. They boast three preseason All-Americans.

Am I picking them to go into Neyland and shock the world? No, I am not. But is it within the realm of possibility? Absolutely.

You and Bruce Feldman recently discussed the new Big 12 and its lack of traditional football brands. Of those teams in the conference, which would you consider as “national brands,” and do you see any team that can rise to become a national brand? — Rob W., Columbia, S.C.

It depends on your definition of “national brand.” Some might say TCU is a national brand because it played in the national championship game less than two years ago. Others might say Utah because it has played in recent Rose Bowls. Or Oklahoma State because it’s regularly a Top 25 team.

But my definition of a national brand is a program that fans and media pay attention to every single year, regardless of whether they’re any good on the field, à la USC and Texas for most of the past 15 years.

By that definition, the Big 12 only has one currently: Colorado.

(Top photo: Brian Bahr / Getty Images)