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Football Futures: Brackets, trades and chaos
Yesterday was a day of change for the entire sport of football. NFL teams went all in — or conversely bailed — on the 2025 season, preparing for an uncertain future in their own ways. And college football provided a glimpse at a possible future that won’t fully come to pass.
Let’s start with the latter, which happened late last night:
There’s your first College Football Playoff bracket of the year, modeled off the committee’s first ranking. Your top three: Ohio State, Indiana and Texas A&M, as we all suspected.
Two quick notes on that:
- We can quibble over who should be where in the top three, but let’s save it for December. All of those three should be there. I’m more intrigued by Texas still having a legitimate shot at making this field.
- No Group of 5 team made the top 25, but Memphis makes it in as the committee’s highest-ranked member. Whoever wins the American Conference likely gets in. The Tigers see Tulane on Friday in what could help decide that Playoff spot.
See the full rankings here. On we go: Let’s go to the NFL, where we saw maybe the busiest trade deadline in recent history:
Pictured above are two former Jets who will now be stars elsewhere. It was a momentous day in New York. A brief overview of the day’s biggest movers:
- The Jets sent All-Pro cornerback Sauce Gardner to the Colts for two first-round picks and wideout AD Mitchell, which has major implications on the AFC playoff race. Hours later, the team also traded stud defensive tackle Quinnen Williams to Dallas for a first- and second-round pick. The franchise overhaul is underway.
- New Orleans also jump-started a necessary rebuild by shipping deep-threat WR Rashid Shaheed to Seattle for two late-round picks, a nice return for the former undrafted free agent. The Saints also traded tackle Trevor Penning to the Chargers, who are desperate for offensive line help.
See trade grades for all these deals, plus the ones we missed. The Athletic Football Show has a full review, as well. Let’s keep moving:
News to Know
LIV goes normie
LIV Golf — the renegade golf tour that promised to change the sport, even naming itself after the Roman numeral for 54, indicating the number of holes each tournament would play — is switching to a 72-hole format for 2026, the outfit announced yesterday. It’s a big step toward legitimizing the operation on the world stage, though hurdles still remain. See more details here, including the CEO’s quote that basically mentions every other sports league in the world besides the PGA.
Yes, the dog is a clone
Former NFL quarterback Tom Brady told People Magazine yesterday that his family’s new dog, a pitbull mix named Junie, is a clone of their previous canine, Lua, who died in December 2023. And somehow this is all part of a marketing venture, it seems. Read more.
More news
- In the NHL, Minnesota won in overtime last night after officials determined that Nashville goaltender Justus Annunen knocked the net off the moorings on purpose. Wild, you might call it.
- Aryna Sabalenka and Nick Kyrgios will play in a “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match. Read more here.
- Shota Imanaga is set to be a free agent after both he and the Cubs declined options on his contract. It’s complicated.
- Cristiano Ronaldo, 40, said he will retire soon and plans to step away from soccer entirely. Read his comments.
- USMNT’s Folarin Balogun scored his first Champions League goal yesterday. See it here.
- Despite the current state of the franchise, Suns star Devin Booker wants to stay in Phoenix.
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Identities: The man who cannot stop coaching
Andrew Hancock / XFL via Getty Images
A cliched adage tells us life is a circle, which is true, but the framing is boring. To me, it’s more about one’s roots, the bedrock of your identity. The things you like, the things you do. We start with so much of it already embedded, explore the world to find what we like and don’t, and return to our root selves with a few knick-knacks attached.
There may be no better example of this archetype than Hal Mumme, whose name you should remember if you’ve been around or read anything about college football. At his root, Mumme is a football coach. And as Christopher Kamrani wrote this week, the oldest full-time coach in the sport has no interest in quitting.
Two points about Mumme’s nearly unbelievable path:
- Mumme, 73 — yes, he’s two weeks older than Bill Belichick — serves as the offensive coordinator at Centenary College in Shreveport, La., a Division III program that took a 77-year break from having a football team before reviving it in 2024. Centenary has fewer than 700 students on campus. Why is Mumme here?
- It’s a great question. Mumme, along with the late Mike Leach, quite literally changed the sport of college football as the co-creator of the Air Raid offense. He has been a head coach in the SEC, in Division III and everywhere in between. He is a grinder, but his impact has been felt all the way to the top of NFL meeting rooms.
I really loved the full story, which you can read here. I have a soft spot for Centenary, as most of my family is from Shreveport and multiple relatives have graduated from and/or taught at the school.
The Gents are 1-6, which means Mumme has work to do. It probably suits him just fine.
What to Watch
📺 UCL: Borussia Dortmund at Manchester City
3 p.m. ET on Paramount+
This may be the flashiest game of a busy day in Champions League action. Remember that we have a long schedule here, so a standings check is probably worth your time.
📺 NBA: Spurs at Lakers
10 p.m. ET on ESPN
Wemby-powered San Antonio (5-1) heads West to meet an impressive Lakers team that’s 6-2 despite missing LeBron James for the entire year thus far and Luka Dončić for half of those games. For now, outside of Oklahoma City, this is the class of the Western Conference. Good game.
Get tickets to games like these here.
Pulse Picks
David Berding / Getty Images
There may be no three words more enticing (and/or dangerous) in the NBA than “Draymond Green: Unplugged.” Sam Amick’s pen caught lightning in this interview.
Hey, wait, is the NBA’s Eastern Conference closing in on the West? John Hollinger pondered that in his weekly notebook, which is always worth a read.
In a gutting twist, NASCAR’s one-race championship format made everyone feel bad about crowning a worthy champion. Jeff Gluck says good riddance.
In Europe, two men — Erling Haaland and Harry Kane — are scoring at a rate we’ve never seen. The numbers here are jaw-dropping.
Most-clicked in the newsletter yesterday: Dan Quinn’s honest comments about Jayden Daniels’ injury.
Most-read on the website yesterday: NFL trade deadline live blog.
