11:59 PM ET The 2021 college football season has just ended, with Georgia beating Alabama 33-18 in Monday night’s national title game, but it’s already time to look ahead to the 2022 season. Not surprisingly, Nick Saban’s Alabama squad will start our 2022 Way-Too-Early college football top 25 on top, leading three SEC teams in
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2:00 AM ET INDIANAPOLIS — Along Highway 15, on a small patch of red clay near Sandersville, Georgia, sits an 84-year-old wooden barn with a rusted tin roof and weathered pine boards. The barn belongs to the Hitchcock family, which has operated a 2,500-acre farm for more than a century. Over the years, the barn
2:33 PM ET INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — The leaders of the College Football Playoff again failed to come to an agreement about expanding the current four-team field, but they didn’t entirely rule out the possibility it could still happen before the end of the current 12-year contract, which runs through the 2025 season. Big 12 commissioner
1:02 PM ET INDIANAPOLIS — Alabama football coach Nick Saban and Georgia coach Kirby Smart both called for increased regulation on name, image and likeness (NIL) deals for college athletes during their joint College Football Playoff news conferences Sunday. Without more regulation, Saban and Smart said the same teams are going to continue to dominate
8:00 AM ET As thunderstorms rolled into the Tuscaloosa area one August afternoon in 2007 with Nick Saban just a few days into his first preseason practice as Alabama’s coach, Jeff Allen alerted his boss that the team needed to move to the indoor facility. Allen had only been on the job as Alabama’s head
11:37 AM ET INDIANAPOLIS — Georgia coach Kirby Smart saw enough of Alabama quarterback Bryce Young a month ago to know what the Bulldogs are up against Monday night in the College Football Playoff National Championship presented by AT&T. “We talk about him as Houdini, because he can make people miss,” Smart said Sunday. “He
8:00 AM ET INDIANAPOLIS — As Alabama and Georgia prepare to play each other again (8 p.m. ET Monday on ESPN/ESPN App), it is hard to forget what happened the last time they met in the national championship game. Because what happened was so unforgettable. Second-and-26 will always live in college football history, but especially
3:44 PM ET ESPN News Services FRISCO, Texas — Hunter Luepke ran for three touchdowns in the first half and North Dakota State won its ninth FCS national championship in 11 seasons with a 38-10 victory over Montana State on Saturday. The Bison (14-1) have never lost when making the trip from Fargo to Frisco
7:00 AM ET Aaron Murray had already committed to Georgia in 2008, but he’d never been to a game at Sanford Stadium before the Bulldogs’ regular-season showdown with Alabama that year. Murray was among the top recruits in the country, and his No. 1 priority that Saturday was convincing a few other big names to
7:30 AM ET Editor’s note: This story was originally published in October 2020. It has been updated. BLACKSHEAR, Ga. — When Stetson Bennett III moved his family from suburban Atlanta to southeast Georgia in the summer of 2004, he took his eldest son and namesake to see the small town’s high school football stadium while
9:42 PM ET Associated Press INDIANAPOLIS — Coach Nick Saban walked off Alabama’s team plane Friday night to a cold, harsh reality. When he returns to the airport for the final time this season, the Crimson Tide will either be celebrating another national championship or heading home disappointed. Saban’s top-ranked team received a warm welcome
12:35 PM ET INDIANAPOLIS — The College Football Playoff is considering Las Vegas and Miami as future host cities for the national championship, sources told ESPN on Friday. The CFP is currently finishing its eighth season of a 12-year contract, which runs through the 2025 season, and hasn’t yet finalized where the national championship game
7:11 AM ET ATHENS, Ga. — Sonny Smart remembers taking his youngest son, Kirby, to the city pool in Bainbridge, Georgia, in the summer of 1983. Kirby, only 7 years old, was trying out for the Bainbridge Barracudas swim team. There was just one requirement to make it: A child had to swim the length
6:34 PM ET Michigan safety Daxton Hill declared for the NFL draft on Thursday. Hill is ranked as the second-best safety prospect in the draft, according to ESPN’s Mel Kiper Jr., behind Notre Dame safety Kyle Hamilton. He is the younger brother of Baltimore Ravens running back Justice Hill and a former five-star recruit in
2:31 PM ET LSU cornerback Derek Stingley Jr. is entering the NFL draft, he announced through The Players’ Tribune. Stingley appeared in only three games this season, recording eight tackles and 3.5 tackles for loss, before undergoing left foot surgery in October. ESPN’s Mel Kiper lists Stingley as the No. 5 overall prospect for the
7:00 AM ET ON OCT. 18, the Monday before the storied Alabama–Tennessee rivalry was renewed for the 104th time, former Vols quarterback Jeff Francis was making his weekly appearance on a Knoxville radio show when Eli Gold called in. The play-by-play voice of the Crimson Tide Sports Network, Gold helped preview the game, eventually turning
8:04 PM ET Despite Alabama’s recent mastery of Georgia, Alabama players downplayed Wednesday any role the Crimson Tide’s dominance in the series might play Monday night in their College Football Playoff national championship game matchup. A month ago, Alabama beat then No. 1-ranked Georgia convincingly, 41-24, in the SEC championship game, and the Crimson Tide
7:00 AM ET When Cincinnati got its shot to take on a heavyweight, facing Alabama in the Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic, the Bearcats’ star corners, Ahmad “Sauce” Gardner and Coby Bryant, were eager to prove they could match up against the Tide’s Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback, Bryce Young, and wide receiver Jameson Williams, considered the top