CHICAGO — I come to you this week from Big Ten Media Days, where 18 coaches have the deepest, hardest-working, tightest-knit teams they’ve ever coached. Not sure how the math works, but I’m sure they’re all going to win big this season.Now, let’s talk about a coach who almost certainly won’t.Stew, I haven’t seen Bill Belichick on many preseason hot-seat lists. However, it was just announced Monday morning that Mike Lombardi has been placed on administrative leave. Do you really think they both survive the 2026 season? — Luigi M.It sounds like Lombardi might not make it to Week 1. If you’ve been following the Belichick regime, this is not remotely surprising.But even before that news, the only person I would have had higher on a hot-seat list than Belichick was Florida State’s Mike Norvell. It was apparent within the first few games last season that the NFL legend’s hire — forced on then-AD Bubba Cunningham through a back-room board of trustees coup — was an all-time misfire. And his loyalty to Lombardi — who my colleague Bruce Feldman called “without question, the worst general manager in college sports” on The Audible podcast — has done him zero favors.Even if we give Belichick/Lombardi a complete pass for Year 1 — they got a late start on the 2025-26 portal class, they didn’t have the high school relationships yet, etc. — that doesn’t explain UNC signing the 52nd-ranked portal class on 247Sports in Year 2. Not exactly the NFL’s 33rd team. They did sign a top-25 high school class, but it’s unlikely more than a couple will be immediate stars.On top of all that, UNC’s schedule is harder than last year’s, when the Tar Heels went 4-8 overall and 2-6 in the ACC. They open against TCU in Dublin in Week 0 and also face Notre Dame out of conference. They host Miami, Louisville and Duke and visit Clemson, Pitt and Virginia. Even if we assume the Blue Devils and Cavaliers, last year’s ACC championship game opponents, regress, I don’t see more than three or four wins on the schedule.It was never realistic for UNC to pull the plug on Belichick after one year, both because of optics (lots of important people having to admit they were wrong) and, more importantly, money. It would have cost around $29 million to buy out its head coach and his staff. Unfortunately, that number won’t go down for another two years, as UNC fully guaranteed his first three years.But at some point, the price tag becomes secondary to the continued reputational stains, fan apathy and, now with Lombardi, legitimate internal issues. Worth noting: Cunningham retired after last year, and his replacement, Steve Newmark, should be fully empowered to make whatever changes he deems necessary.Do the Wisconsin Badgers start to show progress, or are they doomed? — Mark H.The Badgers began showing progress toward the end of last season, as soon as then-AD Chris McIntosh announced he was keeping Luke Fickell. Their defense was dominant in upsets of Washington (13-10) and Illinois (27-10), both of which were ranked at the time. And it needed to be, since Wisconsin played nearly the entire season without a serviceable quarterback. If nothing else, landing Sun Belt Offensive Player of the Year Colton Joseph from Old Dominion should provide some hope. Not to mention Iowa State RB Abu Sama III, who, while up-and-down during his time in Ames, has shown he can be a difference-maker who can take it to the house.By all accounts, Wisconsin did what McIntosh pledged and upped its roster spending considerably for this season. It’s still not near the top of the Big Ten, but it was near the bottom, previously. Not to make excuses for Fickell, but he had more NFL talent at Cincinnati, pre-NIL, than he’s had so far at Wisconsin in the pay-for-play era.The biggest thing Wisconsin has going for it this year is its schedule. It went from being one of the toughest in the country last season to one of the lightest this season. Yes, the Badgers open with Notre Dame, but in conference play they miss Ohio State, Oregon, Indiana and Michigan. Instead, they get Michigan State, Rutgers, Maryland and Purdue.If Fickell can’t win seven or eight this year, he probably never will.With Lane Kiffin now able to attract better high school recruits than he did at Ole Miss, will he remain as dependent on the portal as he has been in the past? — Scott S.I don’t think any coach wants to be dependent on the portal once they get past the initial roster-flip phase. The goal is to build the core of the team with three- and four-year guys while using the portal to fill specific needs for a particular season. See: Ohio State, Georgia, Miami, Notre Dame and others. Even Curt Cignetti has been signing fewer transfers each year he’s been at Indiana. (From 31 his first year to 17 this year.)At Ole Miss, Kiffin never truly got off the transfer train, in part because that program doesn’t usually sign top-10 recruiting classes but also because he felt an urgency after his fourth season in 2023 to significantly upgrade its D-line, which he did via the portal. But now he’s at LSU, one of the handful of programs capable of landing five-star after five-star after five-star with the right coach at the helm.There’s only one problem: The NIL landscape is shifting again. Portal players have long been more expensive than all but the very elite high-school recruits. But by all accounts, the high-school market became much costlier seemingly overnight once revenue share kicked in last year, yet another factor that’s stretching programs’ roster budgets higher and higher.Coaches like Kiffin will have to start making a choice: Do you use X amount of your budget on a four-star high-school player who might not pan out or even stay for more than a year, or on, say, a proven G6 guy who won’t require time to develop and might even cost less? And now there’s another variable thanks to the new NCAA eligibility model: Do you pay to retain a good-but-not-great senior who can now come back for a fifth year or use it on the high-school guy with a higher ceiling?Roster management has never been more complicated. But it helps to have a bottomless well of cash, as Kiffin seems to at LSU.Lane Kiffin Says Ole Miss Fans Should Be GratefulStewart Mandel and Bruce FeldmanIf Indiana were to lose four games this season, what do you think that would do for Cignetti’s perceived outlook for the next several years? — Nick K.It wouldn’t invalidate what he achieved the past two seasons, but it would signal that building a national championship program at a historically bad school might be less challenging than maintaining it in this era.I’d want to see what that 8-4 looks like before jumping to conclusions. Was it a bunch of close losses or blowouts? Did one side of the ball implode but not the other? Did he finally miss at quarterback?I’m sure in the moment we’d see a lot of sweeping proclamations that 2024-25 was a perfect storm that Cignetti will never achieve again. But making that claim based on one season would be presumptuous. The Hoosiers’ wild success came so out of nowhere that Cignetti barely had a chance to capitalize on it in recruiting when his 2026 roster was built. A lot of those players knew where they were going before he’d barely coached a game. The true effect is only being felt now, as evidenced a couple of weeks ago when IU landed its first-ever five-star commit, Indianapolis receiver Monshun Sales. He chose the Hoosiers over, among others, Ohio State — a.k.a. Wide Receiver U.Cignetti was on Nick Saban’s Alabama staff when that dynasty got rolling. I’m sure most of you remember that the Tide won three national titles in four years beginning in Saban’s third season, 2009. You may have forgotten, though, that in his fourth season, 2010, they went 9-3 in the regular season. Obviously, it became a blip. If Indiana goes 9-4, we’ll just have to wait another year to see if this, too, becomes that.Do you believe the recent addition of college fantasy football on a giant platform such as Yahoo will increase participation from college fans, or does the sport have too many teams and players for people to make the effort compared to NFL fantasy football? — William T.The one time I tried it a decade ago, even I found it nearly impossible to keep up, despite having a job that requires keeping up with college football. I’d always lose to someone who knew the slot receiver at Bowling Green was primed to have a big day against Kent State’s corners. The Yahoo league is at least limited to Power 4 players, but that’s still 68 rosters to keep up with — who’s injured, who’s been getting more playing time recently, etc.It could still be fun if you do it with a group of buddies with an aptitude similar to yours, and if you stick mostly to the big names of the top programs. Don’t take it too seriously. But even then, there’s always one overly competitive guy who can’t help himself. Every week, two minutes before GameDay ends, he will change his lineup, and now he’s got Syracuse’s No. 2 running back, who runs for 150 yards against Colgate.Realistically, the people most likely to dominate college fantasy will be professional gamblers, who already track every conceivable player for every team and seek out every possible advantage. So stick to playing against your buddies — not randoms on the Internet — and you’ll be fine.I am on the Drew Mestemaker bandwagon this year. Will he and his fellow North Texas transfers be enough to pull Oklahoma State over the hump and back to respectability? — Justin F.It’s a fascinating story.While the Cignetti/Indiana miracle began with those 13 James Madison players following him to Bloomington, this is something else entirely. New coach Eric Morris is bringing virtually the entire two-deep, starting with his star quarterback, who helped the long-struggling Mean Green go 12-2 and produce the nation’s most powerful offense. Most of the American conference had no answers for them, save for the two best teams they faced — USF and Tulane — which stomped them 63-36 and 34-21, respectively.So, the question is, if you essentially take a good-but-not-quite-elite G6 roster, mix in a handful of P4 guys and plop them in the Big 12, what is their ceiling?If the bar is just “respectable,” well, pretty much anything would be more respectable than Oklahoma State’s 4-20 record and 18-game Big 12 losing streak the last two years. The 2026 Cowboys will easily clear that bar. But does that mean improving from zero league wins to three? Going 6-6 and making a bowl game? Skipping past all that and contending for the conference championship? I honestly have no idea.But I do know Mestemaker, who is ranked in Tier 1, No. 6 overall, in The Athletic’s QB tiers, has long since graduated from a cute story of a former walk-on tearing up a mid-major conference to a highly talented passer who lots of big programs wanted last offseason. He could have made a lot more money from one of them but opted to stick with Morris despite “only” getting $3.75 million this year in Stillwater.Mike Gundy had some solid Big 12 QBs over the years — Brandon Weeden, Mason Rudolph, Spencer Sanders, et al. — but the well ran dry once he had to start paying them. Mestemaker has a legit chance to match or exceed all of them playing in Morris’ Air Raid. The bigger question is whether the Cowboys will be able to stop anyone on defense.Maybe they’ll be more 2010s-style Big 12, the glory days of 70-63 games, than the 2020s model of Texas Tech mauling people in the trenches.Head coach Eric Morris brought Drew Mestemaker and many of his North Texas teammates to Oklahoma State, but how good will the Cowboys be? (Danny Wild / Reuters Connect)I’d like your point of view concerning scheduling in college football. Too easy/too hard/balanced the best? Ways to get top teams to play each other? Schedule ranking system as part of who advances to playoffs? — Terri M.Scheduling in college football is an inherent mess because it’s a do-it-yourself model. In an ideal world, schools wouldn’t fill out their non-conference schedules 10 years in advance (unless it’s an established annual rivalry), and the CFP or another central entity would assign pairings based on how they finished the year before, just like in the NFL. The only thing you’d know ahead of time is the date and whether it’s a home or road game.But as things stand today, there’s no incentive to schedule up — as long as you’re in the Big Ten or SEC. The past three national champs, 2023 Michigan, 2024 Ohio State and 2025 Indiana, played no P4 non-conference games. The Wolverines and Hoosiers went undefeated and finished No. 1, and the Buckeyes got in with two losses. Conversely, while 2025 Texas lost to 4-8 Florida and looked mediocre for much of the season, Steve Sarkisian was not wrong that the Horns would have likely made it in at 10-2 had they opted out of playing Ohio State. Top-10 wins over Oklahoma and Texas A&M would have pushed them above at least 10-2 Miami.Now, it’s a different story in the ACC and Big 12. In the first two seasons of the P4 era, the committee has basically said those leagues’ schedules are a game worse than in the B1G/SEC. Hence why BYU was never taken seriously at 10-2/11-2 the past two years. In these leagues, you have to schedule at least one tough game out-of-conference to have any chance of proving yourself. Miami doesn’t get in last year without beating Notre Dame.Allow me to reiterate this for the hundredth time: The commissioners, who run the CFP, should update the selection committee protocol to explicitly include non-conference schedule strength as a criterion. Basketball and other NCAA sports do it. They won’t, though, because their members want to reserve the right to endlessly complain while doing nothing to improve the situation.What is the ceiling for Billy Napier and JMU football? Can they build a program that can not only get invited to the Playoff but also win a game or two? — John S.The ceiling is already high, thanks to all the great coaches that were there before Napier. This is a program that won or reached at least the FCS semifinals seven times from 2004-21, moved up to FBS and reached the CFP within four years. Obviously, Napier fell flat at Florida, but the last time he was in the Sun Belt, at Louisiana from 2018-21, he went 40-12 and won back-to-back league titles. And JMU is better equipped to contend for championships than Louisiana.But I’m not sure any G6 program can reach the level you’re describing anymore. The talent drain is real. Even if Napier managed to assemble the level of talent it would take to advance in a Playoff, most, if not all, would get scooped up by the big boys as soon as they put anything on tape, making it very difficult to build something. Case in point: In a previous era, JMU would have brought back most of the lineup that made it in last year but couldn’t keep up with Oregon. With a year’s experience under their belt, presumably they’d be even better and be more competitive in the CFP.As it is, though, almost everyone followed Bob Chesney out the door. Nearly 20 are now at P4 schools.My goal if I’m James Madison is to keep winning consistently, keep crashing the CFP every few years, and once the inevitable next realignment bomb explodes, land an invite to the ACC or whatever incarnation of that league comes next.With the prevalence of unaccountable cheating combined with the rise of sports gambling (including players betting on games), why should we care about college football anymore? This is an honest question. — jwahlstrom15Care or don’t care, that’s up to you. Just know that unaccountable cheating and gambling scandals have been part of college football since well before whenever you first began caring about it.Are preseason all-conference teams just dumb now? There are too many teams, too much roster turnover and no logic to what will actually happen once the season begins. — nbh19475Yes, absolutely.That’s why I love them.