The Pulse Newsletter 📣 | This is The Athletic’s daily sports newsletter. Sign up here to receive The Pulse directly in your inbox.Good morning! Apologies for the incoming reminder that summer days are waning. Today:
Catching Up, Part 1: What you’ve missed in college footballAfter a 39-day World Cup, history’s longest, lots of sports fans surely looked up and noted … whoa, fútbol Americano starts soon.A month from today, in fact. College football’s Week 0 begins with Bill Belichick’s turbulent Tar Heels in Dublin, Ireland, against TCU, the first team to humble them last season.With that in mind — and all 32 NFL teams now at training camp, which we’ll get to tomorrow — let’s look ahead. I brought on the author of our college football newsletter, Until Saturday, to go over a few preseason FAQs. (Conveniently, that author is me, Jason. You’ve now realized I’m not Chris Branch. Hello there.)
College football overhauls itself to a dizzying extent every season. What now? Steady-ish, for once! There are sponsored jersey patches now, including Notre Dame’s that might’ve cost $20 million. The Playoff will remain at 12 teams, though powerful figures want more. And FCS mega-dynasty North Dakota State moved up, then saw an NCAA rule change that could mean an FBS Playoff run in Year 1. There, that wasn’t so bad?
