And on the third day of the ninth month in the year 2026 of our Savant and Savior Curt Cignetti, the college football gods mercifully said, “Let there be football.”
Goodbye injunctions and hello interceptions. Out with TROs and in with RPOs. Take a hike, local judges and make room for the line judges.
An exhausting, head-spinning and often downright silly offseason is officially over after college football really kicked off on Thursday (after the always bizarre Week 0 last weekend). The machinations of the long break were replaced with the one thing that no one – despite serious efforts – can screw up: the football. It is undefeated, a reliable constant that rarely fails to deliver. It is a beautifully unscripted four-act drama that plays out over and over and draws us back to the tailgate grill like shot-gunning, beer-starved lemmings.
Last season, Bill Belichick was terrible and Vanderbilt was good. Lane Kiffin’s chaotic departure from Ole Miss gave way to an epic playoff quarterfinal showdown between the team he jilted and Georgia. The upheaval of NIL overload had no chance against the exuberance of Fernando Mendoza. Indiana, winners of nothing, shellacked Alabama, winners of everything. And at the end of it all, a euphoric fan base, tipsy with its sudden reversal of fortune, belted out a 1976 Abba song in South Florida.
