Chris Vannini | NCAAF Sr. Writer, The Athletic

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One year upgrade requires financing, qualifying, device and upgrading in good condition after six months with half paid off. Chris Bonini, who is the senior writer covering college football for The Athletic. And Chris, I'd love to hear your reaction to what Dion has done so far at Colorado. It's a changing of the culture to be sure and there's a lot of buzz coming out of Boulder. I'll admit, I am surprised how quickly he is finding success. I thought this was going to be a season where they win three or four games and it would take a year or two before things get rolling. But he's got it going. I mean, I'm not saying they're going to win 10 games or anything, but they are doing a lot better in the areas that I didn't expect them to so quickly.

I think you got a credit. One, the players, absolutely. A lot of them had never played together before until this season. And offensive coordinator Sean Lewis has done a really, really good job there. Helping Shitter Sanders throw for almost a thousand yards already this season. Hasn't thrown an interception. So, a lot of the little areas.

Colorado is doing really well in penalties, organization, like they're on top of things and that has been really impressive. A lot of people who see Deion as a guy who has a bunch of shtick, right? And he doesn't really mean what he says and it's more about show. But it does seem humorous that every game he goes into now, there's some kind of reason for him to carry a chip on his shoulder or for the team to kind of play angry or play with an edge. It certainly seems like he brings that from the way that he played, actually. Deion Sanders has always understood that sports is an entertainment business and he is going to make sure he is entertaining in every way that he can. That's not to say he's not doing things the right way or succeeding. He obviously is. He just knows the value of the entertainment aspect of that. And yeah, he's going to find anything to have a chip on the shoulder.

I think everybody does that. I mean, we remember two years ago when Georgia won the national championship, I think it was, and Nolan Smith said, people said Georgia was going to go 7-5. And I have not found a single person who said Georgia was going to go 7-5. But Kirby Zmar was able to imprint that us against the world mentality in a team that is favored for everybody to win. So the best coaches are able to pull that out and he's clearly got a good connection with his players where they believe in him. And when he tells them something, they're going to go to the wall for it. And it creates a lot of entertainment for us. TV ratings for Colorado are through the roof right now. That's why Fox is going there. Fox big news is going there three weeks in a row. College game day is going there this year. It's a show. It's a circus in a good way.

And he knows how to take advantage of that. Certainly was a show and highly entertaining in Tuscaloosa on Saturday night where the Texas Longhorns maybe serve notice to the rest of college football that they're closer to being back than they have in quite a long time. What do you see with the Texas Longhorns that maybe shows you this is for real now?

It's what they did in the trenches on the offensive and defensive lines. That is where Texas has struggled for the last decade. That's where we thought they were going to be better this year.

And they are. They lived up to the hype of what they are doing there. They were able to run the ball late in the game when you knew they were going to run the ball. They were able to pressure Jalen Miller constantly with the pass rush. Funnel run plays to the inside to keep the Alabama run game in check. Texas looks like a championship team in the trenches. And that's always what it takes at the end.

It's what they've missed for a while. And yeah, so Texas goes to Alabama and wins. Most impressive win of the season. The real test for Texas being back, so to speak, is how they respond to it. Because they often get a big win and then you lose to a team you shouldn't lose to. They've got Wyoming this week, Baylor in two weeks, Oklahoma after that. So I think Texas is feeling good and the real test of things is can they keep this going? As for Alabama, it's almost as though the shine has come off the tide in the last couple of years.

What do you see as a big problem with them specifically? They just lack the guild players on offense that win you a ball game. I mean, Alabama could have lost to Texas last year.

They probably would have if Bryce Young didn't pull that game out of a hat, basically. Him and Jameer Gibbs. Jameer Gibbs was a transfer. They haven't had the elite wide receivers. Where is your Derrick Henry, your Julio Jones, your Devante Smith? They haven't had those guys really the last couple of years outside of Bryce Young, a quarterback. And even a quarterback. You go from Jalen Hurts to Tua to Mack Jones to Bryce Young. Those are first round, second round NFL quarterbacks and now they don't have that right now. That is where it starts. Alabama's recruiting numbers are great, but they have lacked the game-changing players at skill positions. So now they've fallen back to the pack a little bit.

Chris, how much do you think NIL or even Transfer Portal may have to do with that? I don't think it has anything to do with Alabama. I think the biggest thing is the existence of Georgia. Georgia has come in and recruited. Kirby Smart obviously came from Alabama and he's getting a lot of players who maybe would have gone to Alabama five years ago.

And that's changing. Texas A&M too has the number one recruiting class a couple of years ago. Alabama still recruits really, really well, but so do some other schools now. Schools that Alabama directly competes against. I always thought in the transfer era, Alabama would never have any holes again. That if they didn't have a quarterback, they could go out and get a really good quarterback to come in.

And they just kind of haven't done that. And Georgia hasn't done a ton of transfers either. So I don't think that's what's hurting Alabama if they're that or NIL or anything. It's just losing guys to some schools who are very, very good. We're spending a few minutes talking college football, getting set for another weekend on the horizon with Chris Venini, who is the senior writer with The Athletic.

It's after hours here on CBS Sports Radio. Which of these realignments do you think is the most significant or most impactful, whether it's one that's already occurred or one that we're about to see? I think the Big Ten adding USC, UCLA, Washington, and Oregon all at once now next year is one of the most impactful we will have ever seen. To have a conference stretch from New Jersey to Los Angeles, to have four of the biggest markets out west in your conference.

How's that travel going to be? I mean, Big Ten games are now going to be on from 11 noon from when the game starts to 1230 at night when the games end. And so the Big Ten is going to be just so big and expansive now. It's going to be weird watching an Oregon-Washington game next year and realizing, oh, this game impacts Michigan State and Purdue.

It's just kind of the nature of things. I think that's going to be the one when it happens next year and we realize it, it's going to feel extremely weird. The SEC has stayed within its geographic footprint. The Big Ten has not, and it's going to feel very different next year. Do you think fans care outside of the initial headlines where we kind of get the bombshells, schools leaving and joining different conferences? Otherwise, do you think it really affects college football fans at the base level?

Depends who you're a fan of. If you're a fan of Washington State and Oregon State, yeah, it impacts you a lot because now there's not going to be a Pac-12 anymore. If you're USC and UCLA and so many of the teams you're competing against are in the Midwest and out east, it's going to feel weird. It's going to make traveling to road games a lot more difficult. It'll be fun at first to do all the trips for Big Ten fans to come out west and to do all that kind of stuff, and there will be more bigger games. I think ultimately, TV ratings for that will be quite good, which is the reason this is happening. But I do worry that 16, 17, 18 team conferences are going to impact the playoff and impact the sport in a lot of different ways as a kind of trickle-down effect.

Those are yet to be seen, but in general, I don't think the consolidation of these schools is a good thing in the long term because I worry there will be more Washington States and Oregon States that get left behind in the next thing that happens. I'm glad you mentioned the playoff because I was going to ask. It's projecting, obviously, Chris, but what impact do you think it could have on the expanded playoff? It's going to 12 next year, and the current plan is six conference champions get an automatic berth. The problem is the Pac-12 may or may not exist next year.

It certainly won't exist in a strong form. So that may very well be changed to five automatic conference champions and seven at-large berths. But I wonder, when the SEC has a Texas or an Oklahoma who doesn't make the playoff because there's only 12 spots and the Big Ten has a USC that doesn't make the playoff because there's only so many spots, how does that impact the desire to potentially grow the playoff even further? Because now, without a Pac-12, that's one less conference championship available. That's one less thing for fans of a team to celebrate. And if that doesn't happen, do we make the playoff or not?

And you're going to have a lot more disappointed teams because of that. So I wonder if the realignment, the expansion of conferences potentially down the road leads to another expansion of the playoff. So the Pac-12 is just going to disappear into thin air? That's it? It's gone?

It's going away? We don't know. Washington State and Oregon State are the only two technically left. They were actually in court with the Pac-12 this week to try to maintain that they control the rights to the conference, to the money, to the branding, to everything that's in it. The court temporarily agrees with them on that.

We don't know. They could join the Mountain West. They could, in two years, bring the Mountain West over them, do a kind of reverse merger, so to speak. They could try to just charge ahead next year as a two-team conference, which is allowed under a two-year grace period. So it's yet to be determined. Washington State and Oregon State are still trying to figure out if trying to rebuild the Pac-12 is worth it, what kind of money is available.

So still to be determined on that. Chris Venini of The Athletic is with us here after our CBS Sports Radio. Another major story in college football and significant because of where it's taking place. East Lansing, Michigan State, Mel Tucker suspended. How should Michigan State handle this moving forward? There's a hearing on the case, the investigation October 5th and 6th.

Mel Tucker's statement earlier this week called it a sham. It says there's an ulterior motive for the school trying to get out of his contract. So it did not sound like somebody who expects to coach this team again.

It's been a very complicated and messy situation. I don't know how it's all going to play out. But in terms of Michigan State on the field, they're bringing back Mark Dantonio to be an associate head coach to help out the interim head coach. They happen to play Washington this week, who has maybe the most explosive passing offense in the country. Washington's like a 16-point favorite. So it could turn out to be an ugly game between Washington and Michigan State.

They're kind of bad timing on top of all that. But yeah, the Mel Tucker era at Michigan State has taken a sudden turn. And I'm not quite sure where it's going to end, but Mel Tucker didn't sound like a coach, confident he's going to be keeping his job in some form, whether that's a settlement, whether that's something else. I don't know.

Nobody really knows yet. But yeah, that's a real, real complicated thing going on there. Considering what Michigan State went through with the Larry Nassar era, and how so many people, they were part of that information chain and yet did nothing or protected the doctor, it would seem like Michigan State would be motivated to make sure this was not another situation like that one. Well, they're abiding by what are generally considered to be proper Title IX protocols, which is you let a third party investigate everything, you stay out of it, you don't interfere with it.

And then once all the information is gathered and presented, and you have your hearing, you make a determination from there. So the university says it is following the book, it's going by the book doing what it's supposed to do in these situations. Brenda Tracy has said she wasn't going to go public with this and only did because some other reporter apparently got wind of it.

So she was planning to wait until after the situation. The school has said, look, we're making sure we don't mishandle this, we're trying to do this all the right way. Mel Tucker is saying this isn't a Title IX investigation, it shouldn't fall under the university policy.

Anyway, he believes it's just a personal matter. The school says no, she's a vendor for the school, she's been paid by the school to do her stuff. So the university says it has jurisdiction. If you go by Title IX, this is generally how it's supposed to go, it sounds like, at least based on people I've talked to at this point. Michigan State says this isn't the old MSU, they've tried to learn from the NASA situation, other situations, and this is kind of the direction and the protocol that they have and that a lot of schools have with this stuff.

And it's being followed, at least as far as we know, to this point. But again, the publicity of this, which was not planned and is usually not supposed to be part of the process, has thrown a bomb into everything at this point. Before I let you go, Chris, I always like to ask our reporters and insiders this question. What are a couple of other storylines, games, outcomes that have piqued your attention to start the season? Well, Florida State has been really interesting. They whipped up LSU in week one and they look like a team that may be able to compete for the playoffs, maybe compete for the national championship. This is a team that two years ago was 5-7. They started the year 0-4 and they have rebounded in a major way, gotten a lot of really good players out of the transfer board. Florida State, the old powerhouse from the 90s, might be back into form. Miami as well just blew out Texas A&M. Could Miami and Florida State be back on track to what they were? And similarly, talking to the big brands, Notre Dame. Looks like they might be a pretty darn good team with Sam Hartman at quarterback.

We weren't quite sure what to expect. They look to be really good as well, so you may have some of these bigger brands from the past of college football coming back to the top a little bit. It seems even more so the last couple years that it's wide open and college football really is the wild, wild west.

Were you just ever really sure from one week to the next or even one month to the next what's going to happen? Yeah, this is a sport that has been dominated by Alabama for a long time, then Georgia for the last two years. With Alabama maybe slipping, with Clemson slipping, there might be more room at the top now than there has been in quite a while. I think that's generally a good thing for the sport. You need to go through cycles where other teams are winning and stuff like that. Maybe we're starting a new cycle like that. You can find Chris on Twitter at Chris Bonini, V-A-N-N-I-N-I, a senior writer for The Athletic.

Lots in college football, we barely scratched the surface. We appreciate a couple of minutes though, Chris. Thank you so much.

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