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Ryan McGee, ESPN Senior Writer
Only two of last year’s top 10 Heisman Trophy vote getters are back on the field this season. Only four of the 26 consensus All-Americans from one year ago have returned.
Nick Saban, he of the seven national championships, seven of the past 10 SEC titles and the “a’ight” that has always carried the weight of Thor’s hammer, is off the sidelines for the first time since 1970, now on the road with ESPN’s “College GameDay.”
So in this season of transition, of confusion, of a perpetually shapeshifting college football atlas, who now stands alone as the beacon of the sport? Who sits atop the game’s highest peak, as the person who rightfully surveys their football domain? Whom do we now select as CFB’s chosen one, the human best equipped to represent and perhaps speak on behalf of every team, school, conference and even the future of this increasingly complicated world?
Who is the Face of College Football? And yes, that title is capitalized on purpose.
“Well, it’s not me,” Saban said in July during SEC media days, his first official gig through the looking glass and on the other end of the endless questions to the endless conga line of coaches who marched to the podium. As he said it, the look on his face was that of happiness and relief, with a dash of confessed confusion. “Now I get to express my opinions, which I’ve certainly not had an issue with in the past. Maybe this is an even bigger platform now. We’ll see. But does that effect change? I’m not sure I had that strong of an effect when I was coaching, but your chances are better to become that person when you are one who is actually in the arena.”
OK, GOAT, let’s peer into that arena, holding our flashlight in one hand and our college gridiron hopes in the other, seeking that perfectly procured pigskin prophet to lead us through the 2024 darkness.
The nine-year veteran
We’ve already established that the vast majority of last year’s stars have moved on. That’s nothing new in a sport where every player’s time on the roster comes with an expiration date. But what is still new is the way that date slides. A timeline that used to be altered only by injuries, redshirts and mandated one-year sit-outs after transferring is now augmented by greyshirts, blueshirts, greenshirts, the instant gratification model of the transfer portal and that little global pandemic we all endured a few years ago. Yes, there are still college athletes on rosters today who were on rosters when COVID-19 arrived.
Miami tight end Cam McCormick actually was on a college football roster a full four years before the world went into lockdown, redshirted by Oregon for his freshman year of 2016. The Bend, Oregon, native appeared in all 13 games for the Ducks in 2017 but suffered a devastating left leg break that shredded the ligaments in the leg. Over the next three years, he underwent three surgeries, which carried him through the 2020 season, including having a screw installed in his ankle that malfunctioned, caused another fracture and sidelined him again. He returned in 2021, only to be taken down by an Achilles injury after two games. He played in 13 games in 2022 before transferring to Miami to be reunited with his former Oregon coach, Mario Cristobal.
After the redshirt, medical waivers, COVID eligibility waiver and, finally, one last NCAA waiver granted for this season, Cam McCormick, the 26-year-old who has already earned his undergraduate and master’s degrees, will be playing his ninth season of college football, the first — and likely last — time we’ll ever see such a thing.
So does that make him the face of this craziest of college football eras?
“I like that idea because of what it represents,” Cristobal said ahead of Miami’s season opener at Florida this weekend. “There are people who seem to want to criticize his situation, just as they like to criticize everything about college football right now. But in Cam’s case — and in the case of all these kids who have overcome so much and worked so hard or made very difficult decisions that they know could really impact their lives and the lives of their families — we could do a lot worse than to give Cam that job.”
The superstar
As long as college football has been played, there have been those whose faces and names have represented the sport, from Red Grange and Doug Flutie to Herschel Walker and Tim Tebow. Their names become transcendent, even though their actual time on campus is transient. In recent decades, thanks to the rise of freshmen (who weren’t even allowed on varsity rosters until 1972) and the relaxing of the unwritten agreement among Heisman voters that the youngest players couldn’t win the sport’s most prestigious award, not to mention the recent nitrous boost of NIL advertising superstardom, household names have garnered more attention than ever. They’re on billboards on the way to said houses and part of video games on the TVs inside those houses.
So who best represents those names-in-neon national stars? The veteran quarterbacks of the SEC? Quinn Ewers of Texas? Carson Beck of Georgia? Jaxson Dart of Ole Miss?
“Yeah, I will take that job, but only after I feel like I have really earned it — and I haven’t yet,” Alabama returning QB Jalen Milroe said when asked about the Face of College Football gig earlier this summer, before adding with a smile, “But I’m close.”
But when Cristobal made his comment about people being unfairly critical about all aspects of college football, it might as well have been a Mad Libs sentence with a blank line at the end where written in Sharpie is the name: SHEDEUR SANDERS (again, caps on purpose).
Sanders is a transfer student, coming to Colorado with his coach/father — Deion? Ever heard of him? — after an award-winning two seasons at FCS and HBCU Jackson State. He helms a team that is riding the realignment wave, as the Buffaloes move from the Pac-12 to the Big 12. He electrified the nation one year ago, slinging 27 touchdown passes and only three interceptions even while running for his life — Colorado surrendered 56 sacks, the most of any power conference team. But he also became the tip of the lightning rod for a nation divided about the Buffs, who ruled college football after a 3-0 start, then crashed back into the Rockies as they lost eight of their last nine games.
Shedeur makes bold predictions. He has no issue setting fire to his social media timelines. His NIL valuations have him nearing the $5 million mark, tops in the sport, and he has rolled up to practice in a $350,000 Rolls Royce, a $175,000 Mercedes-Maybach and most recently in Colorado’s first known $110,000 Tesla Cyberbeast supertruck. To many of the grey-haired college football fan set, it feels like way too much, like it always did back in the day with his father, Coach Prime. To the younger crowd, it feels much more normal, like, just the way the world is now.
“Are you asking, do I want the pressure of this job?” the 22-year-old said in reply to the idea of being the Face of College Football. “Pressure has been a part of my life my whole life, certainly my whole football life. Just as it was and is for my father. I already know what the expectations come with. The goal is to remain level-headed. To stay grounded.
“You can’t be the face of anything if you don’t perform and take advantage of the opportunity you have been given, that you have earned. That’s power. But power can be lost. By losing.”
The power broker
Ah, power. With the greatest respect to Saban, the real power in collegiate athletics might not belong to anyone in the arena, but rather to the ones who operate that arena. The maestros who ultimately determine the construction and governance of the rosters, staffs and money that flow through those arenas, and even how the games on the arena floors and stadium fields are scheduled and played.
This potential Face of the Sport wears no eye black. It isn’t encased in a helmet. It’s not even under a ballcap. It’s framed by a tailored suit, and instead of speaking into a headset to send in a play, it’s leaning into a microphone, either in front of the assembled national media or at a special hearing of a Congressional committee, saying stuff like:
“We as leaders are responsible for navigating what really are for us in college sports uncharted waters of change.”
“We’ve been incredibly successful, and I understand why so many from outside of the campus and conference realm are interested in coming in and being a part of it, but that responsibility lies with us to bring people into the solution, not to cede authority to external actors.”
“It’s time to update your expectations for what college athletics can be.”
Greg Sankey said all of that and more as he glided his way through the hotel ballrooms of Dallas at SEC media days. This is the man who has had his hand on the steering wheel (purposeful motorsports metaphor, he loves racing) of the Southeastern Conference since 2015. All he has done since is expand the league to include Texas and Oklahoma, and steer all of college football through the 2020 pandemic, all while also serving on the NCAA committees assembled to determine the future of college sports and the governing body itself, which yes, includes traveling to Washington, D.C., to meet with elected officials who operate at an intensity that makes his SEC head coaches look calm and reasonable by comparison.
So … Mr. Commissioner, you want the job?
“Well, first I don’t know if anyone wants this face to be the face of anything,” the 59-year-old replied, chuckling, as he sat beside Saban, who also laughed. “But I think the job of people in my position is to create the best world possible for those who should truly be the face of the sport, and that would be the competitors.”
And that brings us back into the arena …
The coach
Saban’s ring collection is now stored at his house, which leaves only three active FBS head coaches with national championship jewelry. North Carolina‘s Mack Brown, who won his natty in 2005, and two men who have earned two titles each in the College Football Playoff era and will begin their roads toward a third this weekend against each other, Clemson‘s Dabo Swinney (2016 and 2018) and Georgia‘s Kirby Smart (2021 and ’22).
Both are relatively young but still veterans. Both are outspoken. Both are already arguably the faces of their conferences, the ACC and SEC. OK, fellas, who wants it?
“I think when there’s something you philosophically believe in that helps or hurts the game, it’s my job to make the game better and keep the game around for my kids and my kids’ kids,” Smart said. “I think football’s a really good game, and if you don’t do things that you believe in, then why are you coaching?
“Nick taught me that, to look at things through a lens of what’s best for the game of football and maybe not what’s best for you. I’m a big believer in leaving the game better than you found it.”
All right, Coach Smart! Folks, I think we have a willing candidate!
“Nobody replaces Nick.”
Aw, dammit.
“The spot he was at was so far ahead of everybody else, the mantle fits him and not any of us,” Smart said. “There’s a group of college coaches who are experienced and have won games and done a great job, but there’s none of them in Nick’s stratosphere.”
OK, fair enough … Dabo?
“I’ve got a job to do, and my job is those players and serving them and my staff. Hopefully, I can do my job in a way that can be a good example to people,” said the man who admits he has worked to step back from the spotlight so that others can have it. And so as not to get burned.
“There was a time I answered every question that anybody ever asked me. I never went into press conferences with pre-planned answers. I’m just available. I would answer any question anybody asked me about anything. But as we had success, it became a point where they only wanted to ask me a question to attach their agenda, and it’s just not worth it. It’s a distraction for my team. So you have to be guarded. I wish I could always speak exactly how I want to, but you have to be guarded. That’s just the world we live in now.”
Perhaps Swinney and Smart, even at only 54 and 48 years of age, are too tied to the way the game used to be, too busy wrestling with what it is now, to free up the time it takes to be the Face. In that case, we need to go younger.
How about 38? How about a guy who spent a season working for Saban as a graduate assistant at Alabama, where he won a ring, then spent four years under Smart, winning another title as defensive coordinator? And how about a guy who has been at his current job for only two years, but is already 22-5, has installed an SEC-type recruiting mentality on the West Coast, seems to have mastered the transfer portal and is one of if not the headliner of the Pac-12’s migration into the Big Ten?
Hey, Dan Lanning, head coach of the always trendy Oregon Ducks, do you have anything big and philosophical you’d like to add?
“The game right now is as fun as it has ever been to watch,” Lanning said. “We’re seeing a lot of different teams in a position to compete at the end of the season now, and that’s only going to improve with the expanded College Football Playoff. The sport, to me, is in as good a shape as ever, but with so much change, that’s probably tainted a lot of peoples’ view. We start playing games and I think it will remind everyone that this sport is as great as it’s ever been.”
I mean, dang, y’all. Those sound like words that would come from a fresh, new Face of College Football to me. Whaddya say, Lanning?
“No!!! Sounds like a job for Kirby. Lane Kiffin for entertainment.”
Speaking of entertainment, maybe the Duck is available?
Facing the truth of The Face
No one really wants the gig. At least, that’s what they claim. But when one looks back through the history of the Face of College Football, it is a yearbook of people who all said the same thing, that they weren’t looking for the job, but the job found them. Even when that has been true, it was only to a point.
Grange, Flutie, Walker and Tebow. Jim Brown. Roger Staubach. Peyton Manning. Walter Camp. Knute Rockne. Woody Hayes. Jimmy Johnson. Lou Holtz. Saban.
Natural leaders naturally lead. The position finds them, even if they say they don’t want it. Because the reality is that deep down, they really do. In the end, we can try as hard as we might to assign the task and title from the outside, but becoming the Face of College Football, as with any face, is something we grow into.
“No one wants extra work, especially in these jobs as coaches and players and administrators,” Saban said earlier this summer. “But if you truly love something, if you really want it to be something that other people will love like you do even after you’re gone, then you take on that work. Because it has to be done.”
ESPN reporter David Hale contributed to this report.