NCAAF

10:00 AM ET Sometimes it’s better not to play, apparently. Miami ranked 15th in last week’s SP+ ratings and took a bye week before this Saturday’s big game against Clemson. Of the teams ranked just above them … UCF lost to No. 71 Tulsa Texas lost to No. 45 TCU Oklahoma lost to No. 41

12:48 AM ET This season, more than ever, strength of schedule could mean strength of conference — though the 13 College Football Playoff selection committee members likely would never publicly admit it. Over the past six seasons of the playoff, committee chairs have insisted that the group ranks teams, not conferences, but during a season

12:29 AM ET Do you hear it, off in the distance? It’s still faint, because we’re just a month into this strange attempt at college football in 2020, but it’s there — that familiar refrain, the siren song we’ve heard before. Listen. “S-E-C! S-E-C!” You thought this college football season would be different just because

6:37 PM ET Texas senior quarterback Sam Ehlinger said his school “deserves better,” after the No. 9 Longhorns lost at home to unranked TCU on Saturday. The 33-31 loss to the Horned Frogs marked the sixth time since 2017 that the Longhorns have entered a game ranked in the Associated Press poll and lost to

10:37 AM ET No. 14 Oregon, the Pac-12’s only ranked team, will open play at home Nov. 7 against Stanford as part of the league’s seven-game schedule announced Saturday. Despite the shortened season, the Pac-12 will still have two rivalry weekends. North Division rivals will play each other in Week 4 with this year’s installments

2:15 PM ET Notre Dame president Rev. John Jenkins has tested positive for COVID-19 and is showing mild symptoms, the school said in a message sent to the campus community on Friday. Jenkins learned this week that a colleague with whom he has been in regular contact tested positive, so he also got tested and

8:00 AM ET When Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott recently proposed expanding the 2020 playoff field to eight teams, he also was proposing — in a way — to bring Texas back. Because there is no team in the SEC, ACC, Big 12 or Big Ten that would have benefited more from an eight-team playoff field

8:00 AM ET The good news about Week 5: 18 ranked teams are in action. By 2020’s standards, that’s pretty fantastic. The less good news: 13 of them are favored by double-digits, and only four play each other. The No. 4 Georgia vs. No. 7 Auburn game (7:30 p.m. ET, ESPN) could be dynamite, but

4:16 PM ET Stanford cornerback Paulson Adebo has opted out of the 2020 season and will focus on preparing for the NFL draft. Adebo was a first-team All-Pac-12 selection as a sophomore and junior before announcing in January he would return for another season. “Unfortunately, 2020 has not gone according to plan,” Adebo tweeted, while

7:00 AM ET David M. Hale Close ESPN Staff Writer ACC reporter. Joined ESPN in 2012. Graduate of the University of Delaware. Harry Lyles Jr. This is the weekend you’ve been waiting for in college football. We’re slowly getting to a point where all Power 5 football is going to be played, and we’ll be

7:00 AM ET Chris ConnellyReporter Close Reporter for ESPN and ABC Stories appear on Outside the Lines and E:60, as well as College GameDay and SportsCenter, Has won three Sports Emmys and six Edward R. Murrow Awards, as well as a Prism, a Gracie, and a National Headliner Award. ON THE MORNING of Oct. 2,

3:02 PM ET PAC-12 commissioner Larry Scott suggested expanding the College Football Playoff from four to eight teams for this season, but the CFP management committee did not approve the idea during Wednesday’s meeting, CFP executive director Bill Hancock told ESPN. Although the playoff won’t expand this season, the commissioners have reviewed the current format

10:00 AM ET Editor’s note: The SEC is back! Except maybe LSU. Meanwhile, the Bottom 10 never went away, ready to rank the worst of college football while we await the return of the Big Ten, Pac-12, MAC and Mountain West. Inspirational thought of the week: All I hear is what you’re worthWith all those

7:52 AM ET Carlton Lance remembers only two of his son’s passes that could have been intercepted during North Dakota State‘s 16-0 season in 2019. There was an out route in a 27-16 victory against UC Davis when a cornerback cut under the Bison receiver and nearly picked off the pass. And there was a

1:57 PM ET Notre Dame will resume team practices Wednesday after reporting 18 positive coronavirus tests on Monday, but the program has changed the way it will eat its pregame meals and will now have rapid antigen tests available on the sideline because of lessons learned from their outbreak, coach Brian Kelly told ESPN on

4:59 PM ET Last week, minutes after news broke of Houston’s fourth false start, linebacker Keith Corbin tapped out two short tweets that summed up the Cougars’ current state of mind. “Can we just play one game man,” he posted shortly after North Texas announced — like three other teams before it — that it

8:00 AM ET The past month hadn’t been kind to Auburn. COVID-19 testing wiped out almost an entire week of football practice at one point in late August. In preseason camp, there wasn’t a single week when the Tigers were able to keep the same five offensive linemen together, and this was a group that

2:28 PM ET LSU became the first defending national champion to lose its season opener in more than two decades Saturday, and coach Ed Orgeron said the responsibility rests with him to turn things around heading into this weekend’s game against Vanderbilt. The Tigers, who entered Saturday’s game ranked sixth in the country, lost at