CFB Newsletter: Meet 2025's Greatest Turnaround Team
This week, the Kennesaw State Owls highlight the newsletter.
Welcome to the College Football Newsletter, where every moment merits fireworks.
UMass played NIU on Tuesday, and fireworks were in the air for the occasion. No, the Minutemen didn’t win, but they did kick a field goal in the fourth quarter to prevent a shutout and inadvertently created one of the most absurd celebratory moments in recent college football history. The final score was 45-3. UMass is 0-10 and has been outscored by a combined 271 points. That’s a lot of points! To put that into perspective, we can look to the inverse in the Indiana Hoosiers, who have been outscoring teams by 325.
Things look bleak in Amherst. But the beauty of college football is that programs can turn their luck around pretty quickly. Just ask the Kennesaw State Owls, who we might be able to call Tennessaw State pretty soon. The Owls are 7–2 overall and undefeated in Conference USA as they take on Jacksonville State this weekend. But just last season they were 2–10, with their win over Liberty as one of the crowning upsets that defined the 2024 season. So I asked Richard to explain how the Owls changed their fortune in a calendar year:
Kennesaw’s drive to become Tennessaw is one of the most impressive non-Indiana turnarounds we’ve seen in recent college football. Kennesaw has barely been an FBS program. Not only was head coach Jerry Mack tasked with turning around a team in general, but he was doing the dual thing of turning a bad team around while transitioning them to compete at the FBS level. Then it became a matter of competing significantly at the FBS level rather than just being happy to be here.
Their old coach, Brian Bohannon, was fired pretty sloppily overall. But that’s then and this is now, and Jerry Mack has done a great job at Kennesaw State.
Part of this is certainly because the portal era allows you to do this, as far as quickly flipping a roster. But it’s not like Kennesaw State has $15 million to throw at players to flip a roster. This is a great job of scouting and developing by both Jerry Mack and director of player personnel Peter Chung.
Can something similar happen to UMass? Maybe! Will it? You should stay tuned to your Split Zone Duo subscriber feed for more on that situation in the next couple of days. Maybe even today? We’ll see.
Here’s what the SZD crew dropped into your podcast feeds this week
Alex and Richard have a second mailbag episode for you, where they talk about how there are more legitimate contenders for the National Championship this season compared to others. Spoiler: Alabama isn’t one of them. You can listen to part one of the mailbag here.
Rodger Sherman is back for the Tasting Menu to talk about everything Week 12.
David Haddad of The Loyal Sons joined the Main Course presented by Modelo to talk about the most important thing happening in college football this week: a Pitt home game? Listen to David and Alex convince themselves in real time into rooting for Pat Narduzzi beyond this season, despite their many complaints about his tenure with the Panthers. Their reactions are even better, so check out the segment over on YouTube.
We also write a lot, including about non-CFB subjects
For Slate, Alex wrote about the Cleveland Guardians betting scandal and examined how baseball got here.
Rodger relaunched his newsletter as Sports! If you haven’t done so already, go sign up. ALEX DO NOT READ THIS NEXT PART: Rodger’s latest post is about how Steelers QB Aaron Rodgers is losing to opponents and also to Father Time.
And one more very important note:
Be on the lookout for Richard on the UConn-Air Force sidelines this week for CBS Sports. When you see him on your TV, send us a screenshot on your preferred social platform.
SZD social fun of the week
Richard and Alex argued about Omar Cooper’s game-winning TD catch. Alex thinks it was an all-time college football catch but Richard immediately tells him to pump the brakes on that. Which side are you on? I’m personally on Team Alex because of the context of that catch.
Thanks for reading, have fun watching this week’s games, and we’ll talk to you soon.
This is great! Hawaii would be an excellent subject for one of these, too. Timmy Chang single-handedly killed Year Zero.