THE BRILLIANCE OF COLLEGE FOOTBALL: PRANCING WINNERS, BIGGER LOSERS

It’s crazy watching Georgia take command — Carson Beck drives a Lamborghini and dates a Cavinder? — with traditional powers making statements while Florida pays off Billy Napier and Dabo Swinney cries

     The charm of the college football season involves immediate audacity. See Georgia, trying to win a third championship in four years and promote Kirby Smart as a king, with Nick Saban engulfed in too many TV ads. Watch how Carson Beck is marketed into an early Heisman Trophy favorite, driving a Lamborghini Urus Performante and dating a social media star named Hanna Cavinder, of whom you know more than I do.

     Or USC, where Lincoln Riley has a fresh look — a defense! — in winning with Miller Moss and without Caleb Williams. Or Ohio State, where an NFL-worshipped freshman receiver named Jeremiah Smith caught two scores while Oregon struggled. Or Notre Dame, where the quarterback won at Texas A&M and tried peering toward the sky.

     “I remember looking up and trying to see the end of the stands, and, like, you literally just can’t even see the top,” said Riley Leonard, who transferred from Duke and grew up in Fairhope, Ala.

     Or, say, Alabama, where Kalen DeBoer has yet to surrender a point upon succeeding Saban. Or Penn State, where coach James Franklin refers to his quarterback as “Lamar Allar” after he rushed for significant yardage. Or Miami, where transfer quarterback Cam Ward throttled Florida in Gainesville and remarked, “I would say, advice to the fans, if you’re going to be loud, you have to be loud when we’re huddling. You can’t just be loud once we break the huddle; by that time, there’s no point. We hear the play, we communicated already.”

     Or Texas, where Dr Pepper talked starter Quinn Ewers into mocking his backup — Arch Manning, latest of the one-and-onlys from football’s noblest family — just before the kid threw and ran for touchdowns. “He’s got great hair and famous relatives,” said Ewers, who’d better play well this Saturday at Michigan if he wants the job long-term. Or Ole Miss, where Lane Kiffin has been sober for years and sends his dog, a Labrador retriever, to fetch the tee after a kickoff. Juice was on the injured list when the Rebels manhandled Furman, 76-0, thanks to quarterback Jaxson Dart’s five touchdown passes and a sixth on the ground. He also is a transfer, as you will notice all season and throughout the future.

     “Pain of watching someone else get the kickoff tee,” Juice wrote on X to his 57,000 account followers.

     The beauty of Week 1 winners is how they wipe out the miserable, especially when an inaugural 12-team playoff system keeps survivors around much longer. Already, the massive extremes of money — provided by ESPN/ABC, NBC, Fox Sports, CBS and other gladhanders  — have overtaken the meaning of the game, which has nothing to do with grade-point averages. Saban, making his debut on ESPN’s “College GameDay,” couldn’t sit still when Ohio State’s megabucks roster was discussed.

     “You guys keep talking about a $20 million roster. If you don’t pay the right guys, you’ll be s—t out of luck,” he said.

     “Congratulations — you just broke the internet,” Kirk Herbstreit said.

     Also ready to implode with grotesque finances is Florida coach Billy Napier. He will walk away with $26 million — not quite Jimbo Fisher’s $77.6-million buyout at A&M — but enough to scream what the Gators have done with the program since Urban Meyer left. Will Muschamp, Jim McElwain and Dan Mullen were blown out, with Napier next after a 41-17 loss Saturday. This comes only days after athletic director Scott Stricklin told Paul Finebaum, “I really believe Billy Napier is going to be the coach at Florida for a long, long time.” A better quote came from Mullen, who posted this on X: “The Florida coach that got fired went to three consecutive new years six games in his first three years. And was let go in his 4th season.”

     That would be him. Does Tim Tebow want the job?

     I’m serious.

     Almost in similar shape is Clemson’s Dabo Swinney, who once had a dynasty going with two national championships. Now? He refuses to use the transfer portal, which will lead to his demise. “You get beat like this, it’s on the head coach,” he said after losing 34-3 to Georgia. “That’s on me. When you lose like this, (the critics) have got every right to say what they want to say. This one will leave a mark. This will be one I won’t forget.” And Florida State? After legitimately raising hell last season when the Seminoles were omitted from the playoff, coach Mike Norvell has lost his team at 0-2.

     Brian Kelly was paid almost $100 million in base salary for 10 years. He’s failing to do what Saban and Ed Orgeron did at LSU. Three straight seasons, he has lost the season’s first game, not a way to claim a banner. “We had some guys play their butts off tonight and we're sitting here again, we're sitting here again talking about the same things!” said Kelly, pounding a table after losing to USC in Las Vegas. “About not finishing when you have an opponent in a position to put them away. But what we're doing on the sideline is feeling like the game is over.”

     Maybe he should open against McNeese State instead of accepting macho money. “I’m so angry about it that I've got to do something about it. I'm not doing a good enough job as a coach,” Kelly said. “I’ve got to coach better because it's unacceptable for us not to have found a way to win this football game. It's ridiculous. It's crazy.”

     What’s crazier — Deion Sanders will say — is why son Shedeur and two-way loon Travis Hunter won’t be in the upper Heisman running. Both players were sensational last Thursday. But Colorado barely won and likely will fall this weekend at Nebraska. First, Deion followed a 31-26 victory over North Dakota State by criticizing the CU administration for shutting down the air conditioning. “They have the propensity to turn the air off to save some money. I don’t know why we try to save money unless we’re broke around here,” he said. “But now it's hot, right? I apologize on behalf of the university. We can do better than that.”

     Never mind if his son threw for 445 yards and four touchdowns, three to Hunter. Watch Carson Beck. Watch Jaxson Dart. Watch Jalen Milroe. Watch Dillon Gabriel. Watch Miller Moss.

     “You ever felt like you won but you didn’t win?” Sanders asked.

     Get used to it. As we knew, this is the year of Georgia and Alabama and Ole Miss … and Ohio State and Oregon. And it still could be the year of USC and Notre Dame and Penn State and Miami. We will see if it’s the year of Texas.

     But it is not the year of ESPN/ABC, which was shut down by DirecTV as a carriage standoff begins. “The Walt Disney Co. is once again refusing any accountability to consumers, distribution partners, and now the American judicial system,” said Rob Thun, DirecTV’s chief content officer. “Disney is in the business of creating alternate realities, but this is the real world where we believe you earn your way and must answer for your own actions. They want to continue to chase maximum profits and dominant control at the expense of consumers.”

     I have Spectrum. I get Saban. But those with DirecTV?

     Congratulations. You end up losing Pat McAfee.

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     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.