Things haven’t gone well for Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce on the field in 2025. While Kelce has seen his stats increase following a down year in 2024, that hasn’t led to many Chiefs wins.
Week 15 proved to be the final nail in the coffin for the team. The Chiefs not only lost quarterback Patrick Mahomes to a torn ACL, but were eliminated from the playoffs for the first time since 2014.
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That’s unfamiliar territory for Kelce, who spoke candidly about both scenarios on Wednesday’s episode of “New Heights.”
When talking about Mahomes, Kelce said watching the injury happen on the field didn’t feel real. He summed up the whole experience succinctly, saying, “S*** just sucks, man.”
“On a freakish play, to see 15 go down like that, it f***ing, it was almost like it wasn’t real. S*** just sucks, man. For a guy who puts in that much and puts his body on the line week in and week out, and … makes the best of it by how hard he works. It sucks, man.”
Mahomes and Kelce are obviously very close. On the field, the two have immense chemistry. No pass catcher has hauled in more touchdowns from Mahomes, as the pair has hooked up for 59 scores. Off the field, the two are often seen together as well. That has to make the injury hurt even more for Kelce.
With the Chiefs now out of the playoffs, Kelce vowed to keep playing hard so the team can “end on the highest note that we can.”
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It marks the first time since Kelce’s second season in the NFL that the Chiefs won’t make a playoff appearance. Kelce, as you might expect, was disappointed about that streak ending.
“It’s obviously f***ed up, but it’s a new feeling. So, all I know is to go out there and play my ass off and to show up and give my guys the best chance to win. That’s the mentality, man.”
At 36, it’s unclear how much more football Kelce has left in him. While some have speculated he could call it a career after the season, Kelce has made no declarations about his plans just yet. It’s also unknown how much the Chiefs’ failures in 2025 could impact Kelce’s decision. Does he really want to go out after the team’s worst year in over a decade?
As Kelce noted, the Chiefs still have three games left on the schedule. While the results won’t matter, Kelce is going to try his best to give Chiefs fans something to cheer down the stretch. He doesn’t know any other way to play.
There are three weeks to go in the season, but for the most part we can already figure out the 14 teams that will be in the playoffs.
There are nine teams alive for seven spots in the AFC, and for the moment that includes the loser of the AFC North race between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Ravens. The Steelers and Ravens have a combined 0.1% chance to get a wild-card spot, according to DVOA. The other team on the outside looking in with a shot at a wild-card spot is the Indianapolis Colts, who face a tough challenge with Philip Rivers at quarterback.
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In the NFC, there are 10 teams alive but the Dallas Cowboys are down to about a 1% chance. The loser of the Carolina Panthers/Tampa Bay Buccaneers NFC South race has a 0% shot at a wild-card spot, DVOA says. The Detroit Lions, currently the No. 8 seed, still have a chance to get a wild-card spot, so there’s intrigue at the bottom of the NFC picture. There just aren’t many spots still realistically open, even if the Los Angeles Rams and Denver Broncos are the only teams to clinch.
Just because we can make a good guess on which teams are in the field doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty at stake over the final three weeks. Week 16 has a few games that are critical to division races.
One of them is one of the NFL’s oldest and best rivalries. The NFL picked out a winner for Saturday night, as the Green Bay Packers face the Chicago Bears. The 9-4-1 Packers fell a half-game behind the 10-4 Bears when they lost to the Broncos, and while Green Bay wouldn’t be dead in the NFC North race with a loss Saturday, they’d be 1.5 games behind with two to go. Of course, getting that win becomes tougher without defensive star Micah Parsons, who is out for the rest of the season with a torn ACL.
It should feel like a playoff game on Saturday night. It feels like a division title showdown, and it’s not the only one this weekend.
(Yahoo Sports/Taylor Wilhelm)
Here are the other Week 16 games that will have the biggest impact on the playoff picture:
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Los Angeles Rams at Seattle Seahawks
It’s arguable that this is the best matchup of the entire regular season. Most rankings have the Seahawks and Rams as the top two teams in the NFL, and with both teams at 11-3, this Thursday night’s game feels like it will not only determine who wins the NFC West but the No. 1 seed in the NFC as well.
It’s possible the Rams lose but still win the NFC West. They have a much easier schedule (they play at Falcons and vs. Cardinals, while Seattle is at Panthers and at 49ers). If the Seahawks lose, it is very hard to envision them winning the division because they would lose the head-to-head tiebreaker due to a Rams’ season sweep.
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The entire NFC playoff picture changes based on who wins Thursday night.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers at Carolina Panthers
Because the Buccaneers face the Panthers two times in the final three weeks, Tampa Bay wins the NFC South by winning any two of its remaining three games. The Bucs have the tiebreaker over the Panthers if they sweep them or even if they split, due to record against common opponents.
That means the Panthers aren’t dead in the NFC South race if they lose, but it would mean Tampa Bay could clinch in Week 17 by beating the Dolphins. A win Sunday for the Panthers means they’ll at the very least be alive in Week 18 when they face Tampa Bay again.
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Jacksonville Jaguars at Denver Broncos
The Broncos are in the playoffs already and the Jaguars are pretty close to a lock. But this one still matters.
The Jaguars are trying to hold off the Houston Texans for the AFC South championship, and the Texans have the easier remaining schedule. A Jaguars loss at Denver and a Houston win Sunday against the Raiders would cause a tie atop the division. If the Jaguars lose Sunday and the Texans win out, Houston wins the division based on the tiebreaker of record in conference games, according to the Jaguars’ site.
The Broncos’ goal is obvious: Get the No. 1 seed. Denver would get it with two more wins; the Broncos have the tiebreaker over the Patriots due to a better record against common opponents.
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New England Patriots at Baltimore Ravens
While the Patriots are now a significant underdog to get the No. 1 seed, they still have to hold off the Bills in the AFC East after last Sunday’s loss. A defeat to the Ravens would knock the Patriots back into a tie for first place, if the Bills beat the Browns.
The Ravens might need to win out to take the AFC North. They are a game behind the Steelers in the division, though they face Pittsburgh in the season finale. If the Ravens lose either of their next two games, the Steelers could clinch the division before Week 18.
The tournament, which begins on June 11 and will be co-hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico, will see a $727 million total fund with $655 million of that to be shared among the 48 qualified nations, the largest field in World Cup history. Those teams that are eliminated in the group stage will leave with $9 million, while the runners-up in the final will take home $33 million.
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World Cup 2026 prize pool
Champions: $50 million Runners-up: $33 million 3rd place: $29 million 4th place: $27 million 5th-8th place: $19 million 9th-16th place: $15 million 17th- 32nd place: $11 million 33rd-48th place: $9 million
In 2022, World Cup winners Argentina received $42 million after defeating France in the final.
Four years earlier, France earned $38 million after winning the 2018 World Cup in Russia.
Since FIFA began making the amount of prize money handed out public, the total amount given to the winners has grown from $2.2 million to Italy at the 1982 World Cup to the $50 million to whoever lifts the trophy at MetLife Stadium on July 19.
Expectations were extremely high for Jayden Daniels and the Washington Commanders in 2025. After winning the Rookie of the Year award last season and receiving down-ballot MVP votes, Daniels was supposed to lead Washington back to the playoffs, and potentially contend for a Super Bowl.
That didn’t happen. Daniels battled a number of injuries and the Commanders disappointed. With the team sitting at 4-10 after Week 15 and Daniels dealing with an elbow issues, the Commanders decided to shut down the second-year quarterback for the rest of the year.
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Daniels spoke about that decision and his season on Tuesday, saying he was “super frustrated” by how things fell apart, per ESPN.
Though Daniels will remain on the team’s active roster, he won’t start the rest of the way. Instead, the team will go with veteran Marcus Mariota under center to close out the year. Daniels said he was improving, but did not pass enough markers to be cleared to play in Week 16.
“I don’t want to miss games at all,” Daniels said. “It’s been a frustrating year, disappointing year. You learn from it and move forward.”
The 24-year-old added that he’s focused on his long-term status, saying, “Longevity is a big thing, so you want to be smart with this.”
The Commanders have a number of reasons for making that decision. At 4-10, the team’s season is essentially over. Risking a bigger, more significant injury to Daniels that could compromise 2026 seems foolish at this point.
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If healthy, Daniels could easily turn the team back into a contender next season. The former LSU star looked like a future star as a rookie, throwing 25 touchdowns against nine interceptions last season. After one year, he looked like the best quarterback in the 2025 NFL Draft.
But after Daniels’ injury-riddled 2025, that’s no longer a sure thing. New England Patriots quarterback Drake Maye is the MVP candidate this time around and Chicago Bears quarterback Caleb Williams has made significant improvements in Ben Johnson’s system. Bo Nix and the Denver Broncos, meanwhile, have already clinched a playoff spot.
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Daniels isn’t really competing against those players, he’s competing against his own health. The Commanders are probably wise to shut down their franchise player with the season lost. Now, it’s up to Daniels to prove he can stay healthy enough to be the superstar Commanders fans thought they had after an excellent rookie year.
Back in 2016, Leicester City won the Premier League despite having preseason odds of 5000-1. Two years later, 16th-seeded UMBC knocked off No. 1 Virginia in the NCAA tournament, a feat estimated at worse than 1000-1 odds. And in 2019, the Avengers overcame 14 million-to-1 odds to beat Thanos.
Compared to all that, then, the Cowboys’ 1-in-64 chance to make the playoffs seems downright easy.
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Yes, unbelievable as it seems, the 6-7-1 Cowboys are still technically alive in the playoffs. Dallas can’t claim the wild-card spot — the best the Cowboys could do is finish 9-7-1, and they’d lose a tiebreaker to Green Bay for that last spot. That means the only way for Dallas to get into the playoffs is via an NFC East title … and there’s only one way to an NFC East title.
Yes, Dallas has to win out, and Philadelphia has to lose out. That’s it. That’s the only scenario out of 64 possible if-then options. (Note that this is different from actual odds; this assumes that every game is a 50-50 proposition, which is obviously not the case.)
So in the interests of science, game theory and making Cowboys fans squirm, let’s run through the schedules to close out the season:
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Dallas faces the Chargers at home before going on the road against Washington and the Giants.
Philadelphia gets Washington at home and away, with a game in Buffalo in between.
Yeah, uh … no disrespect to the Washington Commanders and their fans, but that doesn’t look good for the Cowboys. At all. Buffalo is playing well enough to beat Philadelphia, but expecting Washington to take down the Birds twice in three weeks? Probably not happening.
There will be autopsies and postmortems aplenty for the Cowboys’ season, the way there always are. But it’s already obvious their problems run through an atrocious defense. Only three teams have surrendered more than the Cowboys’ 374.9 yards per game. Only five have intercepted fewer passes. Only the Bengals have allowed more than Dallas’ 30 points per game. No defense has committed more than Dallas’ 113 penalties, no team has allowed more drives to end in an offensive score (48.7 percent).
The defense’s impotence is all the more maddening — even without the obvious absence of Micah Parsons — when you consider that Dallas’ offense leads the league in total yardage and passing yardage, and ranks fourth in points per game. Dak Prescott leads the league in yardage, attempts and completions, and ranks second in Quarterback Rating and third in touchdowns. The offense finally came together right as the defense fell apart.
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The on-field results have been pretty much what you’d expect. Only two of Dallas’ seven losses have been by fewer than eight points. And Jerry Jones has been less than glowing in his review of Matt Eberflus, the Cowboys’ third defensive coordinator in three seasons.
So yes, the Cowboys will almost surely miss the playoffs once again. It’s been an even 30 seasons since Dallas reached even the NFC conference championship. But hey, if they could pull it off this year, well, that might just warrant another eight-episode Netflix documentary.
On the campus of James Madison, two head football coaches are hard at work.
Within the JMU football operations center, outgoing coach and new UCLA coach Bob Chesney and his coaching staff are grinding on preparations for the biggest game in the school’s history — the College Football Playoff bout on Saturday night at Oregon.
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Less than a mile away, inside Hotel Madison, new JMU coach Billy Napier and his staff are knee-deep in preparations for the next version of the JMU football team — scouting players, assembling a staff and examining the transfer portal.
Every now and again, these two intersect. For instance, Napier attends most practices, watching Chesney coach Napier’s future players from afar. The two, Chesney and Napier, have even met to share information — Napier helping with Chesney’s transition to the power conference level and west coast (Napier has experience in both), and Chesney helping Napier’s transition to JMU.
In the middle of it all is a chance at one of the biggest upsets in college football history.
“The three of us — me, Bob and Billy — have an agreement that the most important thing is the 2025 team,” JMU athletic director Matt Roan said. “We are proving you can work together for the betterment of a team and program. Now, is it awkward? Yeah, there is an awkwardness to it, but we’ve handled it as good as we could have.”
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After all, Roan added, “What’s the alternative?”
As this year’s College Football Playoff revs up with four first-round games this week, one thing has impacted a majority of the 12-team field: the coaching carousel.
Eight playoff-bound teams have experienced coaching staff turnover to some degree.
Three programs have lost or will soon lose their head coach (JMU, Ole Miss and Tulane). Two teams, Texas A&M and Oregon, have each lost both their offensive and defensive coordinators — three of them (Collin Klein, Will Stein and Tosh Lupoi) to head coaching gigs. Ohio State’s offensive coordinator, Brian Hartline, and Alabama’s receivers coach, JaMarcus Shephard, have accepted head coaching jobs at USF and Oregon State, respectively.
Lane Kiffin made the biggest splash of the prolonged college football coaching carousel with a drama-filled move to LSU. (Tyler Kaufman/Getty Images)
(Tyler Kaufman via Getty Images)
While all but Kiffin are remaining at their gigs through the end of their teams’ playoff stretch, the juggling act is intense enough to beg a couple of questions: Will their team’s play be impacted by the situation? And is there a way to avoid the carousel’s infringement on the postseason?
“We’ve got to fix the calendar,” said Will Hall, the former Tulane assistant who will replace Jon Sumrall as head coach after the Green Wave’s playoff run ends. “We are the only sport in the world where free agency for players and coaches begins in the middle of the season.”
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An expanded playoff has further complicated an already-frenetic time — mid-November through mid-January — in the sport of college football.
In that span, teams are completing their regular seasons; preparing or playing in bowls and, now, playoff games; attempting to retain their current roster while signing a new class during the December early signing period; scouring the transfer portal (i.e. tampering) to prepare for its opening in January; hiring, firing and attempting to retain coaches; and, oh by the way, players are completing their final exams.
Whew.
Shifting and shrinking the portal window from December to January hasn’t necessarily produced the desired effect. In fact, the coaching hiring cycle has accelerated faster than ever and players are already announcing their portal entrance weeks before January arrives.
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How does all of this get fixed? Some believe it isn’t possible as long as college football is tethered to higher education. The university’s academic calendar makes it virtually impossible to structure college football in the same way as the NFL, where free agency and coaching transitions mostly unfold after the playoffs.
Most spring semesters begin in the middle of the playoffs in early to mid-January.
“I don’t think there is a way to avoid it,” Chesney said. “The NFL doesn’t have to worry about players enrolling in classes. If everybody started in February [class], you could do it then.”
Bob Chesney and James Madison are still alive in the College Football Playoff after he took the UCLA head coaching job. (Hans Gutknecht/Getty Images)
(MediaNews Group/Los Angeles Daily News via Getty Images via Getty Images)
However, a group of college athletic administrators is reigniting the topic. Members of the NCAA Football Oversight Committee are in the midst of exploring a holistic examination of the 365-day football calendar.
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Should Week Zero be opened to all teams (right now, teams need a waiver)? Can the entire regular season eventually be moved up? Is the portal in the right place? What becomes of spring practice or the proposed summer OTAs? And should the early signing period move back to February or forward to the summer?
Another unanswered question: Will the playoff expand beyond 12 teams? That answer — officials are mostly studying a 16-team format — may dictate the answer to a lot of those questions.
So, what is the solution to all of this? How do you stop the madness of teams preparing for some of the biggest games in school history while juggling coaching staff hirings and firings and player re-signings?
“I don’t feel comfortable saying, ‘Here’s the answer!’” said Texas A&M athletic director Trev Alberts.
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Alberts says the “chief challenge” in college football is that it is devoid of “centralized decision-making” — a point made by many through the years who argue that a new entity, board and/or commissioner is needed for a sport whose governance is fractured among conferences with differing missions, ideals and geographic and cultural footprints.
“Everybody is doing what they should be,” Alberts said. “Every commissioner is fighting for the membership they lead. Many times, those are cross purposes. There isn’t centralized decision-making. Could you get to a point where that is the case? I think so. But I’m not naive to know that a lot of the pain we’re going through right now is ultimately necessary to get where you want to go.”
How long are we from such a setup? His coach, Mike Elko, has the answer: not close.
“What’s going to have to happen is some group or board together needs to make decisions for the best interest of college football,” Elko said. “It just seems like we’re a long ways from that.”
In the meantime, Elko has an offensive coordinator, Klein, juggling head coaching duties and preparing for the Aggies’ playoff game against Miami. In Oregon, head coach Dan Lanning has two coordinators, Stein and Lupoi, operating as head coaches for Kentucky and Cal, respectively, while gearing up for the JMU Dukes.
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In Oxford, Pete Golding is making his head coaching debut leading Ole Miss to its first-ever playoff game with a staff of five assistant coaches who have signed contracts with a rival school in the same conference. Golding has intentionally not changed Ole Miss’ practice schedule, meeting times, etc. in order to retain a level of consistency for the players.
However, he has brought in new offensive coaching hires who, like Napier at JMU, are mostly observing.
“Anybody for the 2026 piece of this is [for] retention of your current roster, being here available for your current roster, to meet them,” Golding said. “A lot of players want to have an idea of who they are going to play for.”
Meanwhile, down in New Orleans, Hall, the new Tulane head coach, is at least for one more week still occupying his offensive assistant role under Sumrall, the new Florida coach finishing out Tulane’s season.
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“Coach Sumrall said it: ‘I got two phones, two jobs and two hours of sleep,’” Hall said with a laugh during an interview this week. “I’m kind of in the same role. But both of my jobs are in the same town!”
At JMU, Chensey’s gig is a world away. As it turns out, that’s a positive. The three-hour time difference from Los Angeles to Virginia helps.
By day, he works on JMU. By night, he works on UCLA.
It makes for some long days. He’s on the phone until midnight East Coast time dealing with the Bruins and he’s out of the house by 6 a.m. for team meetings at JMU.
“I’m fortunate to have that three hours,” he said. “It allows you to balance even though it makes my day longer.”
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In the meantime, about a mile away, Napier and his new support staff are reviewing film of current players, conducting coaching staff interviews and attempting, as best they can, to be respectful of the current team’s playoff run.
Napier is unlikely to attend the Dukes’ game at Oregon, he said, as there’s just too much to do back in Harrisonburg. After all, the expectation is that most of Chesney’s coaching staff is heading to Los Angeles as well as a handful of players. Thirty more players will exhaust their eligibility and a few others he’d expect to transfer.
Napier is planning to have 60 new players next year.
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“It’s been a positive, but, look, it’s been a nightmare to do all these things at one time,” Napier said. “It’s beneficial for us to have a good showing in the playoff. If we win, then heck, let’s go to the next week!”
The Frontier League’s Joliet Slammers are leaning into their nickname after announcing that they will play an exhibition game at a local prison next season.
Old Joliet Prison, which was open from 1858-2002 and featured in the 1980 movie “The Blues Brothers,” will host “The Big House Ballgame” on April 30 featuring the Slammers and the Gateway Grizzlies.
“The Slammers are proud to be a part of a once in a lifetime celebration of the famous Route 66 and excited to help usher in a new era of baseball and community connections in Joliet,” said the Slammers in a statement. ‘”The Big House Ballgame’ will serve as the kickoff to a full slate of programs and community-wide activities throughout the city.”
It will come as no surprise that a member of the Veeck family is involved in this idea.
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William “Night Train” Veeck, whose grandfather Bill came up with ideas like “Disco Demolition Night” and many others, joined the Slammers as executive vice president of sales and marketing and part-owner in Jan. 2024.
Veeck’s father, Mike, and actor Bill Murray are also part of the ownership group.
It didn’t take long for Veeck to deliver an out-of-the-box idea to bring attention to the Slammers.
Last July, the Slammers dropped 2,600 hot dogs from a helicopter above their stadium in an attempt to set a Guinness world record.
According to the Slammers, Warden Edmund Allen introduced baseball to the prison’s inmates to improve morale and help with good behavior. Baseball games took place there until the facility closed in 2002.
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No word yet on how the Slammers will configure the field or how many fans will be able to attend the prison game.
NEW ORLEANS, La. — Jon Sumrall bursts into his office, out of breath and hustling toward his refrigerator.
This is a daily routine of his: a two-mile walk with wife Ginny — the one thing, he half-jokingly says, that preserves his marriage — followed by homemade smoothies for both of them.
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Out of the fridge comes an assortment of items: vegan protein powder, creatine, frozen bananas and strawberries, milk, peanut butter, a jar of honey and wilted spinach.
“Are these OK to use?” he asks a shrugging Ginny, as he sprinkles the leafy greens into a whirling blender.
How he’s managing to do both is simple to explain.
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“Not a lot of sleep,” he says.
Four hours of sleep a night, to be exact. It hasn’t slowed him down.
Just because he has two jobs doesn’t mean Sumrall stops his routines, like that two-mile walk, or his 5 a.m. morning runs and weight-lifting. In between, he finds himself in the midst of a College Football Playoff trip while preserving the Green Wave’s signing class and retaining current players on the roster, all while signing new players at Florida and hiring a coaching staff in Gainesville.
In a snapshot of this juggling act, on a recent Monday, Sumrall led practice in the morning in New Orleans, flew to Gainesville for his introductory news conference (he watched Tulane practice film on the flight) and then flew back Monday evening to be there for another practice Tuesday morning.
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If it sounds like a lot, it’s because it is.
“I drink SPARK [energy drink] in the morning and coffee in the afternoon,” he explains.
He’s not the only one doing this. In fact, as it turned out, his opponent in the American championship game, North Texas, had a coach, Eric Morris, who had already accepted the Oklahoma State job.
Sumrall had a plan prior to the American title game, win or lose.
“During our walk, that’s what we talked about,” he says. “Win, win or win. If the other alternative happens, here’s what we probably will do. I’ve spent more time on the win options. That’s what we want to do.”
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But why keep a coach around who’s leaving?
“We believe it’s the right thing to do for our student-athletes and it gives us the best opportunity to win those games,” athletic director David Harris says.
Jon Sumrall is introduced by athletic director Scott Stricklin as the new head coach of the University of Florida football team during a press conference on campus on Monday, Dec. 1, 2025. (Stephen M. Dowell/Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
(Orlando Sentinel via Getty Images)
In his agreement in accepting the Florida job, Sumrall was clear with Florida AD Scott Stricklin: I’m coaching my team the rest of the way.
North Texas agreed to the same despite Morris heading to Oklahoma State. The same goes for James Madison, where Bob Chesney — UCLA’s new coach — will continue coaching the Dukes in the playoff.
So, yes, two playoff-bound teams are coached by men who have accepted power league jobs. Another, Ole Miss, will be led by a coach in his first month, Pete Golding, after the departure of Lane Kiffin to LSU.
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In fact, earlier this week as Sumrall discussed his big move, the televisions in his office played clips of Kiffin’s introductory news conference at LSU. Sumrall smiles and points to the screen when asked about this year’s coaching carousel.
“There’s always timing. Not to name names,” he says with a chuckle.
Kiffin’s decision to leave Ole Miss — and the Rebels promoting Golding — stopped many other dominoes falling. Last Sunday, the American conference coaching moves to the SEC fell nicely in place: Alex Golesh (USF to Auburn); Sumrall (Tulane to Florida); Ryan Silverfield (Memphis to Arkansas).
But just 10 days ago, that’s not how many expected those hires to go.
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In fact, most believed that Golesh was bound for Arkansas, Sumrall to Auburn and Florida had its sights on Missouri’s Eli Drinkwitz or Washington’s Jedd Fisch if it didn’t snag Kiffin.
What happened? Florida drew the interest of Sumrall, then deep in negotiations with Auburn.
Asked about his choice, Sumrall said, “A lot of it for me was, ‘Do they believe in my vision?’ You want to do the job at a place that wants you to do the job your way.”
Sumrall’s way is tough, hard-nosed, fearless. He’s a former Kentucky linebacker and longtime defensive assistant and coordinator mostly in the South.
Sumrall took the Tulane job two years ago for a reason, he says. He wanted his next job to be one of the jobs.
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“I wanted a dream job,” he says. “Those are Florida, LSU, Texas, whatever, to me. The journey has been crazy. Knowing that I was going to go to Florida … I didn’t think about that ’til Sunday morning. Woke up Sunday morning and I was going to tell my team that day. My wife looked at me, ‘You’re going to be the head coach at the University of Florida.’ I’m like, ‘I know, it’s crazy.’”
At Florida, Sumrall will be the fifth coach in the last 13 years. The Gators have fired the last four — each of them having not lasted beyond Year 4.
Does this frighten him?
“I’m not scared. There’s not a lot that scares me. Maybe rattlesnakes,” Sumrall says. “I’m unapologetically myself. I’m going to be who I am. That job won’t change me.”
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Sumrall’s toughness comes from a tough mentor, Rich Brooks, his coach at Kentucky and the man who hired him as a graduate assistant. His organization skills? Those come from Neal Brown, the former West Virginia coach hired recently at North Texas who he worked with on the Kentucky staff.
They’ve prepared him, along with Mark Stoops, another Kentucky mentor, for this big gig.
“I worked my whole career to get this point,” he says. “It’s like a celebration but it’s the start of something special — it’s not the end. It’s a cool opportunity. I look forward to all of it — even the hard parts.”
It’s been quite a climb.
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He’s in his fourth season as a head coach — first two at Troy and last two at Tulane — and he’s lost a total of 11 games and won 43. His Troy teams won the Sun Belt in both 2022 and 2023, and his first Tulane team last year lost in the American championship game. This year, the Green Wave beat North Texas 34-21 for the conference title.
The winning has turned profitable for him and his family of six (he and Ginny have boy-girl twins and two more girls). He’ll more than double his contract at Florida at more than $7 million annual salary.
But that pales in comparison to the job itself. For instance, on Tuesday, Sumrall’s phone rang.
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It was Tim Tebow.
“He’s like, ‘You know why you’re at [the Florida] job? Your culture. You built your culture on toughness. When we were good under Urban, we were tough,’” Sumrall says. “‘We’ve watched you. You build it on toughness.’”
Tough? Like juggling two head coaching jobs while attempting to lead one team into the College Football Playoff while assembling a staff and recruiting for another?
After the Green Wave’s win over North Texas on Dec. 5, Sumrall returned to Gainesville for a few days and then flew back to New Orleans for mid-week practice in preparation for Tulane’s first-round game on Saturday.
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However, the entire Sumrall family isn’t moving to Florida until after Mardi Gras.
Why? Because the Sumralls rent a condo with other families on the parade route. The Florida coach will be back in Louisiana, at least for a few days for the annual festivities.
“I’m coming back for Mardi Gras,” he says laughing. “That’s selfish. That’s for me.”
San Antonio Spurs star Victor Wembanyama’s emotions following the team’s loss to the New York Knicks in the NBA Cup championship had nothing to do with the result of the game. Following the loss, Wembanyama was emotional while taking postgame questions before revealing he “lost someone today.”
Wembanyama fought back tears and took only two questions before leaving the press conference.
While Wembanyama did not provide details, The Athletic reported Wednesday that the Spurs star found out his grandmother died prior to Tuesday’s game. Wembanyama played in the contest, scoring 18 points in the 124-113 loss to the Knicks.
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It’s unclear whether the 21-year-old Wembanyama will take additional time to grieve. After a day off on Wednesday, the Spurs will return to the court on Thursday to take on the Washington Wizards. The team also plays on Friday.
It’s been a difficult season for Wembanyama so far. The third-year player has developed into a superstar when on the court, but missed 12 games due to a calf issue. He returned from that injury to play in the team’s last two games, but was on a minutes restriction in both contests.
The Spurs excelled despite Wembanyama’s absence, going 9-3 while the center was out. After winning just 34 games last season, the Spurs are one of the biggest surprises in the NBA thus far. Through 26 games, the team is 18-7 and sits as the No. 4 seed in the Western Conference.
Pete Golding did something interesting at the beginning of the first week of the rest of his coaching life.
He got a haircut.
That may not seem like a big deal. A lot of people get haircuts. But for those who’ve followed Golding’s journey to Ole Miss, where he’ll make his head coaching debut Saturday in the College Football Playoff, turning in his trademark shaggy locks for a more mature, close-cropped look is perhaps a subtle but meaningful signal of the weight he’s now carrying.
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“Pete knows what the position demands,” Rick Rhoades, Golding’s former college coach at Delta State, told Yahoo Sports this week. “When you’re the defensive coordinator and you operate from the press box and you’re in a situation where your head coach is very, very visible, you can probably present yourself one way. When you’re the face of the program, you’ve got to present yourself another. And I think Pete is very aware of that.”
After weeks of drama surrounding Lane Kiffin’s future, culminating with his departure to LSU after Ole Miss’ regular season finale, Golding was elevated to permanent head coach almost by default. With Kiffin gone, the playoff looming and no real opportunity to conduct a thorough coaching search — most of the logical Ole Miss candidates were already off the board by that point — it took athletic director Keith Carter a matter of hours to decide the best shot for the CFP now and continuity into the future rested with Kiffin’s defensive coordinator.
For Golding, that could cut both ways. Is there pressure to deliver a deep playoff run beginning this weekend with the No. 6 Rebels’ home game against American conference champion Tulane? Or perhaps this is a bit of a free roll, given the chaos Ole Miss has been through over the last month, with several assistant coaches trying to do two jobs at once and Golding himself having to transition from focusing only on the defense to leading the entire team.
Pete Golding was the defensive coordinator at Alabama and Ole Miss before becoming the Rebels’ head coach. (Jeffrey Vest/Getty Images)
(Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
It’s hard to say because nobody in the history of college football has ever had to make their head coaching debut with so much on the line. And when you consider where Golding started, the odds of a 41-year-old from Hammond, Louisiana, being in this unique, almost surreal position are probably too big to ever be calculated.
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“Never dreamed it, you know?” said Frankie DeBusk, who hired Golding to his first full-time coaching job in 2007 at D-II Tusculum University. “There’s several guys I hired that I probably envisioned would be fighting for that head job more than Pete. But it just goes to show you what can happen if you’re willing to take what you know and use it to the best of your advantage and not try to be someone you’re not.”
But who is Pete Golding?
For someone who has been at high-profile SEC programs since 2018, when Nick Saban plucked him out of UT-San Antonio and made him Alabama’s defensive coordinator, he has been both ubiquitous and somewhat unknown.
Unlike his predecessor, whose social media life almost seemed like a reality show, Golding’s only activity on Twitter/X is the occasional posting of a shark emoji, an apparent nod to the “landshark defense” that became associated with Ole Miss a decade ago. He doesn’t have a lengthy catalog of interviews that go much deeper than football philosophy. He hasn’t been groomed, the way many top assistants are, to be a front-facing personality that catches the attention of athletic directors.
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Until now, Golding has probably existed for many fans more as meme or an idea than a three-dimensional person; a defensive savant whose unkempt beard and wild, graying hair — combined with a DUI arrest after National Signing Day wrapped up in 2022 — might have given the impression of a fratboy who never grew up.
And at various points, that may not be entirely wrong.
“Oh, I can’t tell those stories,” David Duggan, who was Southern Miss’ defensive coordinator when Golding came on as defensive backs coach in 2014, said with a laugh.
But the wild-man aesthetic betrays both his seriousness and his talent, according to those who have known him from the beginning.
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“He’s one of the most focused individuals I’ve ever been around,” said Rhoades, who essentially signed Golding at Delta State as a throw-in with two other players he was recruiting from Hammond, a town that bisects the path between New Orleans’ northern suburbs and Baton Rouge. “We always measured people inside-out rather than height, weight and all that. So we knew Pete had something special. He was one of those guys that always seemed to be a step ahead.”
Unsure what he would do after his playing career, Rhoades talked Golding into sticking around as a graduate assistant. Around the same time, Rhoades had reached out to Ron Roberts, who is well known now as a former defensive coordinator at Baylor, Auburn and Florida, and who just took that job on Ryan Silverfield’s new staff at Arkansas.
But back then, Roberts was coaching at a high school near Fresno, California, after a stint at Tusculum where he worked under DeBusk. Rhoades, whose son was also on staff at Tusculum, convinced Roberts to leave California and be the defensive coordinator at Delta State.
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That’s where Golding’s fledgling career began to take shape.
“Ron really taught Pete how to be a defensive coach,” Rhoades said.
Roberts had learned the 3-3-5 defense from Joe Lee Dunn, the legendary defensive coordinator who spent time at both Ole Miss and Mississippi State, and in turn Roberts imparted it to Golding. When Golding’s internship was up and it was time to get a full-time job, DeBusk hired him at Tusculum for $27,000 to be the defensive backs coach.
By the next year, Golding was elevated to defensive coordinator running his variation of the 3-3 stack as Tusculum made the second round of the D-II playoffs.
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“We played that defense and blitzed and played a lot of man behind it, and you’ve got to have a lot of courage to be the defensive coordinator doing that,” DeBusk said. “But Pete was very confident in what he was doing and had our kids believing in it. You see coaches come and go, but Pete just had it. I mean, he’s got it today. You can’t put your finger on it, you know? Sometimes you coach great players and can’t really tell you why they’re a great player, they’ve just got it. And Pete’s that guy that when it comes to coaching. He’s just got it.”
Still, it didn’t seem like Golding was on a glide path to stardom. From Tusculum back to Delta State for a couple years to Southeastern Louisiana and then Southern Miss, it would have been hard to imagine constructing a career that culminated with a head coaching job in the SEC.
At the time, in fact, Golding didn’t even have an agent.
“He didn’t think he needed one,” Duggan said.
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That changed after Golding went to UTSA, where he constructed a defense that ranked among the top 10 in yards allowed in 2017. At that point, the agents were recruiting him — including Jimmy Sexton, who represented many of the heaviest hitters in college football.
That connection helped Golding make the huge leap from UTSA to Alabama, even though Nick Saban had never spoken to him before a whirlwind courtship that ended with Golding and Tosh Lupoi sharing defensive coordinator duties for the 2018 team that got torched by Clemson in the national championship game.
Immediately and almost every day thereafter, Golding became the target of Alabama fans’ criticism any time something went wrong. It got so intense, in fact, that Golding’s father Skip — a former coach himself — called into “The Paul Finebaum Show” on a couple occasions to defend his son.
At one point in the fall of 2022, Skip Golding even threatened the longtime Finebaum caller “Legend,” in one of those only-in-the-SEC scenarios.
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“Give me his address,” Skip Golding said. “I’ll meet his ass because I ain’t scared. I’m from south Miami.”
It’s probably no coincidence that Skip hasn’t been heard from since. In fact, nobody in Pete Golding’s family, including his father, mother and brother, responded to interview requests from Yahoo Sports.
When he left to join Kiffin’s Ole Miss staff after the 2022 season, there was a sense around the SEC that Alabama wasn’t particularly disappointed to see him go after a couple years where the defensive numbers were fairly pedestrian. It’s unclear how true that is; Saban has never acknowledged any break in the relationship, and Golding has maintained that family reasons (particularly his wife’s roots in Mississippi) played a role in what seemed like a lateral move at best.
It’s turned out to be the sweet spot. If anything, Golding is positioned now where his deep relationships in the state could pay off particularly now as fans galvanize behind the anti-Kiffin.
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“He’s done such a good job of recruiting the state,” said Duggan, now the head coach at Jackson Academy. “If you’re Lane Kiffin, you come into the high schools with Pete because he had been on the ground, laying the foundation. Lane did a good job, but he doesn’t have the relationship component like that. Pete established all those relationships personally. He’s a really good guy, he’s really smart and the high school coaches all really, really like him. He’s going to have the support from all the high school coaches in the state, I promise you that.”
Already, it feels like a different era in Oxford. At his first media appearance since becoming head coach, Golding vowed that even though his job responsibilities and salary might be changing, “I’m not changing who I am, I’m not changing what the hell I wear. Going to yoga, playing pickleball, I ain’t doing any of that [expletive]. I am who I am.”
Those who know him well believe it.
“He’s just so grounded,” DeBusk said. “He’s a special person because he won’t let any of the other stuff get to him. Never has. Loves to coach ball, loves to be around players, loves to make a difference in their lives. You put him on the board, he’s as good as it gets. He’s just a special person when it comes to relating to 18- to 22-year-old kids. At the same time, he’ll be able to talk to the biggest donor Ole Miss has or the lady that works in the cafeteria. He has that knack about him and he doesn’t put on a façade.”
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As everything was swirling in Oxford with Kiffin’s impending departure, Golding texted DeBusk, reminiscing about the days at Tusculum when they went to the Moose Lodge in Greeneville, Tennessee, to celebrate after a big win.
“He said, ‘Coach, it’s enjoyable and I’m doing a lot of great things, but I had just as much fun back then,’” DeBusk said. “But that’s him. He’s probably walking around with a wrinkled T-shirt on right now. He’s not trying to be something he’s not.”
The reality is, Golding’s lack of varnish will either play extremely well or horribly depending on how Ole Miss performs in this CFP and over the next couple years. Though the clean-looking haircut may signal the first hint of image consciousness, injecting Golding into the SEC head coaching ranks should be a breath of fresh air for a sport that always needs more characters on the sideline.
“He’s a lot different than his predecessor, and I don’t mean that positively or negatively, but he won’t try to be anybody other than Pete,” Rhoades said. “I would be shocked beyond belief if he’s not his own man.”
