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Hello. It’s no longer March. I guess this is a college football newsletter again. But first:
This Is April: If you can win at FAU, you can win anywhere
On Nov. 30, 2023, Indiana gave JMU’s Curt Cignetti the callup. It’d become arguably college football’s most impactful hire of the last century, at least outside of Alabama.
About three months after hiring Cignetti, the Hoosiers made another coaching decision — retaining MBB coach Mike Woodson for another year after missing the 2024 men’s tournament — that’d go from debatable to enormous. It won’t end up being as sport-changing as their football move (because almost nothing could be), but it’s already created a wild alternate reality.
What if Indiana, instead of bringing back Woodson, brought home local native and Hoosier alumnus Dusty May, who’d taken FAU (FAU!) to 2023’s Final Four? Despite being mentored by Bob Knight, he doesn’t throw furniture. He was right there.
Imagine the Hoosiers having both Cignetti and May right now. Maybe May’s hypothetical Hoosiers could’ve signed UConn hero Braylon Mullins, Indiana’s top high school player last year. Then maybe taken Michigan’s place last night, winning the national title. In Indianapolis.
But by the time Indiana was interested in May, it was a year too late, at least for the foreseeable future.
Michigan’s gain, and what a gain. First championship since 1989, breaking the Big Ten’s drought since 2000 Michigan State.
- May’s Wolverines finished as the third-highest-scoring team in tournament history, even though they beat UConn in a vision-warping sarcophagus whose left-side-of-your-TV-screen basket was apparently being guarded by gnomes (and also for half the game by Michigan’s Morez Johnson Jr. and company).
- Per Sports Reference’s SRS metric, they’re the highest-rated team since 2008 Kansas. In Ken Pomeroy’s ratings since 2002, no other squad has ever been this much better than the average team from its season.
- These Wolverines were so dominant throughout that, when paired with last night’s dismal scoring environment, it sort of ruined the end of the tourney. Not that Michigan will ever care, or should.
What’s the lesson of Michigan hiring May and Indiana hiring Cignetti?
Hire overachievers, first of all. Not just coaches who inherited machines and kept them rolling, and not just those who’ve worked for guys you’ve heard of. Rather, I’d look for those who’ve turned little things into big things.
No Michigan championship could ever remotely compare to what Cignetti accomplished (though May inheriting an 8-24 team and quickly portaling it into this behemoth in two years is of course amazing). But you know which turnaround was comparable to Cignetti’s championship? May’s FAU, which fell two points shy of a title shot despite having vastly, vastly fewer resources than the Big Ten’s Hoosiers.
“When May got his first head-coaching job at FAU in 2018, it was unimaginable that he’d be cutting down nets eight years later. He took FAU sight unseen, only to find out the program didn’t have a practice gym. His tiny office backed up to a janitor’s closet, and half the time it sounded like a construction zone. When grinding sounds could be heard on the other side of the wall, May would blurt out, ‘Dental chair.’ The Owls lifted weights in an area so small it looked like a closet, and May had goals installed on the second level of Baldwin Arena in what was once a yoga studio.”
That’s from CJ Moore’s report on leaving the stadium last night alongside May. It reminds me of this story on Cignetti’s pre-JMU gigs or this story on those of his JMU successor, Bob Chesney, now at UCLA.
If you can turn nothing into something, maybe you can turn something into everything.
More Madness:
- Sunday, UCLA’s women won the school’s first hoops crown since the men’s in 1995. Some might say this means the Big Ten has both basketball titles and the football title, but we all agree the Bruins are still in the Pac-12, right? Increasingly rare sentence about a national champ: “Seniors accounted for every point UCLA scored, starting with the two who had been Bruins for their entire college career.”
- By Jerry Brewer, the best thing I’ve read about Geno Auriemma’s emotional Friday meltdown against rival Dawn Staley.
- Women’s early top 25 for next season, headlined by the return of USC’s JuJu Watkins. Men’s rankings led by … Illinois!
- Two other new additions to this season’s list of champs: the men’s Division II Gannon (Pa.) Golden Knights and DIII Mary Washington (Va.) Eagles. UMW did it with a wild buzzer beater.
Quick Snaps
💰 Everything to know about the state of the SEC championship (and thus all other conference title games as well), now that prominent voices are saying the moneymaker’s time is running out.
🌀 Revised portal rankings: top 20 transfer QBs for the upcoming season, led by Miami’s aggressive grab of Duke’s Darian Mensah.
- Also, the top G6 transfers heading up to the Power 4, led by Oklahoma State importing North Texas’ roster.
⏰ I would say Uar Bernard is the prototypical NFL Draft prospect, but his pro day workout was somehow way more impressive than that. Minor complication: The Nigeria native just started learning football.
😐 There’s another White House executive order on college sports, this one attempting to restrict transfers. Great news for lawyers.
🤔 James Franklin intends to be much more involved in Virginia Tech’s offense than he recently was in Penn State’s.
💎 Diamond time. Texas Tech overtakes the top spot in our softball rankings, while Alabama and Auburn enter our baseball top 10.
Oh Right, Football: Who’ll be this year’s top-10 tumble?
Almost every football season, at least one highly ranked team will end up nowhere near its initial ranking. Last year was special, with a series of slip-ups ranging from preseason No. 2 Penn State beating No. 4 Clemson in the Pinstripe Bowl to No. 17 Kansas State going 6-6.
(As always, this unpredictability is what makes college football fun, and isn’t any particularly viable argument against the existence of preseason rankings, which are harmless. It’s true.)
Last offseason, I managed to clock LSU as fraudulent, though I was a believer in Clemson for once, so I deserve no credit. However, the search is on for this year’s most suspicious team that could start in the top 10.
That search starts with Manny Navarro’s list of the biggest questions facing each team that finished in 2025’s AP Top 25. Yeah, that photo of Kalen DeBoer was a spoiler alert, because this was the part that unsettled me the most:
Q: Can the Tide get back to being bullies at the line of scrimmage?
“Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, we’re sure you heard about Alabama’s struggles running the football. Not only did the Crimson Tide swing and miss at landing a premier running back in the portal, but six of their top seven offensive linemen need to be replaced. Six O-linemen were added via the portal, but Mississippi State right tackle Jayvin James was the only Power 4 starter among them. The defensive line will also have several new starters.”
Plenty more here, including new QBs all over.
That’s it for today. Be safe, and maybe try to turn an enemy into a friend.
Last week’s most-clicked: Obviously, it was the post on arguably the 20 greatest shots in March Madness history.
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