When ESPN released its initial FPI college football rankings in June, Miami was No. 9 and Clemson was No. 11. Friday’s updated rankings saw both teams fall out of the Top 15, and SMU coach Rhett Lashlee called the rankings “rigged.”

Clemson is now No. 16 and Miami dropped to No. 17 in the updated FPI released Friday – the two highest-ranked ACC teams. SMU, meanwhile, moved up one spot from No. 20 to No. 19.

The top 15 teams include nine SEC teams, five Big Ten teams and independent Notre Dame. Given the ACC’s drop down the FPI rankings, Lashlee argued it’s “rigged.”

Clemson was picked to win the ACC once again in this year’s preseason poll while Miami checked in at No. 2 with seven first-place by the panel of voters. SMU followed behind as the No. 3 team in the preseason media poll and got two first-place votes.

Lashlee made waves during ACC Media Days this year when he took aim at the SEC, particularly with regard to its schedule. He also called the conference “top-heavy” considering six teams from the league have won national championships since 1964.

“There’s other leagues that claim depth,” Lashlee said. “The SEC has had the same six schools win the championship since 1964. Same six. Not a single one has been different since 1964. That’s top-heavy to me. That’s not depth.”

Rhett Lashlee’s point was about the grind of the ACC on a week-to-week basis, arguing it’s among the toughest conferences in the country. During his opening statement in Charlotte, he pointed out the league had multiple teams in the College Football Playoff, joining the SEC and Big Ten as multi-bid conferences in the first year of the 12-team format. SMU, of course, was one of those teams.

“When it comes to the ACC, there’s no question our league has separated itself as one of the top three leagues in America,” Lashlee said. “The data speaks for itself, whether it’s the revenue generation that we did this past year. I know the commissioner spoke to three leagues how to network. Our network five years in is thriving and does a great job covering us. Three leagues had multiple CFP participants this year. We were one of them.

“I think sometimes — you know, I was fortunate to win a National Championship in 2010 when I was at Auburn, and since then, over the last 14 seasons, one league’s won eight championships and two other leagues, us and the Big Ten, have won three National Championships, and another league hasn’t won any. I think that just shows you where our league has been on the national stage and where we think we’ll continue to be and where we belong.”

In the second quarter of the Indiana Fever’s 99-93 win over the Connecticut Sun on Sunday, Sophie Cunningham left the game after suffering a knee injury. After the game, Fever beat reporter Scott Agness revealed Cunningham is scheduled to undergo an MRI on Monday.

The injury occurred when Sun guard Bria Hartley crashed into Cunningham on a drive to the basket. Hartley seemingly fell onto the lower part of Cunningham’s leg, causing the Fever star to hobble away on one leg while clutching her injured knee.

Eventually, Cunningham fell to the floor and had to be helped to the locker room. She didn’t return to the game. With Cunningham out, the Fever rallied together and mounted a 21-point comeback, the largest in the franchise’s history.

Kelsey Mitchell was spectacular in the victory, tallying 39 points. It is tied for the most points a WNBA player has scored in a single game this season. Cunningham cheered on her teammate online, tweeting, “KELSEY FREAKIN MITCHELL.”

While the Fever were able to pull out a win on Sunday, Indiana fans can only hope Cunningham’s injury isn’t long-term. The former Missouri standout has been pivotal to the team’s success this season, averaging 8.9 points, 3.6 rebounds and 1.2 assists per game while shooting 47.7% from the field and 44.3% from beyond the arc.

Cunningham’s step up in production has been particularly important while Fever star Caitlin Clark has been sidelined. Clark last played on July 15 and has missed 21 total games this season.

Cunningham could be joining on the Clark on the sideline for the foreseeable future if her MRI doesn’t go well on Monday. It’s safe to say Cunningham’s family isn’t happy with the officials from the game on Sunday.

After Cunningham left the game with her injury, her sister blasted the WNBA online, seemingly claiming Hartley intentionally hurt Sophie.

“@WNBA maybe you should focus less on fining players for commenting on your poor officiating & more about hiring officials that are able to call a consistent game and protect your athletes. Pathetic. Praying for you,” she wrote.

Sophie Cunningham’s sister wasn’t the only family member who was frustrated with the injury. Cunningham’s mother took aim at Hartley following Sophie’s misfortune: “Hartley is a disgruntled player having trouble everywhere she goes; she’s plain mean and plays out of control.”

The Fever will take the court next on Friday against the Minnesota Lynx at 7:30 p.m. ET. The game will air live on ION.

After eight weeks of summer practice, Mark Pope gave his Kentucky Wildcats some time off before the fall semester begins later this month. But he’s having trouble keeping all of his players out of the Joe Craft Center practice gym, even while conducting an interview in his office right above the court.

“We tried to kick everybody off campus. To try to get everybody off campus to go home and refresh.” Pope said earlier this week on the Eye on College Basketball with Matt Norlander. “And then I’m sitting here in the office, and Denzel Aberdeen is down there in a full sweat getting a ton of work done. Reece Potter is out there getting shots.

“I mean, you think about DA. He’s got a national championship ring on his finger, and in our one week off, where we’ve told these guys they’re banned from the gym, these guys are still breaking in. That’s the type of group we have.”

This shouldn’t be too shocking to hear. If anyone knows what it takes to win at this level, it’s Aberdeen. After improving his individual game across all three seasons at Florida, capped with a national championship victory as a junior back in the spring, he transferred to Kentucky for a new challenge in what will be his final college run. It’s also nice to see Potter, a seven-footer coming over from a lower-level program in Miami (OH), embracing the grind, too.

Norlander did push back a touch, asking Pope how these guys are still able to get into the practice gym against the coach’s orders. For one, Pope is confident his players will still dedicate at least a few days off from working out during this break. But secondly, he’s not going to tell a group of players hungry to get better that they can’t eat, especially when it comes to someone like Aberdeen.

“Denzel, in the gym right now. Winner, winner, winner,” Pope said when asked to quickly describe Aberdeen. “He’s just a winner. He’s got a championship ring, man. That’s hard to get. He’s incredible.”

A seasoned super athlete at 6-foot-5 with a 42-inch vertical, Aberdeen expects to play a significant role for the Wildcats in 2025-26, potentially as a starter. He averaged 7.7 points in 19.8 minutes per outing last season off the bench on a loaded Gators’ squad. But when given starter minutes, he stood out: 14.4 points, 2.6 assists, and 2.4 rebounds in 29.8 minutes per outing while shooting 42.9 percent from the field and 41.4 percent from deep across five games as a starter against SEC foes.

If Aberdeen can put up comparable numbers in his role at Kentucky, all those extra hours in the gym will not only pay off for him as an individual but also for the Wildcats’ chances of making a deep NCAA Tournament run.

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The first includes college football’s biggest brands, which are dominating the list of favorites once again: No. 1 Texas, No. 2 Penn State, No. 3 Ohio State, and No. 4 Clemson.

Second are teams we’ve talked about over the past few decades that are using money and celebrity coaches to elbow their way into the conversation: Colorado, North Carolina, and No. 23 Texas Tech.

And then there are those who see the second year of the 12-team playoff and a different playing field created by revenue sharing and think they might be able to fashion a turnaround not unlike No. 20 Indiana’s worst to (almost) first resurgence last year: Pick a name, any name, but a good starting point might be UCLA (now with star QB Nico Iamaleava ) or Virginia (which, like Indiana last year, avoids pretty much every top team on its conference schedule).

Jeffrey Kessler, the attorney who helped broker the massive legal settlement that compelled virtually all schools eligible for the playoff to share millions with their athletes, says these times remind him of the early 1990s, when the NFL introduced unrestricted free agency and the salary cap.

“It’s a big change,” Kessler said. “But I think the system will adapt and the better-managed athletic departments will do well, as they always do. And athletic departments that are poorly managed won’t do so well, and probably didn’t do so well in the old system, either.”

Pay or no pay, one thing hasn’t changed in college football or any sport: Great players win games.

It’s no big surprise, then, to see Texas at the top of almost everyone’s watch list. Leading the Longhorns is none other than Arch Manning, the sophomore quarterback with the reported $6 million-plus NIL deal, and the latest burgeoning star in a family that has produced lots of them, from Archie to Peyton to Eli.

“For Arch, he grew up in this era of seeing high-level football,” Texas coach Steve Sarkisian said. “He’s watched Super Bowls. He’s watched gold jackets getting put on. He’s been to playoff games. He’s been recruited at the highest level as the No. 1 player in the country.”

Though it doesn’t always work out, there are plenty of schools where a player with hopes of winning the Heisman Trophy also will have a legitimate chance to win the CFP.

Besides Manning, other favorites include receiver Jeremiah Smith, whose success with defending champion Ohio State figures to depend a lot on whether the Buckeyes’ next quarterback, Julian Sayin, who is also in the Heisman mix, is as good as advertised.

Clemson QB Cade Klubnik is among the favorites, as are the Tigers for a repeat title in the ACC.

Quarterback Drew Allar is in his fourth season at Penn State, where the Nittany Lions are expected to face Ohio State for the Big Ten title (They play Nov. 1, and coach James Franklin is 1-10 against the Buckeyes).

Meanwhile, LSU appears to be only a secondary threat to Texas as Georgia and Alabama are in the SEC, but Garrett Nussmeier is in that Heisman mix and can stay there with a good performance against Klubnik and Clemson on Aug. 30.

Nobody has defined this new era of NIL as much as Colorado coach Deion Sanders.

Sanders brought his unapologetic swagger to a program that had been in the dumps for decades. He made the Buffaloes relevant, producing TV ratings, celebrity sightings, a Heisman winner in Travis Hunter, and maybe the most talked-about player in the sport in his own son, Shedeur, whose tumble to the fifth round of the NFL draft said as much about his talent as the football-loving public’s reaction to a new era in which players hold more power.

Winning? That was another thing. Deion Sanders is 13-12 over his two seasons, and now that Hunter and Shedeur are gone, the only big expectations for CU are coming from Boulder.

“The next phase is we’re going to win differently, but we’re going to win,” Sanders said.

Another celebrity coach, Bill Belichick, will start answering the question of whether fans and wins will follow him to North Carolina, a school where the excitement often doesn’t ramp up until basketball season.

The 73-year-old coach said he was building an NFL-style program — meaning everything he does, from nutrition to training to, yes, contracts, will look more like the pros. It was the sort of notion that used to be spoken softly but can now be used as a selling point.

“Everything we do here is predicated on building a pro team,” said Carolina’s new general manager, Mike Lombardi, who worked with Belichick in the pros. “We consider ourselves the 33rd [NFL] team because everybody who’s involved with our program has had some form or aspect in pro football.”

Over in Lubbock, Texas, the Texas Tech athletic program has never been afraid to swing big.

The program that gave us swashbuckling coach Mike Leach and Super Bowl quarterback Patrick Mahomes is being bankrolled by the billionaire head of its board of regents, Cody Campbell, who now has the school’s football field named after him.

Texas Tech has made a series of high-profile and expensive player signings — some for high schoolers who haven’t arrived yet — and is estimated to be spending more on NIL than any program in the country besides Texas.

“I know there’s a lot of expectations on this team,” said coach Joey McGuire, who is coming off an 8-5 season. “We look at it as opportunities.”

The new world of revenue sharing and an expanded playoff does give more reason for hope across the country.

When searching for blueprints of how that can work, most long-suffering programs will look to Indiana.

The Hoosiers were an also-ran for decades, with one Rose Bowl appearance ever and one winning record in a non-COVID-19 season since 1995. Then coach Curt Cignetti arrived, brought 54 new players from the transfer portal and turned Indiana into a winner overnight.

It was a remarkable turnaround that ran counter to the realities seen in these stats:

⋅ There are 70 teams that make up the Power Four conferences, plus Pac-12 leftovers Oregon State and Washington State.

⋅ Since 2000, 36 of those teams have captured a total of 137 outright or shared league titles that have been won between the five largest conferences.

⋅ Of those 137 titles, 92 (67 percent) have been captured by 10 programs that have won five or more. The other 26 have combined to win 45.

⋅ That leaves 34 programs (48.5 percent) that haven’t won any. In the NFL over the same period, only 10 teams (31 percent) have failed to reach the Super Bowl.

Those numbers reflect how hard it is to break through in big-time college football but also the size of the glass ceiling that could be shattered in this new era of college sports.

“I think the rev-share world definitely has a chance to bring things to a more balanced circumstance,” said Purdue athletic director Mike Bobinksi, whose football program has a new coach, Barry Odom, after going 1-11 last season. “Will there always be some programs that operate in a little bit of a different reality? Of course. But we’re not concerned about that, nor are we crying in our beer about that. We’ve just got to find a way.”