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I hope you’ve all been having fun with that point of 12 months when all the things you put on can be mistaken for the climate six hours later.
Dynasty Mode: 14 dominant applications proper now
In honor of UConn ladies’s basketball finishing its 11th (!!) undefeated regular season, let’s look into what number of current dynasties in different faculty sports activities are up there with Geno Auriemma’s 12-time nationwide champs.
(Sure, calling UConn a dynasty proper now means carving out a customized definition of the time period, for the reason that Huskies have gained simply one among their titles since 2016. But they’re favored to repeat this 12 months — and have missed just one Final Four since 2007. They stay a dynasty even during their title droughts.)
Let’s keep inside Division I for as we speak, and let’s solely rely NCAA championships, since a few of these sports activities had been overseen by different organizations in earlier years.
Thirteen of the highest current dynasties exterior of UConn (the place the lads’s hoops staff can be assembling a case), in an order that was strictly alphabetical till I moved issues round for since-forgotten causes:
- North Dakota State soccer: 10 of the final 15 FCS nationwide titles, plus one runner-up. Yes, FCS is DI. However, the FBS-bound Bison’s title-winning days are done, so this can be a late-period empire turning into a province in a small nation, so to talk.
- Oklahoma ladies’s gymnastics: 6 1/2 of the final 11 titles, plus two runners-up. The Sooners split 2014’s championship with Florida. Not the one Florida break up on this listing!
- Stanford males’s gymnastics: 5 of the final six, plus a squeaker loss to Michigan. Also, 5 earlier titles that had been practically 10.
- Stanford ladies’s water polo: 9 of the final 14, plus three runners-up. (And 5 extra of the latter since 2001.) Of course Stanford is on this listing twice.
- Florida males’s out of doors monitor: 6 1/2 of the final 13, plus 4 runners-up. The Gators break up with Texas A&M in 2013.
- Wisconsin ladies’s hockey: 4 of the final six, plus a runner-up. And eight of the final 19, with one other 4 runners-up. Coached all through by a “Miracle on Ice” hero, the Badgers are once more No. 1 this season.
- NC State ladies’s cross nation: 4 of the final 5. Secret ingredient: having fun out there. Way on the market.
- Oklahoma softball: seven of the final 12, together with a latest four-peat that pushed the game towards its highlight period. No. 5 in our early Power Rankings this season.
- Virginia ladies’s swimming and diving: 5 in a row. The cleanest sweep in all of DI proper now.
- Notre Dame fencing: 4 of the final 5, plus a runner-up. Also two of the final three. And 4 others. (These are co-ed titles, although USA Fencing is pushing for a standalone ladies’s championship.) The web is secretive about which groups are good at fencing this season, although. That matches fencing. Striking silently. *Ninja sounds.*
- Penn State wrestling: 12 of the final 14, plus a runner-up. This season, the Nittany Lions are once more the undefeated No. 1, and the reply to the query on this e mail’s topic is correct right here. Thanks to 2020s eligibility mayhem, they’ve even had a five-time individual champion. If you need, add in coach Cael Sanderson’s standing because the greatest college wrestler ever.
- USC seashore volleyball: six of the final 9. This has solely been an NCAA sport for 9 seasons, so the Trojans have gained it twice as a lot as everybody else mixed. Not even Penn State wrestling can say that. (In a number of weeks, a faculty will declare one hundred pc of the all-time women’s wrestling championships, you recognize. Probably Iowa.)
- Utah snowboarding: six of the final eight, plus a runner-up. Also, in earlier many years: 10 champs and 13 runners-up. Imagine if USC was nice at this and Utah was nice at seashore volleyball. The snowboarding choice present is tomorrow. Now you recognize that.
Elsewhere, Maryland ladies’s lacrosse, Northern Arizona males’s cross nation, Stanford ladies’s tennis and Virginia males’s tennis have gained loads lately, however have multiyear droughts. Sure, that’s just like the exception I proposed for UConn.
Lots of others may make the reduce, too. Texas males’s swimming? Arkansas ladies’s indoor monitor? Someone’s gonna yell at me!! (I selected to not parse the overlapping Northwestern/North Carolina discipline hockey dynasties, and whereas Cal rugby is hilariously nice, rugby isn’t an NCAA sport but.)
Another time, I’d like to have a look at others exterior of DI. Let me know at [email protected] in case you have any of these I ought to you should definitely examine alongside the way in which.
More: Last summer time, this article reviewed the greatest championship streaks in faculty sports activities historical past. Also, right here’s one thing you’ll all click on: Scott Dochterman ranked the 50 best rivalries in men’s hoops. Might come again to that each other time.
Quick Snaps
🌀 “I hate to say it, but Texas Tech is doing what they should with their money.” Loads of portal gossip from anonymous coaches.
🖤 Colorado quarterback Dominiq Ponder died in a single-car crash Sunday morning, police stated. He was 23. Our report.
💰 “The actual money changing hands is less than that $270 million, and the total amount paid out from school to coach will likely be much, much less.” Last 12 months’s buyouts bonanza wasn’t quite as ludicrous as it seemed.
✍️ Stewart Mandel has scripted how Donald Trump’s celebrity assembly to fix college sports will go.
🎧 “The Audible” discusses predictions on who’ll be teaching every P4 staff in 2030.
📰 News:
- A former Michigan staffer was fired by the Atlanta Falcons after accusations of a 2024 incident in Ann Arbor.
- “Student athletes inking multimillion dollar name, image and likeness deals in Mississippi could see their income become tax-exempt as early as next year.” Be serious.
- Texas is reportedly hiring former Kentucky head coach Mark Stoops as a particular assistant. Now think about the Longhorns hiring his brother and former longtime Oklahoma coach, Bob.
Grad School: Up in arms over Bain
When a Tyrannosaurus rex first confirmed up on the NFL mix in roughly the 12 months 67 million BCE, did skilled dinosaur evaluators say its arms had been too short to compete within the professionals? How foolish these guys look now.
At this previous weekend’s version of the occasion, Miami edge Rueben Bain Jr.’s arms measured 30 7/8 inches, the third-shortest at his position since 1999. Of these different two, one went undrafted (Ohio State’s Nathan Williams), and the opposite grew to become a sixth-round apply squadder (NIU’s Sutton Smith). Not best!
Yesterday, Jacob Robinson wrote in our NFL newsletter, “I couldn’t find any (NFL) pass rushers who recorded a sack in the past five years with arms under 31 inches, though Micah Parsons’ aren’t much longer.” He additionally rudely assembled this chart that made me much more defensive about my favourite 2025 participant:
Every 12 months within the NFL Draft, a handful of gamers embody the disconnects between faculty soccer followers and professional GMs. Hey, we had been proper about Russell Wilson! Overconfident from acing that one, we had been then mistaken about Johnny Manziel.
It’s clear Bain is gonna be this 12 months’s “HOW IS HE STILL AVAILABLE” title. Last week in The Athletic’s college writers mock draft, he went No. 2 to the Jets … however our NFL Draft analysts report he may slip out of the primary spherical solely.
I dunno, man. The consensus All-American regarded just like the best participant on the sphere in Week 1 in opposition to Notre Dame, then once more within the bookend recreation, recording 2 1/2 tackles for loss in opposition to Indiana. In between, he took over stretches in opposition to Florida and Ohio State, plus turned Texas A&M’s complete discipline right into a sinkhole. We noticed what we noticed.
Still, the arm factor issues, especially in the trenches, the place wing span can decide which facet has the benefit at level of contact. But it’s not just like the 6-2, 263-pounder can be with no place within the NFL. As our Nick Baumgardner wrote:
“Bain’s best assets are his power and burst, as he is able to consistently punish tackles — generally, by going right through their chests — via a great first step and elite power. He rushes on the outside a lot like an athletic interior tackle would in the NFL.”
Congrats, guards! You get to dam the man whose solely flaw is being formed like Godzilla. Besides, everyone knows how that is gonna go. He’ll drop to both the Ravens or Eagles, everybody will shout, “THEY CAN’T KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH THIS,” after which they’ll preserve getting away with this.
Other mix stuff:
- Bruce Feldman wraps up the speediest class in combine history, together with an enormous day by his No. 1 athlete to observe, Oregon tight finish Kenyon Sadiq.
- “Arguably — and there might not even be much of a counterargument — the most electric on-field combine showing by a linebacker in the past three decades.” Ohio State’s Sonny Styles leads our winners list.
- The most viral second: Arkansas’ Mike Washington Jr. crying tears of joy after posting the quickest 40 among the many quickest operating again group ever.
- “He better win a national championship. He’s got all the resources. It ain’t Ames, Iowa.” The mix means a lot of gamers speaking pretty candidly about faculty soccer for the primary instances of their careers.
- Six-month Tennessee quarterback Joey Aguilar came upon on Friday that his faculty profession is essentially done, then arrived on the mix 4 days later. Modernity!
- Comparing Fernando Mendoza’s “job interview” media session to Diego Pavia’s jump-scare revelation that he’s being mentored by Manziel, it’s clear each of those guys stay in character.
Last week’s most-clicked: Mandel’s grades for all 33 FBS head-coaching hires to this point.