This week’s Sunday Summary deals with final elements of the 2025 season. Moving on is never easy, but sometimes necessary. There will be new storylines to follow, but as we reach bowl season, there is also some finality to the time of year.
It Didn’t Last Long
Have we seen the second and final year of the 12-team playoff? The original deadline to make changes for next season was December 1st. The point of the deadline is to work out the further details with the television partners.
But as the date neared and the Management Committee was nowhere near decisions on what to do next, they moved their own deadline to January 23, 2026.
Not so coincidentally, moving the deadline also came about the same time as the chaos created by the selection committee last weekend. Notre Dame and BYU are bitter about being left out. Miami and Alabama are feeling fortunate. The debates over resumes are ongoing even six to seven days after the announcements.
You know what would have fixed it for the couple of teams feeling particularly burned? A 16-team playoff. And hey, what do you know? The Management Committee now has plenty of time to formulate one before next season.
There aren’t 16 teams capable of winning the national championship. There aren’t even 12, yet we have that many in the current iteration. And yet there will still be complaints from schools that get left out. The NCAA basketball tournament is 68 teams, and yet every year, there is a 69th who thinks they got robbed.
It seems clear with the 2025 debate and the moving of the 2026 deadline, next year, we will get to 16 teams.
College football keeps making its life more complicated than necessary, but there is no end in sight for that.
The Final LA Bowl?
Saturday’s Bucked Up LA Bowl, hosted by Gronk, was promoted as the final LA Bowl. It’s not like we are taking down a piece of college football history. The first LA Bowl was in 2021. It was the Jimmy Kimmel LA Bowl for the first two years. It has been “hosted by Gronk,” ever since then, with Rob Gronkowski turning it into a series of media appearances for himself, since he clearly lacks commercial exposure.
The contract calls for the Mountain West champion (or the next-highest pick available if the conference champion is selected for the New Year’s Six) to match up against the fifth pick from the Pac-12.
But in case it escaped your attention, there is currently no Pac-12. The teams of the former Conference of Champions were used for two years as part of a grandfather clause of sorts. Teams that had been in the Pac-12 would be eligible. However, that was only a two-year-long agreement, and those two years have now passed. The LA Bowl is scheduled to be added to the scrap heap that includes the Astro Bluebonnet Bowl, the Freedom Bowl, the Garden State Bowl, and the California Bowl, among others.
But Sunday Summary thinks there is a way to keep the game in the cavernous SoFi Stadium. Perhaps there needs to be a reminder that there is a “new Pac-12” starting next football season. Old school Pac-12 members Oregon State and Washington State will be joined by Fresno State, Utah State, San Diego State, Colorado State, Utah State, Texas State, and Boise State for football. Surely one of those “states” would welcome a bowl game against the Mountain West, with some of them having just left the Mountain West.
Out of Court and On the Field
There is one obstacle, of course, to keeping the LA Bowl. The two conferences are suing each other after a two-year partnership. When the former Pac-12 dissolved, the Mountain West stepped in to help Washington State and Oregon State have schools to play. There were “poaching penalties” built into the agreement. The Pac-12 then poached five MWC schools.
Sunday Summary thinks the two schools should settle their $55 million legal differences for the sake of maintaining a “vitally important” 35th non-playoff bowl game.
Final Days in Ann Arbor?
The circumstances revolving around the Michigan football program are troubling. The misdeeds of former head coach Sherrone Moore have been well chronicled, and we think it is likely we have not heard the last of the tales.
But are we also in the last days of athletic director Warde Manuel? The school administration had a Zoom meeting on Wednesday night to discuss his future. No action was taken against Manuel, so there was an assumption by some that he had escaped with his job intact. The assumption is erroneous. The school’s board of trustees has hired a law firm to further investigate Moore, and Manuel. The questions around Manuel are what did he know and when did he know it?
During the 2025 football season, when word of Moore’s affair with a staff member became known to some in the athletic department, Manuel told the board that he had investigated and found nothing to substantiate the stories.
Clearly, the stories were true, and thus Manuel’s investigation now has to be investigated. It will be weighed against a laundry list of other personnel problems in the athletic department that have happened in Manuel’s 10-year term in Ann Arbor.
Final Regular Season Game
We at Sunday Summary have a great affection for college football rivalries. They are a part of the fabric of life as college football fans. And no offense to the long list of schools that play in must-see rivalry games. But none stands up to the Army-Navy game.
The game belongs on the bucket list for every college football fan. The Cadets and the Midshipmen entering the stadium make you just sit still and watch every detail. The flyover(s). The teams’ entrances with special uniforms just for that game. The whole thing is just so compelling.
It is traditionally the final regular-season game of the year and needs to stay that way at any and all costs. Playing that game on the East Coast in the December cold helps make the game what it is. Some are grumbling that there should not be any other games on that same day. We get it. But the HBCU’s Celebration Bowl and the maybe-defunct LA Bowl at night did not take away from Army-Navy. It is last and still the best, and that is final.
Final Fashion Word
The selections for this week’s fashion notes are obvious. Army and Navy wore uniforms that paid tribute to the 250 years of military service in this country.
For Navy, the copper color of the helmets represented the copper sheeting the USS Constitution was covered in to protect its wooden hull. The helmets also feature a sketch of the USS Constitution on one side with the original USN mark on the other.
For Army, the marble coloring of the uniform is a tribute to the headstones for soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery. There was a thin purple outline around the numbers honoring those who received the Purple Heart. The back of the helmets included a 1775 reference.
Main Image: CBS Sports
The post College Football’s Sunday Summary Strikes A Final Chord on the Season appeared first on Last Word on College Football.