Jackie Robinson the college football star, plus 2025 transfer portal winners

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The All-Star: Let’s remember a college football player

Did you know Jackie Robinson was a four-sport standout in college? That’s multiple Travis Hunters at once, I think. Check my math.

Even if you knew this, it’s always worth remembering anew, because every time, it sounds too amazing to be true. So many basic Robinson facts function as an escalating series of “not only did he do X, but also he did Y” statements.

• Not only was he the player who forced pro baseball to confront the folly of white supremacy, but also he was instantly one of MLB’s best, leading the league in stolen bases as a rookie and winning MVP in year three.
• Not only does he have a case to rank as the best second baseman ever, but also he started compiling his MLB numbers at age 28, after helping to deal with a little thing called World War II.
• Not only was he perhaps the most important baseball player ever, that might not have been his best sport. In 1939, he was key to UCLA’s first undefeated football season, and in 1940, he set the school record in yards per carry (12.2 lol), led the team in passing and led the nation in punt return yardage. Andy Wittry tracked Robinson’s football career via ecstatic newspaper headlines.
• Oh right, UCLA’s Robinson was also one of the world’s best long jumpers, and his college basketball career would eventually deserve a Slam Magazine article.
• Oh also, his signature football highlight came while playing defense. In 1939, he forced this tie-saving fumble against archrival USC:

In both athletic merit and contributions to society, no American sports figure will ever surpass Jackie Robinson. If he isn’t worthy of honor, then nobody is worthy.

On that note, here is some news:

“On Wednesday morning, a (Department of Defense) link that guided users to a 2021 article titled, ‘Sports Heroes Who Served: Baseball Great Jackie Robinson Was WWII Soldier,’ showed a 404 error page with ‘dei’ included in the URL.”

After public outrage, that link has been restored, minus “DEI,” a term that has been altered into shorthand for complaining about achievements by women and people of color. At this time, the Defense Department has responded to questions by sounding like “King of the Hill’s” Dale Gribble, but has not explained the process that briefly branded the unbelievably overqualified Robinson as unqualified in the first place.

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Quick Snaps

• What’s Jayna Bardahl, author emeritus of this newsletter, up to these days? Investigating Travis Hunter‘s love of fishing, of course.
• “Stanford head football coach Troy Taylor bullied and belittled female athletic staffers, sought to have an NCAA compliance officer removed after she warned him of rules violations and repeatedly made ‘inappropriate’ comments to another woman about her appearance, according to documents from a pair of investigations obtained by ESPN.”
• Recruiting powerhouse Mater Dei — a California high school, to be clear — signed a seven-figure multimedia deal.
• Price indeed going up: EA Sports will pay $1,500 in NIL for CFB 26 athlete appearances, increased from $600.
• Pending some legal stuff, “the NCAA will stop enforcing rules prohibiting NIL from being used as a recruiting inducement.”
• Most years, it feels like West Coast teams generally get a later start on recruiting, for whatever reason. That makes USC‘s current No. 1 ranking extra interesting.
• Chris Vannini ranked history’s 10 most-played March Madness commercials in order of quality. His choices for best and worst are indisputable.

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Offseason Champs: Five ways of looking at portal winners

With a bit of transfer activity left to go in April, we pretty much already know which schools gained the most from it this time around. Manny Navarro recently named LSU, Miami, Oregon, Texas Tech and Southern Miss as this cycle’s biggest winners (in a list that also included the biggest losers).

And this week, Manny looked at the same question from a more numerical POV, after 2,328 FBS players left their previous schools:

• “If you go by which programs signed the most top-100 players (per 247Sports),” then Ole Miss, North Carolina and Texas A&M follow the powers listed above.
• “If gaining starting experience is more your thing, these four programs led the way in net career starts added: Arizona, Missouri, Oregon and Indiana.”
• LSU, Auburn, Florida State, Indiana and Washington led in adding “players who started at least six games last season from Power 4 programs.”
• And of course, if you’re into pure bulk, you’re crowning Marshall for adding a Deion Sanders-esque 47 players — by necessity, due to the December drama that placed Southern Miss’ name earlier in this section.

Plenty more to dive into here, including details on how badly Group of 5 teams got raided this time and which new coaches brought along the most of their previous employer’s players. Washington State Jackrabbits!

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Mandel’s Mailbag

We finally got a 16-seed beating a 1-seed in March Madness. If the Playoff goes to 16, how long will it take to get a 16 over 1? — Reggie C., San Diego

The only way I could see that happening is an even more extreme example of 2024 Ohio State. Imagine if the Buckeyes had sustained a third loss in the regular season, snuck in at 9-3 with the last at-large spot but behind all of the five highest-ranked champs, then caught fire exactly the way they did last year. In that scenario, certainly, No. 16 could beat No. 1.

But my guess is that spot would go more often than not to an ACC, Big 12 or Group of 5* champion.

* I have seen people start to use the phrase “Group of 6,” presumably encompassing the reconstituted Pac-12. Personally, I’m considering retiring the phrase altogether. Its intended meaning in the old system was to refer to the five conferences that did not have a contracted berth in one of the New Year’s Six bowls. Obviously, that’s irrelevant now. Any team from any conference can earn an automatic CFP berth, whatever its label. So shouldn’t we just retire the label?

More Stewart Mandel mailbag here.

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Untimely thought, spinning off of Stewart’s last point: The Group of Whatever is not actually a group. Those conferences do not have their own postseason or share any broadcast deals, they poach each others’ schools all the time and the only thing they have in common is that they are not in the Power Whatever.

For years, I’ve thought the conferences outside the Power Whatever should refer to their football versions with the same term everyone uses for those leagues in other sports: mid-majors.

• Sure, in football contexts, that term has long been a loaded one, partly because the BCS and CFP regimes have regularly treated those conferences as lower-class. Because of that, the Group of 5 name felt defiant and empowering (other than when the AAC tried to unilaterally ditch it for “Power 6”).
• But I think small schools should instead embrace a title that includes the word “major,” even though it also includes a version of the word “middle.” It’s good to remind people you’re major! ULM, name it and claim it!

The same goes for FCS. “Football Championship Subdivision” was adopted in 2006 (as distinct from “Football Bowl Subdivision”) because the old name, Division I-AA, arguably made that level sound insignificant. But in hindsight, I-AA was the more prestigious name — because it left no doubt that those teams are part of Division I. Now that we call it FCS, casual fans share misstatements like, “Carson Wentz played for a DII team called North Dakota State,” and, “Did you hear a Big Ten team just lost to a non-DI team?”

Actually, nevermind. I take all this back. Group of Whatever, start calling yourselves The Absolute Highest Of All Possible Majors. What are they gonna do about it, refuse to let you play in the Rose Bowl?

That’s it for this week. Thank you for reading. If you have thoughts on any of this, let me hear them at untilsaturday@theathletic.com.

Last week’s most-clicked: The QB situations at each Power 4 school.

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(Top photo: Getty Images)

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