Welcome to The Football Notebook, the place where I get needlessly irate at the NCAA for screwing this up time and time again.
Football is officially back in full force, which means my brain has far too many things rattling around inside of it after spending another weekend watching entirely too much of the sport. The Premier League returned with Manchester United immediately embarrassing itself against Hull City, Tottenham found a new way to make me sad and Ipswich Town took approximately 90 minutes to make me question everything I said about it before the season.
Elsewhere, Barcelona and Real Madrid got their La Liga title pursuits started on the right foot, Deshaun Watson continues to be an absolute mess in Cleveland, Keelon Russell won the starting quarterback job at Alabama and Harrison Butker casually drilled a 69-yard field goal.
And then there’s the NCAA, which has somehow stumbled into a world where players currently on NFL rosters might be allowed to return to college football.
I don’t know, man. There’s a lot going on.
Let’s open the notebook.
Manchester United Gets Embarrassed by Hull City
Overreacting to the first game of any season is not always the best idea. Teams ebb and flow throughout a campaign, especially one as long and arduous as the Premier League. There are 37 more matches to go for Manchester United, meaning there will be plenty more opportunities to make up for the disappointing 2-0 defeat to Hull City on Saturday afternoon.
That reality doesn’t excuse the effort. Hull is probably the closest thing we have to a consensus pick to get relegated — literally every pundit, myself included, has said that Hull will go back down to the Championship — making any sort of defeat an absolute travesty. Manchester United entered Saturday believing that it was going to walk out with three points and momentum. Instead, the trains to Manchester got canceled and United departed feeling down in the dumps.
Of course, one has to give Hull credit. It was able to neutralize what Manchester United wanted to do and took advantage of the rare opportunities presented to it. Semi Ajayi got the first, knocking in the rebound to give the home team a 1-0 lead before Nobel Mendy ended the day for good in just the 38th minute with another tally. United had plenty of the ball but did absolutely nothing with it, which might be the most concerning part of the whole thing. It’s rare that a side as formidable — at least presumably formidable — as United seems unable to penetrate a squad so vacant of the necessary talent to compete in the Premier League.
What are we doing?
I’ve spent the last week and a half comparing Manchester United to Texas in college football, where we always enter every single season asking the same question: Is Texas back? Is Manchester United back? Sometimes it takes months to figure that out. Other times, you get a pretty good idea immediately.
Again, this was one game out of 38. Maybe United wins its next five and we completely forget this ever happened. But if Saturday was any indication of whether this is truly going to be the special season Manchester United has been chasing ever since Sir Alex Ferguson retired, the early answer is a resounding no.
College Football Is Out of Control
There are plenty of sentences about modern college football that would have sounded completely insane five years ago. Here’s another one: Players currently on NFL rosters could be heading back to college.
There are currently 16 players from the 2022 recruiting class who were granted a temporary restraining order against the NCAA last week — that seems to be happening quite a bit lately — giving them a fifth year of eligibility. That group includes players who have already made the jump to professional football, including Browns tight end Dae’Quan Wright and Tampa Bay Buccaneers defensive end Jack Pyburn.
Yes, you read that correctly. No, you’re not on drugs. Yes, this is all insane. No, it doesn’t seem like anybody is in charge.
