SI:AM | College Football’s New Faces in New Places

Plus, Hakeem Olajuwon and the decline of the low post game.

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. Shame on Ivan Provorov for refusing to wear a Pride Night jersey.

In today’s SI:AM:

🔄 Where college football’s biggest names are headed

🏀 The evolution of the NBA’s big men

🗽 The Knicks finally have a point guard

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Portal season ends today

Now that the national championship is in the rearview mirror, it’s time to start looking forward to the next college football season. And with the sport’s still relatively new transfer system, the season never really ends. The flurry of players entering the transfer portal began in earnest at the end of the regular season and now that the dust has settled after bowl season, it’s a great time to take stock of all the movement. (The portal closes today but will be open again from May 1 to 15, so players who haven’t made a decision yet can still change schools.) Let’s take a look at some of the biggest names who are on the move.

Sam Hartman (QB, formerly of Wake Forest)

Hartman left Wake Forest after five seasons (including four in which he started at least nine games) and is headed to Notre Dame for his final year of eligibility. He’s the best quarterback on the move this season, having finished seventh in the nation in passing yards in 2021 and 11th this season. Hartman will replace Drew Pyne as the starter at Notre Dame after Pyne transferred to Arizona State. Hartman should be a serious upgrade over Pyne, who wasn’t asked to do much in the Irish’s run-heavy offense. After being ranked No. 5 in the preseason AP poll, Notre Dame had an up-and-down season, leading to a 9–4 finish under first-year coach Marcus Freeman. Adding a quarterback of Hartman’s quality should set expectations high for next season.

Brennan Armstrong (QB, formerly of Virginia)

After Hartman, Armstrong was the top quarterback in the portal, with North Carolina State, Auburn and Oklahoma State pursuing him. Ultimately, he decided to remain in the ACC and join the Wolfpack. Armstrong had an excellent season in 2021, passing for 4,449 yards (fourth-best in the nation) but threw for just 2,210 this season while his completion percentage dropped from 65.2 to 54.7. Armstrong’s decline coincided with the departure of offensive coordinator Robert Anae, who left Virginia after Bronco Mendenhall resigned. But Armstrong and Anae will be reunited in Raleigh after NC State hired him as offensive coordinator. The Wolfpack lost their quarterback, Devin Leary, to Kentucky. Virginia, meanwhile, added former Monmouth quarterback Tony Muskett (a two-time All–Big South selection) in the portal.

Other quarterbacks

Among the other signal-callers on the move are Hudson Card (Texas to Purdue), D.J. Uiagalelei (Clemson to Oregon State), Kedon Slovis (Pitt to BYU) and Graham Mertz (Wisconsin to Florida). Washington’s Sam Huard, a former five-star recruit whose father (Damon) and uncle (Brock) also played quarterback for the Huskies, was a late entry to the portal after Michael Penix Jr. announced his return to Washington.

Deion Sanders’s “luggage”

Remember in Deion Sanders’s first address to his new team when he said, “I’m bringing my luggage with me, and it’s Louis [Vuitton]”? This is what he was talking about. Travis Hunter Jr., the No. 1 high school prospect in the class of 2022, is following Sanders from Jackson State to Colorado. So is Sanders’s son, Shedeur, a quarterback who was a four-star recruit out of high school. Colorado also added four-star tight end Seydou Traore, who caught 50 passes for Arkansas State this season, and receiver Jimmy Horn Jr., a former four-star from USF.

One unheralded player I’m looking forward to watching

South Carolina’s starting running back, MarShawn Lloyd, who averaged 5.2 yards per carry this season, transferred to USC, where he’ll help make up for the loss of the graduating Travis Dye. (Austin Jones, who split carries with Dye, is unsure whether he’ll be back next season.) The Gamecocks’ running back situation was so dire that when Lloyd missed three games with a knee injury, their primary ballcarrier was Jaheim Bell, who’s actually listed as a tight end. South Carolina went way off the beaten path to find their next running back, signing Mario Anderson as a transfer from Division II Newberry College. His stats at Newberry this season were preposterous. He ran for 1,560 yards on 211 carries (7.4 yards per carry) and 19 touchdowns in 10 games. In one game, he ran 25 times for 246 yards and four touchdowns. Division II is a long way from the SEC, but it’ll be fascinating to see how he fares for a South Carolina team that was one of the biggest surprises in the conference this season.

The best of Sports Illustrated

• In today’s Daily Cover, Chris Ballard traveled to Hakeem Olajuwon’s gym outside Houston to speak with the Hall of Fame center about the decline of what made him great: the low post game.
• The Knicks were mocked for overpaying Jalen Brunson this summer, but Chris Herring explains that, after he’s played at an All-Star level thus far, the deal is actually looking like a bargain.
• Richard Johnson takes stock of the most uncertain quarterback situations in college football heading into next season.
• Defending champion Rafael Nadal was bounced in the second round of the Australian Open.
• The Flyers’ Ivan Provorov refused to skate in warmups, because the team was wearing rainbow jerseys for Pride Night.
• Wrestler Jay Briscoe was killed in a car crash yesterday. He was 38.
• A Michigan football assistant was placed on leave pending an investigation by university police.
• Tyler Hansbrough is beefing with John Wall.
• Here are the odds and spreads for the divisional round of the NFL playoffs.

The top five...

… things I saw yesterday:

5. Damian Lillard’s 30 first-half points against the Nuggets. (He had 14 in the second half, and the Blazers lost 122–113.)

4. The sudden blackout during Wolverhampton and Liverpool’s FA Cup match.

3. A similar situation in the Raptors-Bucks game.

2. 19-year-old Liverpool midfielder Harvey Elliott’s long-range goal.

1. Connor McDavid’s speed on this goal that left the entire Kraken defense in the dust.

SIQ

Rutgers and Princeton’s role in college football history as participants in the first intercollegiate football game is well known, but until now I had no idea who played the first game in men’s college basketball history. On this day in 1896, which Big Ten team faced the University of Chicago in the first five-a-side game of college basketball?

• Iowa
• Illinois
• Minnesota
• Michigan

Yesterday’s SIQ: Who leads all Jamaican-born players in Baseball Reference WAR?

• Chili Davis
• Devon White
• Oscar Levis
• Justin Masterson

Answer: Devon White. In 17 seasons, the speedy outfielder racked up 47.3 WAR, compared to 38.3 in 19 seasons for Davis.

There have been five players born in Jamaica who played big league baseball: Davis, White, Justin Masterson, Oscar Levis and Rolando Roomes. Levis played seven seasons in the Negro Leagues for the Cuban Stars East, a traveling team of mostly Caribbean players. Roomes played 170 games as outfielder over three seasons with three different teams. Masterson pitched eight seasons in the majors from 2008 to ’15.

White won three World Series as a player (two with the Blue Jays and one with the Marlins), as did Davis (one with the Twins and two with the Yankees). Davis went on to become the hitting coach for four big league teams, most recently with the Mets in 2021. White has been a coach with the Blue Jays’ Triple A affiliate since ’17. White’s daughter, Davellyn Whyte, is a former WNBA player. Why the different spelling of her name? White changed it in ’03. It turns out that when his family immigrated to the U.S. from Jamaica when he was a child, their name was mistakenly recorded with an incorrect spelling.

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