College Football Live - CFB LIVE - SEC QUARTERBACK COMPARISONS

Episode Date: August 20, 2026

Join our crew Zubin Mehenti, Tom Luginbill, and Dusty Dvoracek on today's episode of College Football Live. NCAA chaos has officially broken lose as a temporary restraining order allows a group of athletes to return to college for a fifth year, despite many of those players participating in NFL preseason games and camps - Dan Murphy joins to weigh in on the fallout. LaNorris Sellers is our special guest as he enters his 4th season at South Carolina. Hear from him ahead of his senior season, and see where they guys think he stacks up next to other SEC QBs. All this and more on College Football Live! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Out of the tunnel, straight ahead on college football live. South Carolina's Lenore. Sellers joins the show to tell us which NFL MVP he was dreaming to be as a kid. Speaking of Sellers, where does he rank among the SEC's top quarterbacks? Our expert breaks it down five through one. Spoiler alert. No Bama quarterback ended up making the list. But where does the quarterback competition stand as we move closer to week one?

Kael and DeBore with the answer. All that more on college football live. First, we begin with another crazy college football headline. It goes a little something like this. Players in NFL training camps granted another year of college eligibility. I know. It's crazy. Let me explain.

Let's just run you through the particulars. This all stems from a group of athletes, including some football players that got a temporary restraining order in a Louisiana courtroom on Wednesday. They're claiming the NCAA took away a final year of their eligibility that outgoing seniors are going to beget moving forward. It's called the five in five rule. Let's check in with the one and only Dan Murphy, ESP an investigative reporter. All right, Dan, I kind of labeled an onion type headline there at the top of the show. Help me kind of explain why this is happening. Yeah, it's messy. To try to make it as simple as we can, basically, for a long time, the NCAA had a rule that allowed you to play for four seasons within a five-year window. This summer, they decided to change that and say you can play for five seasons.

during that five-year window. But that leaves us with this group of players who started playing right away as freshmen and just finished their first four years. So if the old rules apply to them, they're out of eligibility. Under the new rules, they still have eligibility. When they made this rule change,

the NCAA decided that they didn't want to allow these guys to have their fifth year because there were a bunch of incoming freshmen that were already on campus that already committed to their schools, and of all of these veterans were going to come back, those freshmen were going to lose their positions on their roster, most likely.

So they didn't think that was fair. And that prompted what has been a slew of lawsuits. We now have more than a dozen cases involving roughly 100 plus athletes who are all suing the NCAA saying, I could be making a lot of money if I had one more year left. It is illegal for you to block me from doing this based on these inconsistent rules. And while there's been mixed results, they've had a lot of success in getting judges to at least temporarily tell the NCAA, you can't stop these guys from playing. So the upshot, the craziest version of this Zubin, is we have guys who have played in NFL training camps, guys who are in NFL preseason games last week, who may be on a college football roster next week. And because this

is a big mess of appeals and appeals to the appeals, we probably have a situation where some of these players, their coaches, and their teammates won't know whether or not they can take the field for the first game of the season until a day or two before we kick off. It's unbelievable that this is where we are right now. I can only imagine with Greg Sanky, the commissioner of the SEC is thinking, and on that note, I know you've had an opportunity to speak with him. He's commented about it. What is he saying about this watershed development?

So Zanki actually submitted an affidavit in one of these cases last week where he basically, not surprisingly, said, we don't want this. We don't want former pros. We don't want guys who have already expelled all of their eligibility to come back in play. We want the courts to rule against this. It does put him in a really interesting position where several of these schools, especially LSU, where a lot of these players are aiming to go, are in his conference.

So you have a conference commissioner who is publicly opposing a position that at least one of his schools really wants these guys to come back. Again, not terribly surprising that the top brass in college sports don't want to see this happen, but it is a very messy situation that there probably is no easy solution to and will continue to be messy throughout the rest of the college football season. Probably worth reiterating there that there was a reason that this took place in a Louisiana courtroom

and Dan kind of hinted at it. Bottom line is this. I think we've learned this. No matter what happens when the athletes get a no, you just keep suing or going to court until you get a yes. And right now it feels like all the momentum is on their side. That's ESPN's Dan Murphy. Dan, thank you for that great intel.

So the bottom line here really comes down to you're going to have some talented guys like the guys on your screen here. They're going to have an opportunity to leave their NFL camps and join a campus here for one extra year. There's some impact guys available. Here's Adam Shepter with some dizzying numbers for you to think about. We now have NFL teams with 90 players on each roster.

They have to cut down to 53 by Sunday, August 30th. That's 37 players per NFL team, 32 teams, 1184 players who are going to be released here in the next few weeks. some of those, depending on these judge's rulings, now we'll look to go back to college because colleges will pay. There will be players who have choices to make. Do I go to this practice squad where I can make this amount of money,

or do I go back to college? If they go back to college, then colleges have to cut players to make room for the players that were just in NFL camps competing for NFL jobs. And again, I know we're in the time of a wild west in college sports.

but this is something that is transformative and will shape two different sports with players leaving from the NFL to go back to college. We've heard of it going the other way, but it could be going the other way now. It's crazy. E.J. Manuel left speechless this morning on Get Up.

It's great to have Dusty DeVorecheck and Tom Luganville here. All right, so that was on Get Up. Dusty, I know you were ready to get up and talk about this. This is the biggest story right now in all of collegiate sports. You're up.

We've got a game next Saturday, and here we are. I do think that kind of speaks to what's going on in college athletics right now. But you could have seen this coming. Like you go back to when the rule was implemented from the NCAA on June the 23rd. There was first a court case in Ohio, then there was a court case in Texas. Then we had the federal ruling in Colorado. And now we have this, obviously, this decision in Louisiana. It's been building.

It's been growing. all I can say is the NCAA in court continues to get their butts. They cannot enforce any of the rules that they try to implement. Where does that take us? That's a bigger discussion for another day. But for this season, look, as a former player, I understand. These former players are sitting here saying, wait a minute, they change the rules. Now I have an opportunity that I could potentially get an additional year back.

These coaches, some of these coaches are saying, I've got to win now. and I've got to try to get as many good players as possible. And we're in a situation now where the scenario that we heard right there from Adam Schaefter is exactly right. Think about Jack Pyeburn, who just had two sacks for Tampa Bay in a preseason game. Where did he play last year? LSU. Don't you think LSU could use him on their roster? If he knows I'm going to be a practice squad player, they're making about $250,000 a year, which is great money.

The going rate for a starting edge player in the SEC is double, if not triple that number. And a lot of these situations, Tom, this is a business decision. And these players, though the timing is messy and all of this is messy, these players are trying to make the best decision for themselves. And you know, as well as I do, these coaches want to get as many good players on their rosters before the season as possible. Well, and Dusty, think about the vast majority of those cuts. they don't have a practice squad opportunity or an active roster opportunity.

So now their choice is to go back to school if they're allowed to do so where they can continue to making whatever six mid to high six figure salary if they were worth that when they were in college or go out into the real world and start off with everybody else and go get yourself a $45,000 a year job

and live in culture shock. So they're seeing the writing on the wall as well. My initial take on this is, what are we doing? You know, I mean, I never read shirted. Dusty, I can't remember if you redshirted or not. I never redshirted, right? So according to what these players are doing,

I should be able to file for eligibility. I'm going to go out right now and say, well, wait a minute. Wait a minute. I've still got another year of eligibility. Why wouldn't that apply to me, right? Guess what? The rules changed after you departed college, whether you've earned your degree or not earned your degree.

You gave up your eligibility. You signed a professional contract. many of them have played now in a professional preseason game. This is absolute insanity. And there is a trickle-down effect that is awfully negative because of the high school recruiting element to this, because of the other transfer portal signes that everybody across the board had signed this past off season.

And now you're going to add this waterfall into it if it's allowed to go through. How can we make this any more messy than it already is? And somehow, some way, it seems like every week or every month, we find a way to do just that. Tom, I would love to see you back on the field play. Please sign me up for that. Whatever we need to do to make that happen.

He's warm. I'm in. And pal, you're right. I'm not disagreeing with you at all. You make great points. But here we are. And guess what? It doesn't matter what we think.

You've got state and federal judges that's saying, we disagree with you, Tom. And these players actually do have eligibility. We disagree with the NCAA. And we're going to allow these players to play. What's going to be interesting, as these cuts come along, potentially, you're going to have even more players.

I heard numbers thrown out there with hundreds. I think it's more of dozens of players. Because remember this, this is a very specific scenario. It's got to be players that graduated high school in 2022 and never redshirted. This isn't anybody gets to come back and anybody gets to, you know, come off an NFL roster and come back.

So it's a specific amount of people that actually apply for this, but it can change the game. And guys, listen to this, depending on what happens, Three of these players were former Lane Kiffin players. One of them played at LSU last year, and especially the Ole Miss players. Depending on what happens. We've also got, we've got SEC interconference transfer rules that may come into play.

If somehow any or all of those players wound up at LSU, could you imagine the added fuel to that fire in Oxford, Mississippi, week three, when LSU goes to town? It's a great point. It's like real estate, location, location, location, location. So most coaches are thinking, oh my goodness, I got to deal with this today. But there is one coach that said, you know what, I'll deal with this later because I got a great piece of news to celebrate. New on college football live, according to our Pete Dammel, Oklahoma and Brent Venables have agreed to a new six-year deal, adding two years to his current deal, taking him through all of this decade.

Dusty, of course, you, the former sooner, you're plugged in, you've got the intel. What do you make of this timing for Venables? Well, it's interesting. I think it speaks to the trust that everyone there around the program has in Brent Venables. There's real positivity. There's real momentum right now forward, given the college football playoff appearance from a season ago. New athletic director, they're on campus and Roger Denny. And I had a chance to someone to be around both Coach Venables, Roger Denny, and Jim Nagy.

And there's alignment between those three. And I think as those three have spent more and more time together, the vision and the future is clear. That's with Brett Venables running the show there, Norman. If you saw the atmosphere on the Prairie on the Palace of that playoff game against Alabama, you know they are ready to lift off straight ahead here on College Football Live. What makes Lenora Sellers who's sitting about down getting ready to talk to us? One of the most rare players in all of college football. He's got something going almost nobody else does.

I'll talk about it with them next. College Football Live is brought to you by Liberty Mutual and Social. Only pay for what you need. Mysteries unravel and stunning truths are revealed when 2020 investigates. Follow the clues, the evidence, the breaking new details. ABC's 2020 means true murder mystery. Shocking. If you follow true crime in 2020, then you've got to listen to this.

Subscribe now to 2020 True Crime Plus. Add free exclusive true crime content. Search 2020 True Crime Plus on Apple Podcasts. Start your free trial. Terms apply. Last season, it didn't in how I won. I know what I left out there. That's why I'm not running from it.

I'm running for it. I showed up at the altar got. Cape on Norris Sellers' hands. Best outfit on the field. That kid's the best player in the country. Well, if the goal is to get better as the season goes on, fantastic finish might be the appropriate headline for Lenora Sellers. Look at the second half performance.

second to none. And with that, it is a pleasure to welcome Lenora Sellers Inside College Football Live. It's great to have you with us. First things first, before we get to the college stuff, you said your prep days was like playing the SEC of high school. What kind of competition we're talking about here on Friday nights? Yeah, we play some pretty good guys.

Top players in the state. A lot of guys that's here now at other schools, Clemsonsons and stuff like that. So a bunch of athletes. Yeah, Roland in South Florence. All right. So here's the deal. For people that know, no, the cliff notes.

You're committed to Virginia. You're committed to Syracuse. South Carolina is not after you. They get on you. Real late push intense. You sign on the last day of the signing period. Take me through that period in your life. And you're trying to make one of the biggest decisions of your athletic career.

Yeah, so I committed to Virginia. My sophomore summer going into my junior year to coach Beck, coach tonight, coach Menon Hall. and then Coach Mennehall stepped down. Coach Beckenham went to Syracuse, so then I was just like, I mean, I stuck with him. I like the offense. I might as well stick with him now, so then they went to Syracuse.

And then Sonny Day came, and I was just like, I didn't want to go 12 hours away from home. So I just, in Sacramento was recruiting me. I was taking visits there, talking to DeLo. He just got hired. Like I said earlier, guys I played football with, and then I decided I might as well to stay home to play football. Yeah, Dowell Loggins, D.Lo.

What was it like, though, when you had to kind of beg them to come after you? because you were a three-star North Carolina didn't recruit you. Clemson didn't recruit you, all the local schools. And look at the way you've ended up. What did you think about that process, knowing what you had, but people just weren't biting. Yeah, I'm just trusting that it was all over workout. I mean, I had an opportunity to play college ball,

so, I mean, a lot of people don't get that. So I just took advantage of that. I was able to play college football. I had the opportunity, so they didn't come, they didn't come, but it don't work out. What's it like to be the focus or the centerpiece of a Heisman campaign? I think I'm true. I mean, you can't really ask much of that. That's the best playing college football,

and I think every kid strives to be that. Last couple here for you. You're kind of a rarity. This is your fourth year at the same school, essentially with the same coach, when all we see are guys going everywhere. What made you want to stay in Columbia? I mean, like I tell everybody, it's home for me.

I'm out of the way from the house, my parents and all that. My brother's here. I grew up here. And just being home state, it's an opportunity to play for your home state. Last one for you. There was another quarterback that I'm old enough to remember

that kind of played regionally in that area. And I know your dad was a big fan, and he kind of passed it on to you. I believe his name is Cam Newton. He played in the Super Bowl, and he was an NFL MVP. I know you tried to model your game after him a little bit. When you watch Cam growing up,

and now all eyes are on you in the Carolinas, what did you take away from watching Cam in his prime? Really just as energetic. the way he played the game, the way he played quarterback. He could do it all. He did everything. And he spread the ball around, ran the ball when needed to. He was just being that voice out leader for that Carolina team. That's great stuff.

And as I mentioned, Clemson did not recruit you. But that last game, perhaps the last game you'll ever play at South Carolina, will be against Clemson. You'll have all the motivation in the world. I can see that smile already. You're going to have all the motivation in the world that day in Death Valley. Best of luck, man. It's been great to watch you.

And let's have a great senior season. Yes, I appreciate you. Here's their schedule in total. I mentioned that last game at Clemson, but there's a lot of our commentators I see every Saturday say Williams Bryce is one of the toughest venues in all of college football. That guy pulling the trigger for sure. It ain't going to be easy.

At the top of the show we mentioned with Lenorets joining us, we're going to run down the top five quarterbacks in the SEC. Tom is going to do the honors. Dusty will react. And Tom, before we start, I just want to mention that you recruited and evaluated all these guys coming out of high school because Tom's been recruiting and evaluating for 20 years, so he's got a special insight.

This will be really great. Five to one. All right, give me number five with the usual suspects at the bottom of the screen. Well, I'm going to go with who you just spoke with, and that's South Carolina's Lenora Sellers. And it's really for three reasons. Coaching, system, and a revamped offensive line, which was sorely lacking a year ago.

And I mentioned coaching and system. I think Kendall Bryles coming in with how he is, going to lay out that offense is going to be perfectly suited to what Lenore Selle's skill set brings to the offense. I think it's really, really important. I don't think they put him in the best position to succeed a year ago, and they didn't have the help around him for him to play like he did back in 2024. So I'm expecting to him to have a bounce back year. At number four, I'm going with Texas A&M's Marcel Reed. Now, I'll say this about Marcel Reed. I would never play him in a consistent level of man-to-man defense. That's where he thrives.

That's where he's most dangerous because he's so athletic and dynamic with his feet. And if guys' backs are turned to the quarterback, the play is never over. But where he's got to improve is decision-making and progression through zone coverage. Made two critical mistakes against Miami and Texas late in the season last year and in the playoffs. If he can clean up working through progressions in zone concepts, I think he's got an opportunity to be really good. Number three, my man, Gunner Stockton. If ever there was a guy, if ever there was a guy where you said,

take what the defense gives you. It's this guy. If ever there was a guy who was a model of consistency, it's this guy, who is steady, who is tough, who has a competitive temperament, the respect of his teammates. Now listen, I understand he doesn't have as many downfield shots and opportunities in this offense, but man, has he played well in big games, and he is also one of those guys,

and I love this about him. Checkdowns get first downs, right? Don't get greedy. Don't put that ball somewhere. It doesn't need to go. Number two, Texas and Arch Manning. If you watched Arch Manning over the last five to six weeks of the season a year ago, you'd come away unbelievably impressed.

He got past all the preseason junk, started to come into his own, incredibly accurate. The athleticism really started to come. through making good decisions. I thought down the stretch, he was a potentially scary player to have a breakout year this coming fall. And then you look at the additions that they made around him, Hollywood Smothers, Cam Coleman, amongst others. I think Archer is going to have a big year. And number one for me is the most dangerous player maybe at the quarterback position in college football. And that's Trinidad Jamless at Ole Miss. He's old. He's experienced. He's played at multiple

levels. The game has never shown to be too big for him. Even when you made the jump of Fair State, the Division 2 level up into the FBS and the SEC level, he's just so dangerous. I think that's the thing about it is you have to account for him on every

single play, run or pass, whether he's a designated runner, whether it's a great improvisational play. He's the guy that puts the most stress and strain on the defense. I think he's top notch in the conference right now. And one thing, Dustia's breath of fresh air.

Most of these guys, not transfers. Most of these guys homegrown. What do you make of the list? Yeah. It's a good list. There's a lot of good quarterbacks in the SEC. I agree one through three. I will say I think the difference between Arch and Gunner is minute.

But at four, I'm going Sam Levin. I look at what he was able to do at Arizona State. And reports are talk with people that have been in Baton Rouge. He is healthy from the Liz Frank injury. That's a dangerous problem. opposition with Charlie Weiss Jr. as the offensive coordinator. And John Mateer looked prior to the thumb injury. He was outstanding. He's added some size. I don't know if you've seen that little muscle, a little body armor. And we'll do what that leads

to. He's got better weapons and he's going to have a good year. Last thing, obviously, no, Obama guy here because we still don't know who the starter is going to be. Raiders, Texans, let's go with Scott and Steve after the game to begin ESPN Super Bowl season. Jets and Steelers, Aaron Rogers' last two teams and his last year. Football everywhere you look. Gotta have a quarterback before kickoff. Last thing I mentioned at the top of the show, Kalin DeBoer speaking in practice today, said he's totally fine going with either at this stage Mack or Russell. Good way to evade the topic. We'll see if either one of them can sidestep in the pocket the way coach did at the podium today. And we'll see you for more tomorrow.