The AP Top 25 is out and it looked almost identical to last week’s Coaches Poll. At least one unranked team is guaranteed to make the College Football Playoff (no Group of 5 team is ranked), but my hunch is that two sleeper candidates will make it in.

Last year, Missouri finished No. 8 in both polls after going unranked in the preseason and didn’t get a single vote in the AP poll. The year before that, it was TCU that got shut out in the preseason poll and made it to the national title game. The year before that, Baylor finished No. 5, rising from the unranked.

Knowing that kind of history, there are probably six unranked teams with a legitimate shot to crack the Playoff in 2024 if things break right for them.

The Hokies found their identity offensively in the second half of 2023, winning five of their last seven games. Quarterback Kyron Drones ran all over Tulane in a 41-20 romp over the No. 23 team in the Military Bowl. Drones is an elite athlete who kept improving over the season, throwing 17 TDs and just three INTs.

Tech has a dynamic RB in Bhayshul Tuten — a terrific all-around back with good speed. The receiving corps is deep and athletic with 6-foot-5, 221-pound Da’Quan Felton (No. 22 on the Freaks List) being a matchup nightmare for defenses. Plus, Virginia Tech gets Ali Jennings back. The former Old Dominion star is another big target at 6-2, 205 who only played two games last season before an injury cost him the rest of the year. Brent Pry’s defense has playmakers in the D-line and the secondary. They were No. 2 in the ACC in sacks with 39 and No. 10 in the country. Middle linebacker Sam Brumfield, an instinctive former Middle Tennessee standout, should be a terrific fit to help run the show.

The Hokies do have a tricky six-day stretch of hosting a physical Rutgers team before going to Miami, which will be their toughest road test. They get Clemson at home and don’t face FSU or NC State. I am buying Florida State and Miami, but given all the talent the Noles lost, the ACC feels more wide open this year.

Coaches at multiple stops have gushed about quarterback Tyler Shough’s talent. The challenge has been keeping him healthy for a full season, but if that happens, the Cardinals, with Jeff Brohm running the show, will be dangerous. Shough, who turns 25 in September, has never been able to play more than seven games in a season over the past five years.

The Cardinals have to replace a pair of explosive running backs without Jawhar Jordan and Isaac Guerendo. There is unproven talent there in Maurice Turner, who also has great burst, and 220-pound Miami transfer Don Chaney. They also have to replace WR Jamari Thrash but picked up Alabama transfer JaCorey Brooks for 2024. Defensively, there are seven starters back, led by productive edge rusher Ashton Gillotte, LB T.J. Quinn and CB Quincy Riley from a unit that ranked No. 10 in the country against the run and No. 21 overall. The Cards schedule isn’t easy. They have road trips to South Bend and Clemson and play Miami sandwiched in between two other road games. But if Shough stays healthy, this team has the pieces on both sides of the ball to make a run at 10 wins.

Iowa State was picked to finish sixth in the Big 12 preseason media poll. (Petre Thomas / USA Today)

Iowa State

Four years ago, the Cyclones finished No. 9 in the country, going 9-3. They stumbled the next couple of seasons but found their stride again despite being extremely young in some key places in 2023. Now, they’re a more seasoned bunch with nine starters back on both sides of the ball, led by sophomore QB Rocco Becht, who Matt Campbell raves about from a talent standpoint and in terms of his makeup. Becht led Iowa State to wins last year at Kansas State and against Oklahoma State, throwing a combined six TDs and zero picks. Sophomore Abu Sama III is an explosive running back while rangy Jayden Higgins, a preseason All-Big 12 pick, leads a deep group of wideouts. Tight end Benjamin Brahmer is another promising young talent coming off an impressive true freshman season.

The Cyclones are salty on defense, led by the safety tandem of Beau Freyler (107 tackles, three INTs in 2023) and Jeremiah Cooper (five INTs). There are a lot of other really solid players back from what was the nation’s No. 7 red zone defense. Domonique Orange, a 6-4, 325-pound D-lineman who benches 450 pounds and has a vertical jump of 34 inches, has the potential to be a dominant force up front. Going to Iowa City to face the Hawkeyes is a big challenge. Just like going to West Virginia, Utah and Kansas.

GO DEEPER

College Football Playoff sleepers: 13 unranked teams to watch

UCF

Gus Malzahn knows what he’s doing when it comes to running the football, and his backfield this year has the potential to be lethal.

Arkansas transfer QB KJ Jefferson, a load at 6-3, 250, ran for 21 TDs and almost 1,900 yards in five seasons in the SEC. He’ll be joined by RJ Harvey, who ran for 1,416 yards and 16 TDs last year, and Toledo transfer Peny Boone, another horse at 242 pounds who was the 2023 MAC Offensive Player of the Year. Kobe Hudson (eight TD catches in 2023) and Xavier Townsend are good wideouts and tight end Randy Pittman Jr. looks like a budding star. The offense could be prolific.

The big question is if new DC Ted Roof gets this defense to slow down the opponent’s run game. The Knights ranked No. 122 last year in rushing defense. Cincinnati transfer Deshawn Pace should help, and so will a ground attack that keeps drives going. UCF has road trips to Fort Worth, Gainesville, Ames and Morgantown and hosts Utah and Arizona. Jefferson beat Florida in the Swamp last year by putting up almost 350 yards of offense.

It seems like an uphill climb but Malzahn’s teams have been able to get on some big runs, and this group feels like it could be capable of doing it too.

The Tigers ended 2023 on a roll beating Iowa State in the Liberty Bowl to cap off a 10-win season. Ryan Silverfield’s program retained its two hottest commodities in QB Seth Henigan (79 TD passes in three seasons) and 6-3, 225-pound Roc Taylor, a dominant wide receiver who ate up Mizzou last year for 143 yards in a narrow loss.

Memphis coaches are excited by what they’ve seen from their running backs this fall in camp; the group is starting to look like the old Tigers RB stable from when Mike Norvell was cranking out NFL backs. Mario Anderson, South Carolina’s leading rusher last year, has been sharp in camp as has versatile UMass transfer Greg Desrosiers Jr. Speedster Sutton Smith is another weapon.

Memphis will get a big test in September when the Tigers visit FSU and Norvell. Don’t write them off, but even if they lose there, they still have games at USF and Tulane which should be good tests for a team that has a big chip on its shoulder after having gone to bowl games 10 years in a row. The Tigers feel primed to win a conference title in 2024 and make a bigger statement.

Let’s start with running back Ashton Jeanty, the Mountain West Offensive Player of the Year in 2023. He is arguably the best back in college football. Jeanty (159.7 all-purpose yards per game) is an elite player who NFL scouts love, especially his receiving skills.

The Broncos’ defense struggled last year and needs to improve, but there is some good talent there, led by DE Ahmed Hassanein (12.5 sacks and 16.5 TFLs in 2023) and LB Andrew Simpson.

The biggest wild card is how the QB situation evolves. USC transfer Malachi Nelson, a former five-star recruit, is being pushed by Maddux Madsen. Whoever emerges will have a really impressive group of skilled talent to take advantage of. The Broncos also have one of the best punter-kicker tandems in the FBS in James Ferguson-Reynolds (49.7 yards per punt) and Jonah Dalmas (10-of-11 from 40-plus yards on FGs).

The Broncos have to go to Oregon in Week 2 and visit UNLV and Wyoming but get both Washington State and Oregon State at home. The game against the Ducks means they might not have any more margin for error, but 11-2 with a respectable score against Oregon might top the rest of the non-Power 4.

(Top photo: Mike Watters / USA Today)

Will Levis’ love for mayonnaise is known.

The Tennessee Titans quarterback signed a lifetime deal with Hellman’s Mayonnaise last year after he went viral for revealing he put the condiment into his coffee instead of creamer or sugar.

On Tuesday, he took his love for mayo a step further.

Hellmann’s Mayonnaise released “parfum de mayonnaise,” Will Levis No. 8. The company said in a news release fans “can expect bold, savory notes of tart, mayonnaise accord, musk and vanilla with coffee undertones.”

“With the launch of my signature scent, I’ve fulfilled a lifelong dream of partnering with Hellmann’s to craft a fragrance like no other, one truly embodying the distinct scent of greatness,” Levis said in the release. “Rich and creamy, Will Levis No. 8 is more than a mayonnaise-inspired fragrance. It’s transformative. I’ve eaten mayo, drank mayo, and now I can smell like mayo.”

Levis explained to Fox News Digital last year he started to put mayonnaise on his nuggets and sandwiches when he was younger, and it just became a thing.

Tennessee Titans quarterback Will Levis warms up before playing the San Francisco 49ers in an NFL preseason football game on Saturday, Aug. 10, 2024, in Nashville, Tennessee. (AP Photo/John Amis)

49ERS, BRANDON AIYUK REPORTEDLY NOT FAR APART ON A DEAL

He admitted he had been ridiculed for putting the dab of mayonnaise into his coffee, but he explained that he has tried – sometimes successfully – to get others to at least give the condiment a try.

“I think it’s obviously because of just going viral for putting it in coffee and trying it that way,” Levis said at the time. “People have brought that up to me and then said like, ‘How could you?’ and things like that. I’ve made an effort from time to time to try to sway people’s opinions on mayonnaise if they have a strong negative one. And I’ve succeeded in that, I think, a few times.

“Getting people to believe they like mayonnaise when they didn’t even know they liked mayonnaise or just putting people on in general. It’s a great condiment, and it’s a very versatile condiment, and it’s probably my favorite condiment.”

Levis is entering his second season and is likely to start the 2024 season as the Titans’ starting quarterback.

Will Levis, #8 of the Tennessee Titans, drops back and throws a pass during Titans Mandatory Minicamp at Ascension Saint Thomas Sports Park on June 4, 2024 in Nashville, Tennessee. (Johnnie Izquierdo/Getty Images)

He was 3-6 in nine starts. He had 1,808 passing yards and eight touchdown passes in that span.

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Pep Guardiola bought himself a Boston Celtics hoodie, flipped his baseball cap backwards and took his courtside seat in the TD Garden arena for the opening game in the best-of-seven NBA Finals.

“He sat right by me,” Celtics co-owner Steve Pagliuca says. “I talked to him a lot.”

It wasn’t like pulling teeth, which is how Guardiola describes facing Pagliuca’s Serie A team, Atalanta. The Manchester City manager has likened playing against them to an agonising appointment with the dentist because opposite number Gian Piero Gasperini never allows his opponents to sit comfortably.

Guardiola and Pagliuca could have swapped more stories about Italian football.

The City manager used to play for Brescia, Atalanta’s biggest rivals, and he could have told Pagliuca about the time his Brescia came back from 3-1 down against the Bergamo side to draw 3-3 in 2001; the lore of the Roberto Baggio goals and the sending-off of his old coach Carlo Mazzone, who made a legendary run under the Atalanta end to give some abuse back after Brescia’s equaliser.

“We just had a conversation about Atalanta,” Pagliuca says. “About how he respected the organisation and we respect what he’s done. Our (the Celtics) coach, Joe Mazzulla, is a huge football fan.”

Manchester City’s Pep Guardiola is in Boston to support the Celtics in the #NBAFinals

🎥 @ESPNFC pic.twitter.com/fdvKW2GINu

— The Athletic (@TheAthletic) June 7, 2024

Mazzulla had been Guardiola’s guest at the City Football Academy last spring and was a spectator for a 1-0 win against Brentford at the Etihad. This was him returning the favour. “Joe studies football strategy and applies how it impacts basketball strategy,” Pagliuca says.

In the warm-ups before Game One against the Dallas Mavericks, Mazzulla and Guardiola discussed strategy on the court. Their gestures were classic air-chess. If I move here, what reaction does it provoke? How should our rest defence look when playing this kind of attack?

“Joe has really pushed the up-tempo style, trying to get as many shots off as possible,” Pagliuca elaborates. “We’re getting shots off quicker and we’ve also increased our offensive rebound capabilities.

“Many coaches, as they do in soccer, take a more defensive approach, saying the best thing to do is run back quickly after a shot is missed because you don’t want to give up an easy basket. But we have various guys crashing the boards and that’s been very successful. When we do the math, we come out on top, because every time we get an extra couple of points by crashing the boards, that makes up for some times when we wouldn’t be back on a fast break.”

“We’ve grown to have a great relationship… I like to think that we make each other better.”

– Joe Mazzulla on his relationship with Pep Guardiola pic.twitter.com/fjViOst05G

— NBA (@NBA) June 8, 2024

Covering off those fast breaks and maintaining offensive pressure was one of the learnings Mazzulla took from his conversations with Guardiola. “That’s something Pep has been helping me with: spacing,” Mazzulla explained. “It’s crucial in transitions how you move the players.”

Mazzulla also talks to Gasperini, as much as a Rhode Islander and Piedmontese can make themselves understood. “They met in Boston,” Pagliuca reveals. “The biggest similarities are in their very creative approach to the game.”

The Celtics went on to win their first NBA championship since 2008. No one could say they didn’t deserve it. They had the best regular-season record in the NBA, the best home record and were one game away from the best on-the-road record. They won 12 of 14 games in the first three rounds of post-season play, then saw off Dallas in five in the finals.

When asked about majority owner Wyc Grousbeck’s decision to put the team up for sale shortly after they had won their 18th NBA title, Pagliuca pointed The Athletic to a statement in which he said: “I hope to be part of the Celtics moving forward and will be a proud participant in the bidding process that has been announced today.”

In attendance for Game Three in Dallas was Ademola Lookman, Atalanta’s hat-trick hero from the Europa League final three weeks earlier. “He jumped on a plane and flew out with a friend of his on the Nigeria team,” Pagliuca recalls. “I got him tickets and he sat with us.”

Lookman, right, with Nigeria team-mate Joe Aribo and Celtics player Jayson Tatum (Instagram/Ademola Lookman)

For Pagliuca, also co-chairman of Bain Capital, it hasn’t quite sunk in yet that, within the space of a month, his two sports teams made memories that will last lifetimes. That’s spacing of a different kind; less strategic, more future nostalgic. “I’m still in shock. I still don’t know if it happened,” Pagliuca says, still trying to process it.

It’s poetic in a way: a Celtics co-owner watching his other investment, Atalanta, in Dublin of all places, ending a 61-year wait for a trophy. “It’s magical. I felt like the Ted Lasso of Italy,” he laughs. “I thought I was part of a movie.” A feel-good story.

Atalanta had lost their previous three cup finals under Gasperini, including the Coppa Italia just the week before. It was, in some respects, a little like the Celtics not getting it done in the 2017, 2018, 2020 and 2023 Eastern Conference finals (the NBA semi-finals). People wondered whether this core set of players could run it back and go that extra mile or whether they were destined to remain unfulfilled. After all, Atalanta were playing the team of the moment, Xabi Alonso’s Bundesliga-winning Bayer Leverkusen, a team then undefeated all season across 51 games in three competitions.

But, in the end, Gasperini got his due, as did veterans such as Berat Djimsiti, Hans Hateboer and the injured Marten de Roon, as did the doubted Charles de Ketelaere, Gianluca Scamacca and Lookman, whose hat-trick was the first in any European final since 1975.

Lookman was determined not to be on the losing side this time around. Pagliuca asked Celtics shooting guard Jaylen Brown to send him a video before Nigeria’s Africa Cup of Nations final appearance in February to put him in the right mindset. But the Ivory Coast prevailed that day. In Dublin, however, it was a different story for Lookman and for Atalanta.

“You don’t often get to be a part of a movie with a happy ending like that,” Pagliuca appreciates. “After that, we went back to the hotel, sang songs and had meals with the families. I don’t think the players went to bed until…” Pagliuca pauses. “They didn’t go to bed. They just got on the plane at 8am the next morning…”

Pagliuca, far left, celebrates with the Atalanta squad and staff after their win against Leverkusen in Dublin (Jonathan Moscrop/Getty Images)

Also on the flight home was the Percassi family.

Pagliuca would not have bought Atalanta without them.

Antonio Percassi, Atalanta’s snowy-haired president, played for the club in the 1970s. He then became a very successful entrepreneur, working on the franchising of brands including Starbucks in Italy as well as building e-commerce platforms for the likes of Gucci. His son, Luca, Atalanta’s chief executive, was briefly a footballer, too, moving to Chelsea in the 1990s along with Sam Dalla Bona, before going into the family business. Pagliuca compares leaning on their expertise to hiring former Celtics player Danny Ainge as that team’s general manager in 2003.

“They had sought us out actually, because they felt like the Celtics-NBA-global experience could help them,” Pagliuca says. He flew to Bergamo and got working on a deal to buy a majority stake in the club. Pagliuca felt it vital to retain the Percassis’ know-how. They took him out to dinner at Da Vittorio, the three-Michelin-star restaurant in nearby Brusaporto, and the rest is history.

“I have pictures of me sitting behind a huge vat of the special spaghetti (the legendary Paccheri) in the copper pan,” Pagliuca recalls.

Most new owners want to put their own stamp on a team. Look at Chelsea, a club Pagliuca bid for shortly after taking over Atalanta. The executive leadership team, coach and squad are completely different from what Todd Boehly and Clearlake inherited just over two years ago. Today’s Chelsea is unrecognisable from the version that won the Champions League in May 2021. Results have, unsurprisingly, deteriorated.

Pagliuca took a different approach at Atalanta. He leaned on the Percassis and stood by the in-demand Gasperini, who attracted interest from Napoli this summer but has stayed. Gasperini recently didn’t deny rumours that one of the reasons he is the longest-serving coach in Serie A is the percentage he gets at Atalanta from the sales of players he develops.

(Chris Ricco/Getty Images)

“We didn’t want to tweak things too much because, as they say, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Just add to it. And we’ve stuck to that,” Pagliuca says.

Atalanta seemed at their zenith when Pagliuca bought in. They’d finished third three times in a row and came within minutes of reaching a Champions League semi-final. Revenue from that competition, a fertile academy and a brilliantly executed player-trading model were allowing the Percassis to invest further in Atalanta’s youth system and turn the Stadio Atleti Azzurri d’Italia into the Gewiss Stadium, a football ground that increasingly has the feel of a leafy villa or long-life spa.

“A big reason to do the investment is you really want to pick (a) fantastic management team and partners, so it made sense to do the deal because the Percassis were incredible operators and really shared the same kind of philosophy that we had about trying to win and doing it sustainably,” Pagliuca says, “because if you don’t do it in a sustainable way, you see many of these clubs fall by the wayside.”

Udinese, for instance, have seen platforms such as Wyscout blunt their edge in scouting and Red Bull’s multi-club network eclipse what they tried to do with Watford in England and Spain’s Granada as sister teams. They were never able to extend two-to-three-year cycles of punching above their weight into the prolonged seven/eight-year stretch Atalanta are now on.

And here’s the thing, this is Atalanta’s weight now.

Between Europa League prize-winning money, Champions League qualification and new partners coming on board, the club brought in close to €200million last year. Divyank Turakhia, an Indian billionaire, has followed Arctos, who have a stake in Paris Saint-Germain, in joining the ownership group. Mazzulla, according to Pagliuca, “is actually an investor in Atalanta”. They are a big club disguised by the history and tradition of a small one.

“In terms of the sustainability of Atalanta, I think that with the way we are capitalised and the success we’ve had, and now Champions League and the increased revenues, you can see us holding onto players longer than in the past,” Pagliuca says.

(Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)

He’s talking about the likes of Teun Koopmeiners, who is in the middle of a stand-off over his desire to leave for Juventus at a time when Atalanta are financially stronger than ever. Atalanta are not the Celtics of Italian football (that’s Juventus). They’re big-city adjacent (Milan is less than an hour’s drive away) in an ever more congested football region (Lombardy), which has upwardly mobile clubs in Monza (still owned by the Berlusconi family) and Como (controlled by the Hartonos, billionaire brothers from Indonesia). And yet Atalanta have positioned themselves firmly in Italian football’s elite.

As work on the Gewiss Stadium reaches completion, Atalanta are able, in Pagliuca’s words, “to focus on the football operation”. They don’t need to budget, like the Milan clubs or Roma do, for a new ground.

The bigger, more modern Gewiss won’t be transformative like a new San Siro or Olimpico, but “it’s another piece and it helps in all aspects with getting promotions, with our fan amenities, ticket retention, so it ratchets through every aspect of the organisation. Sponsors love to come. We have the relationship with Da Vittorio (that three-Michelin-star restaurant nearby). It’s a lot better food than in any other stadium in the United States and probably in Italy as well.”

As for Serie A’s faltering domestic TV deal, once the main driver of revenue growth and now the biggest lagging differentiator between it and England’s Premier League, Pagliuca points out: “The league is getting more sophisticated. The international rights are up with the exception of the U.S. and the deal that they cut with some revenue-sharing could be as good as the last deal… If you take the long-term view and the streaming wars are over, the technology is going to increase the amount of money that goes through television, the amount of viewers, the amount of fans, which increases the revenues for all these teams.”

In the meantime, Atalanta just have to keep doing what they do best and optimise it, starting with the European Super Cup tomorrow (Wednesday) against Real Madrid in Polish capital Warsaw, where they’ll be without Scamacca, Giorgio Scalvini, Nicolo Zaniolo and Koopmeiners.

Every year, Gasperini gets asked if this could be the year Atalanta challenge for the Serie A title. He then reminds his interlocutors that they’ve lost context. But is it so outlandish to suggest as much in a league that’s had four different winners in five seasons and in light of the scale of investment Atalanta have received and the winning feeling a new trophy brings?

“That’s a tricky question,” Pagliuca says. “The goal is always to maximise the potential. Winning the Europa League and being in the Champions League, that’s all part of that. And if you take your eye off the ball, that can go away very quickly. So we have to perform and we do that through the academy, the scouting, the stats, the investing and an incredible management team in the Percassis.

“That’s the basic strategy and beyond that, you know, you’re always one injury away from losing an NBA championship or Serie A. Even the best teams are never a lock to win it in Serie A. Look at Napoli. I thought they would dominate this year (the reigning champions finished 10th, 41 points off the title). So the philosophy is similar to the Celtics. It’s to field a team that can win and hopefully you take advantage of that when the breaks come our way.”

That’s what happened for him since May in the Europa League and then the NBA; that rare unbottleable synergy of simultaneous success.

“I don’t know if it’ll ever happen again,” Pagliuca acknowledges. “I just have to be grateful that I was able to be a part of that with all the great people at the Celtics and all the great people at Atalanta.”

(Top photo: Nicolo Campo/LightRocket via Getty Images)