Coastal Carolina Football

Coastal Carolina quarterback Grayson McCall announced on Monday that he is entering the transfer portal.

The three-time defending Sun Belt Conference Player of the Year award winner will be expected to catch the eye of prominent football programs looking to bolster the quarterback position.

McCall, 21, earned his first Player of the Year award after throwing for 2,488 yards, 26 touchdowns and just three interceptions in 2020. He followed that up with nearly identical stats last year (2,873 yards, 27 touchdowns and three picks) before throwing for 2,633 yards, 24 touchdowns and two picks in 2022.

For his career, he's completed an impressive 70.4 percent of his passes. He's also rushed for 1,053 yards and 16 touchdowns at Coastal Carolina.

Suffice to say, he's going to be a major target in the transfer portal:

McCall's former head coach, Jamey Chadwell, agreed to take over as Liberty's head coach on Dec. 4. There will be some speculation, naturally, that McCall might consider following him there.

But the young quarterback might be looking for a higher-profile program to help bolster his NFL draft stock. As Max Olson of The Athletic reported:

"If McCall isn't looking to team up with Chadwell at Liberty, he's going to have a long list of suitors. We know this because McCall was getting approached by Power 5 schools last offseason even though he wasn't in the transfer portal. Notre Dame, Florida, UCLA, Kentucky, Wisconsin, NC State and Missouri are among the many schools believed to be hunting for transfer quarterbacks right now. McCall should get calls from a bunch of them."

Indeed he should. McCall's decision is major news for both this offseason's transfer portal and potentially for the 2024 NFL draft.

The Coastal Carolina Chanticleers celebrated their 35-21 win over the Texas State Bobcats in hilarious fashion...with an eating contest against legendary competitive eater Joey Chestnut.

Unsurprisingly, Chestnut took down the competition, but the Chanticleers can't be too upset, as they moved to 9-2 on the season with Saturday's win over the Bobcats.

Chestnut, a 14-time Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest champion, is currently ranked first in the world by Major League Eating, so it's no surprise he had an easy time beating some college football players.

It's also interesting that they decided to have a pizza-eating competition, as Chestnut recently placed second in the Fat Boy's Pizza eating competition near LSU. He ate four-and-a-half two-foot slices in 10 minutes.

After leading Coastal Carolina to an undefeated regular season, head coach Jamey Chadwell has been named the Associated Press college football coach of the year for 2020. 

Per Ralph D. Russo of the Associated Press, Chadwell received 16 first-place votes and a total of 88 points to beat out Tom Allen from Indiana (14 first-place votes, 66 points), Luke Fickell from Cincinnati (five first-place votes, 44 points) and Nick Saban from Alabama (eight first-place votes, 42 points).

Chadwell is just the second head coach from a Group of Five school to win the AP coach of the year award since its inception in 1998. Scott Frost was the first to do it when he led Central Florida to a 13-0 record in 2017. 

The Chanticleers were one of the most pleasant surprises in college football this season. The program went a combined 13-23 in its first four FBS seasons and had never been ranked in the Associated Press Top 25. 

In 2020, Chadwell led Coastal Carolina to 11 straight wins in the regular season and a ninth-place ranking in the final Associated Press Top 25 poll. It also climbed all the way up to 12th in the final College Football Playoff rankings. 

ESPN's Bill Connelly projected Coastal Carolina to finish last in the Sun Belt's Eastern division with a 5-7 record in his preseason prediction column. 

"I knew we weren't as bad as people were going to pick us to be," Chadwell told Russo. "I thought we were going to be pretty good. I knew we were going to be better."

The Chanticleers' quest for a perfect season fell short when they were upset by Liberty 37-34 in overtime in the Cure Bowl on Dec. 26. Their 11 wins were the most in a single season for the program since going 12-2 in 2014. 

Chadwell finished his second season as Coastal Carolina's full-time head coach. He previously served as the interim coach in 2017 when Joe Moglia went on leave for medical reasons. The Tennessee native has gone 19-17 in three seasons with the Chanticleers.

Coastal Carolina's incoming president may have made more than a few friends on campus with his recent comments, but the College Football Playoff committee might not be as inclined to applaud his efforts.

In an open letter to the committee, incoming president Dr. Michael T. Benson strongly criticized the panel's ranking of CCU's undefeated team, noting the No. 12 Chanticleers (11-0) suffered from "flawed logic."

"Coastal Carolina and the University of Cincinnati have every right to be absolutely flabbergasted by both the results of the rankings, but also the flawed logic the committee used to arrive at their conclusions," Benson wrote. "I believe Cincinnati earned a spot in the playoff. And I also believe the Chanticleers were not respected when it came to bowl selection."

No. 8 Cincinnati went 9-0 during the regular season but was placed behind two-loss Oklahoma and three-loss Florida in the final rankings as well.

Despite victories over No. 21 Louisiana-Lafayette and No. 13 BYU padding their resume, the Chanticleers won't be playing in a New Year's Six bowl—the Bearcats earned the final bid there. Instead, they're heading to the FBC Mortgage Cure Bowl where they'll face No. 23 Liberty on Saturday.

While it's the first-ever bowl game for a program established in 2003, and in only its fourth season as a FBS school, it's not exactly the matchup an undefeated team would expect.

Benson was quick to point out how that wouldn't be the case for a brand-name school while explaining the committee runs away from the type of Cinderella stories created during March Madness by stacking the deck for top teams.

While the incoming school president said the letter wasn't written out of bitterness or with vindictive intent, it's final, blistering line calls out the committee for valuing revenue above all else.

"The lack of fairness inherent in the current system—a system driven by money as its master—must be addressed," Benson said. "You know it as well as I do; it's not right nor is it American."

The Sun Belt championship game between Coastal Carolina and Louisiana has been canceled after Coastal Carolina had a positive test for COVID-19 within its program.

Per the press release, "Because of contact tracing, an entire position group would not be available to play due to possible exposure and therefore the game cannot be played." 

"We are very disappointed that the championship game cannot be played, but we are so proud of all of the players and staff members and their hard work during this truly challenging season," Sun Belt Commissioner Keith Gill said in a statement. "We will honor both teams as 2020 Sun Belt Conference Co-Champions."

The Sun Belt championship had been scheduled for Saturday. 

It's been a tough end to the season for Coastal Carolina, which also was ranked just 12th in the latest College Football Playoff poll despite being 11-0 on the season. It's unlikely a second win over No. 19 Louisiana (9-1) would have gotten them anywhere close to a top-four finish and the College Football Playoff. 

But it could have potentially catapulted them ahead of No. 9 Cincinnati (8-0), which hasn't played in two weeks. That's important—the top-ranked team from the American Athletic, Conference USA, MAC, Mountain West and Sun Belt conferences automatically qualifies for a berth in either the GoodYear Cotton Bowl, Fiesta Bowl or Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl if they don't get into the CFP. 

The Bearcats face Tulsa on Saturday at 8 p.m. ET in the American Athletic Conference Championship Game. The Chanticleers hopes of leapfrogging Cincinnati are now entirely reliant on a Tulsa win. Tulsa, ranked No. 23, is unlikely to jump over both Cincy and Coastal Carolina with a win.