Ranking college football's all-time villains
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- The 157th college football season opens as ESPN publishes a ranked top-10 of the sport's "all-time villains," spanning players, coaches, a network, and a university.
- Caleb Williams lands at #10 for transferring from Oklahoma to USC with Lincoln Riley, winning the 2022 Heisman, and starring in national TV ads during his own games.
- Deion Sanders is #9 and the only entry with two "villain eras" — Florida State in 1988, when he taunted Clemson at Death Valley, and Colorado's head coach from 2023 onward.
- ESPN itself appears at #7, with the author — an ESPN employee — recounting being pelted with rocks in Knoxville in 1997 and a Crown Royal bottle in Columbus.
- The 1990 Miami Hurricanes rank #5 after their 46-3 Cotton Bowl win over Texas drew 15 penalties for 202 yards, a performance the article states directly inspired the NCAA's 15-yard excessive celebration rule.
- Johnny Manziel checks in at #3 as the first freshman Heisman winner (2012), whose nightclub antics became "the lead story on TMZ" while he was still 20 years old.
- Lane Kiffin holds the #2 spot, but the article text cuts off mid-entry, and the #1 villain is not visible in the provided excerpt.
Why it matters: An ESPN writer ranks his own employer as a college football villain (#7) and places widely liked Tim Tebow at #8 alongside figures like Johnny Manziel, blurring provocation and parody. The 1990 Miami Hurricanes entry carries a concrete ripple: the article states their Cotton Bowl penalties directly produced the NCAA's 15-yard excessive celebration rule still enforced today.
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