This is an opinion column.

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We need more Rhett Lashlee’s in college football.

Lashlee is the coach at SMU with rabies. He’s one sick puppy, in other words, if he thinks the ACC is better than the SEC at anything other than academics and cheating.

But just because everyone agrees that Lashlee is going into fall camp with a brain infection doesn’t mean we should ignore him. After all, these are unprecedented days for college football. Crazy is the new game. Hop on the Pony Express and let’s ride.

Exhibit A: Revenue sharing is here for collegiate sports, but don’t call the players employees or American campuses will burn and the Olympics will be ruled by the Russians and Chinese.

Exhibit B: President Donald Trump using women’s sports to distract everyone from his latest scandal involving girls.

Exhibit C: Bill Belichick is coaching at North Carolina, and dating someone who could be enrolled in the school.

Exhibit D: Miami paid $3 million for Georgia’s quarterback after, I’m told, Alabama turned down Carson Beck.

We could go on and on.

The point is that maybe it’s worth wondering what preposterous thing is going to happen next. SMU to the national championship game? Why not? It’s almost like this new era of college football was tailor-made for SMU, which is the most notorious cheater in the history of the sport.

Maybe Lashlee is on to something.

Lashlee was ridiculed at ACC Media Days for suggesting that his conference is deeper than the SEC. First, let me just point out that I’m thrilled things have worked out for Lashlee, who was one of Bo Nix’s 541 offensive coordinators at Auburn.

Fun fact: Lashlee started his career as an offensive coordinator at Samford in 2011. Before that he was a quarterback and grad assistant at Arkansas. He learned under the biggest nerd in college football, Gus Malzahn, which means Lashlee knows about punching up against big SEC schools.

At Auburn, it was Alabama and Georgia. At SMU, Lashlee recruits against Oklahoma, Texas and Texas A&M.

SMU has so much money that it bought its way into the ACC by giving up nine years of television revenue worth $200 million. It then raised that money over the course of a couple days, finished second in the ACC in 2024 and made the playoffs over SEC also-rans Alabama, Ole Miss and South Carolina.

It’s safe to assume that the Mustangs will be contending for a playoff spot once again.

Should SMU have made the playoffs over Alabama? Well, yeah. Alabama was terrible by the end of the 2024 season and lost badly on the road to Vanderbilt and Oklahoma.

But, wait, here comes a new champion to the rescue.

Trump loves SEC football and SEC football loves Trump. Maybe his new executive order will prevent these rogue schools like SMU from outspending the Crimson Tide.

But could the ACC actually have more playoff-contending teams than the SEC this season?

People are laughing, but not me and definitely not Trump. The list of ACC playoff hopefuls stretches all the way from Dallas to I-95.

Belichick is at North Carolina. SMU is coached by a maniac with a stack of blank checks. Miami and Duke both have better quarterbacks than Alabama. FSU won’t stop talking about beating the Tide. Clemson is loaded and has, potentially, the best quarterback in the country. Louisville and Virginia Tech are the sleepers and people are predicting Georgia Tech will go 11-1.

If Notre Dame defeats Texas A&M again, then the ACC will have all the bullets it needs to put more teams into the playoff than preseason speeding violations against Georgia football players.

College football’s case of the rabies isn’t going away, and it’s going to take more than Trump to save us from this fresh hell.

BE HEARD

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Joseph Goodman is the lead sports columnist for the Alabama Media Group, and author of the book “We Want Bama: A Season of Hope and the Making of Nick Saban’s Ultimate Team.”