This is an opinion column.
Cheers, Thomas Castellanos.
You broke through the late-June college football malaise and made us think about … college football. Like the sport. The games of football and not the 4+4+5+11 College Football Playoff math.
Not the revenue sharing formulas.
Especially not the lawyers.
The new Florida State quarterback went all Joe Namath in an interview with On3 and reminded us there’s a football season with games coming up soon.
He talked all the trash, filled the bulletin boards and gave us something to write before beach season turns into football season.
You have a former Boston College quarterback coming to a program fresh off one of the biggest failures slinging mud at Alabama like he’s Diego Pavia.
Bravo.
“I’m excited, man,” Castellanos said to On3 about the season opener against the Crimson Tide as part of a wildly entertaining interview. “People, I don’t know if they know, but you go back and watch every first game that I played in, we always start fast. I dreamed of moments like this. I dreamed of playing against Alabama.
“They don’t have Nick Saban to save them. I just don’t see them stopping me.”
Pew Pew. Shots fired.
Here’s a quarterback who began his career at UCF, transferred to Boston College and is now at Florida State making June headlines like he’s at The U in the ’80s.
This is a Florida State team that entered last season No. 10 before belly flopping to a historic 2-10 disaster. It’s a team whose only 2024 wins came over Charleston Southern and in a 14-9 game with Cal.
That’s not the kind of momentum you’d want for another Alabama-Florida State season opener. There hasn’t been as much chatter compared to the 2017 meeting dubbed the Greatest Opener of All Time (or G.O.A.T) was more like a donkey.
Still, there were a few built in storylines to make Labor Day Saturday in Tallahassee interesting before Castellanos started writing checks with his mouth.
There’s some lingering bad blood at FSU when its undefeated ACC championship-winning team missed the 2022 College Football Playoff in favor of a one-loss Crimson Tide.
There’s also the Gus Malzahn factor.
The former Auburn coach will be in his first game as Florida State’s offensive coordinator when his old rival comes to town.
That’s spicy.
But it’s Castellanos who brought the real kick and a punch.
He’s not scared of a post-Saban Alabama team, nor is he worried about kicking the hornet’s nest. They’re soft, is the only takeaway from Castellanos’ comments.
What’s notable is what you haven’t seen or heard in the 24 hours since Tallahassee Talker went viral. There’s been no real response from Tuscaloosa.
No clap back.
There’s not much that has to be said to a transfer QB coming to a 2-win team, honestly.
Florida State got a few talented receivers in the portal including Tennessee’s Squirll White and USC’s Duce Robinson to help the effort.
It’s also true Alabama returns a decent chunk of its defense, including a front seven that could make life difficult on Aug. 30. He’ll see speed and athleticism at a level above the day in, day out in the ACC.
But I respect the confidence this guy’s showing for a program that was a punchline last year. Perhaps he’s trying to inject some fire into a locker room that not only lost 10 of 12 games last year, they were rarely even competitive.
A Week 2 home loss came to Castellanos and Boston College, 28-13 as the spiral began. It was a team built on transfer portal players (including a few former Alabama backups) but became a cautionary tale in the quick fix marketplace.
Where former top recruit DJ Uiagalelei flopped hard, FSU is banking on Castellanos to help bury the 2024 radar blip.
This transfer apparently isn’t afraid to talk and he might win back a few Alabama fans who read the full On3 interview. Turns out he wasn’t a big fan of first-year Boston College head coach Bill O’Brien.
Yes, that Bill O’Brien.
“BC wasn’t the school for me,” Castellanos told On3. “I wasn’t able to be myself, and I had to try to make myself be something I wasn’t. I just didn’t like it. Bill O’Brien and I butted heads early in the season. I got banged up a few games. We had a meeting, and it kind of blew up in my face. I did so much for that program, and I did everything that I could, and I just wasn’t repaid the right way.”
It got even more pointed from there as he points out the level of athlete at Boston College isn’t on par with Florida State.
This was truly one of the most blatantly honest interviews I’ve seen in a while. Castellanos clearly didn’t hold much back and, in this column, we’ve always cheered the big talkers in this sport.
The game became too sanitized and boring with robotic coaches and players doing all they could to resist the urge to say anything interesting.
Castellanos didn’t.
