Jordan Ritter Conn

Oct 30, 2024 | theringer.com | Jordan Ritter Conn

They grew up playing on asphalt—touch football in the summer and tackle when winter snow arrived to soften their falls. They played everything, baseball and hockey and basketball, but they always loved football the most. They grew up, in the late ’80s and early ’90s, with the belief that they were special. That someday this collection of boys from the west side of Mankato, Minnesota, would achieve something that no one from their town ever had.

Aug 27, 2024 | theringer.com | Jordan Ritter Conn

On a hot summer day in Dallas, a 72-year-old retiree walks through a cavernous hotel ballroom, followed by cameras and flanked by microphones, trying to find a seat. Technically, no one is here to see Nick Saban, but at SEC media days old habits persist. Saban is short and slender, but in college football he remains a giant, the centripetal force that has long kept the sport on its axis. And now that he’s arrived, players, coaches, and reporters are all drawn into his orbit.

Nov 26, 2023 | theringer.com | Jordan Ritter Conn

The road to the college football hinterlands is stunning, winding its way through Oregon’s Willamette Valley, hills and vines in all directions, home to vineyards producing some of the world’s finest pinot noir.

Sep 28, 2023 | theringer.com | Jordan Ritter Conn

Late in the fourth quarter of the Green Bay Packers’ 2023 home opener, Jordan Love stands in the middle of a stadium that’s a monument to its team’s history, orchestrating the movements of nearly all of the 78,000 people assembled. He waves his arms and they clap their hands. He screams in their direction and they scream back in his. He looks up as he hears the green-and-gold-clad faithful at full volume, and he takes a breath to soak in their joy.

Sep 13, 2023 | theringer.com | Jordan Ritter Conn

For a brief moment, on Saturday afternoon in Boulder, Deion Sanders is invisible. Hard to believe, I know. Since he took over as head coach at the University of Colorado, Sanders has become college football’s centrifugal force, the planet around which attentions circle on loop after thirsty loop. The Buffaloes were on Fox’s Big Noon Kickoff the past two weeks, and will host ESPN’s College GameDay this coming weekend.