Jake Trotter Oct 23, 2026, 06:15 AM ET

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Jake Trotter is a senior writer at ESPN. Trotter covers college football. He also writes about other college sports, including men's and women's basketball. Trotter resides in the Cleveland area with his wife and three kids and is a fan of his hometown Oklahoma City Thunder. He covered the Cleveland Browns and NFL for ESPN for five years, moving back to college football in 2024. Previously, Trotter worked for the Middletown (Ohio) Journal, Austin American-Statesman and Oklahoman newspapers before joining ESPN in 2011. He's a 2004 graduate of Washington and Lee University. You can reach out to Trotter at [email protected] and follow him on X at @Jake_Trotter.

On the afternoon of Saline High School's homecoming game against rival Dexter last year -- to be played less than 7 miles south of Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor -- coach Kyle Short pulled quarterback Tommy Carr out of class.

Short's wife was going into labor.…