0 comments by Matt Zemek on 1/7/2016
College basketball is, by nature, crazy and hard to sort out… but this season is already pushing the boundaries of what’s so fascinatingly fragile about the sport. You don’t need to write elaborate explanations in order to capture the up-for-grabs nature of this season at its Janus-inspired midpoint, with two months of regular season action […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 1/6/2016
The balance of power on the field in college football and the future of academia as we know it — these are big ideas best tackled by fertile minds. Our guest columnist today raises them and invites us to consider college sports in a much broader and far-ranging context.
0 comments by Matt Zemek
As we continue our series of guest columns on Myths and Mysteries in college sports, David Wunderlich steps to the plate.
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 1/5/2016
The Kansas Jayhawks don’t wear any green. They don’t play on a parquet floor. They don’t have a shamrock in their logo. Yet, they really and truly are the Red Auerbach-era Boston Celtics of college basketball. Monday night’s enthralling 109-106 triple-overtime victory over the Oklahoma Sooners, in the 40th 1-versus-2 game in college basketball history, […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
The NCAA and USC are still at it in the courts, but where was the press when this story acquired critical mass? That’s what a guest columnist wants to know about. * Josh Webb is one of the 10 unsung #CollegeSportsTwitter stars you were encouraged to follow for 2016. You can find him
0 comments by Matt Zemek
The Heisman Trophy certainly invites a lot of criticism. Today, a guest columnist offers a pointed takedown of the award and its level of credibility. * A week ago at Awful Announcing, I invited you to follow 10 unsung #CollegeSportsTwitter stars. Flowing from that invitation, I gave the floor to those tweeps in a series of […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
The Big 12’s now-completed college football season is a trail of regret, littered with irony and aches and a sense of unfulfilled promise… even though the conference achieved its absolutely necessary goal of making the College Football Playoff. After the TCU-and-Baylor snub of 2014, the Big 12 had to make the playoff in 2015. The […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
In many ways, the 2015-2016 Pac-12 bowl season was reminiscent of the 2014-2015 Big 12 bowl season. One heavyweight delivered a knockout punch. The other one was leading by a large margin on points after 12 rounds… but got KO’d in the 15th. Remember the bowl season a year ago? TCU crushed Ole Miss in […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 1/4/2016
The Southeastern Conference was and is a hard conference to assess this college football season. There’s no way to reasonably refute that claim — not when considering the contradictions which exist in the league. The SEC’s most fundamental contradiction at the end of the bowl season, one which will exist whether or not Alabama wins […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
If Tom Herman is number one in a ranking of all 80 bowl coaches from all 40 games, Art Briles of Baylor checks in at number two. What Briles achieved in the Russell Athletic Bowl against North Carolina doesn’t require a lot of explanation, but it’s worth briefly underscoring just how impressive Baylor’s boss was […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
Mark Helfrich is not a bad coach because his Oregon Ducks blew a 31-0 halftime lead to the TCU Horned Frogs in this past Saturday’s Alamo Bowl. Helfrich isn’t a bad coach, period. He helped rescue Oregon’s season, which appeared to be headed off a cliff at one point but became (in its regular-season incarnation) […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
College football is a billion-dollar business. College football head coaches at Power 5 schools — with very few exceptions — receive seven-figure compensation levels each year. There is absolutely no excuse for kicking an extra point when leading by five with under five minutes left in regulation, but Todd Graham of Arizona State did exactly […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
A total of 80 men coached teams in the 40 bowl games which have just run their course. No man coached a better game than Tom Herman of Houston. The commander of the Cougars had his team ready to compete, hit, and perform at a desired tempo against Florida State in the Peach Bowl. Houston […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
The Southeastern Conference enjoyed a terrific bowl season this year. Eight bowl wins is a record for any single conference. An 8-2 record is undeniably strong, a record which points to pronounced consistency in a larger number of games than conferences which had seven bowl games or fewer. The SEC, spread across 10 games, packed […]
ATLANTA, GA – DECEMBER 31: Chance Allen #21 of the Houston Cougars scores a touchdown in the fourth quarter against the Florida State Seminoles during the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl at the Georgia Dome on December 31, 2015 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 12/31/2015
You know that many members of the national college football press corps will rip the Florida State Seminoles for losing to the Houston Cougars in the 2015 Peach Bowl on Thursday afternoon in Atlanta. Florida State made itself a target by winning (and because of Jameis Winston, but mostly by winning). When teams become targets, […]
