0 comments by Matt Zemek on 12/31/2015
Wednesday night’s Music City Bowl in Nashville was an ugly mess of a game. Moreover, no one was surprised that the clash between the Louisville Cardinals and the Texas A&M Aggies turned into a sloppy, disjointed, and cluttered affair. Louisville did well to rebound from a 0-3 start to make a bowl game, but in […]
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The Mississippi State Bulldogs finished a perfectly respectable season on Wednesday afternoon in Charlotte, winning the Belk Bowl and capturing nine victories in a rebuilding year. The Bulldogs lost their best running back and receiver from 2014, leaving star quarterback Dak Prescott with comparatively few resources this season. Even though MSU’s nine wins did not […]
Recording studio microphone
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 12/30/2015
Tuesday at partner site Awful Announcing, I offered a list of 10 unsung #CollegeSportsTwitter stars worth following for 2016. I invited all of the honorees to answer two questions: 1) What is the biggest myth in college sports? 2) What is the most underreported story in college sports over the past 25 years? A few […]
ORLANDO, FL – DECEMBER 29: Johnny Jefferson #5 of the Baylor Bears carries while defended by Dominquie Green #26 and Des Lawrence #2 of the North Carolina Tar Heels during the first half of the Russell Athletic Bowl game at Orlando Citrus Bowl on December 29, 2015 in Orlando, Florida. (Photo by Rob Foldy/Getty Images)
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 12/29/2015
Frustrations can either linger or be expunged. One team knew what to do with its frustrations as 2015 came to a close. * The Baylor Bears went to Orlando, the site of DisneyWorld, on a business trip, not a pleasure cruise. Art Briles and his program felt the sting of a high-profile bowl setback each […]
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The California Golden Bears didn’t get everything they wanted this season, but they did make a bowl game, marking a modest but real step forward for the program. The man at the heart of this improvement project in Berkeley was Jared Goff. He dazzled in September, especially when he rang up 45 points on a […]
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When the 2015 Iowa Hawkeyes take the field for the Rose Bowl game this Friday, they’ll certainly attempt to win for themselves, to achieve something in the present moment. Yet, as much as every competition is about the opponent and the opportunity in front of one’s nose, some games have a way of reaching more […]
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Notre Dame. Ohio State. Two longtime Midwestern powers. The Fiesta Bowl, located in the suburbs of Phoenix, could not ask for a better matchup, given that the desert metropolis is a magnet for residents of the Midwest, in much the same way that Florida cities attract New Yorkers and other residents of the urban Northeast. […]
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Houston and Florida State will play in the 2015 Peach Bowl, a New Year’s Six game. The pairing feels odd in many ways, chiefly because Houston hasn’t played a bowl of this stature in 30 years. The fact that the Cougars reside in a lower-tier conference also makes the event feel smaller than it should. […]
Record roasting do-everything quarterback for Navy, Keenan Reynolds, is one of the five that cannot be afforded to be lost to their teams.
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 12/28/2015
It is so easy to emphasize the negative in life, and this could have been the case for Keenan Reynolds and Navy heading into the Military Bowl on Monday afternoon against Pittsburgh. Navy did not win the American Athletic Conference’s West Division. It did not get to play in the first AAC Championship Game. It […]
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As the North Carolina Tar Heels and Baylor Bears prepare to meet in the Russell Athletic Bowl — one of the more attractive matchups of the bowl season — it’s worth recalling a time when both schools stood tall. * The previous two seasons, Baylor won the Big 12 Conference, but North Carolina had not […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 12/24/2015
It became a favorite joke of bloggers on #CollegeFootballTwitter a few years ago. The University of Miami announced a crowd of 40,000 for a game in Sun Life Stadium, when no more than 20 to 25 thousand fans could have been in the joint. Announced crowds often exaggerate the actual walk-up crowd to a considerable […]
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The number 17 is not the over-under for Saturday’s Foster Farms Bowl between the Nebraska Cornhuskers and the UCLA Bruins in Santa Clara, California. The number 17 isn’t the spread by which UCLA is favored against its 5-7 bowl opponent from the Heartland. Could it be the number of thousands of people which will attend […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 12/23/2015
Monday night, I was supposed to appear on a podcast produced by the All Sports Discussion website. The co-founders, whom you can find
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Groundhog Day keeps happening over and over for Duke football — it’s enough to make Bill Murray mad. No, not THAT Bill Murray… the other one. * Before Caddyshack and Ghostbusters; before The Royal Tenenbaums and Lost in Translation; before Bill Murray established himself as one of the great comic actors of our time, another […]
2 Jan 1996: Running back Ahman Green of the University of Nebraska carries the football during the Cornhuskers 62-24 Fiesta Bowl win over the University of Florida at Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Arizona. Mandatory Credit: Stephen Dunn/Allsport
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 12/22/2015
Some of the greatest bowl games in college football history are readily identifiable: the 2007 Fiesta Bowl, the 1984 Orange Bowl, the 2003 Fiesta Bowl, the 2006 Rose Bowl, and others on that level of esteem. A number of bowl games in that vein, however, aren’t discussed enough — not because they were played so well, not because […]
