0 comments by Matt Zemek on 10/5/2015
In the latest episode of the college football drama “How Coaches Think,” we present a double affirmation of one particular coaching tendency that’s quite common… but doesn’t have to be. * Saturday witnessed all sorts of coaching missteps. Two particular mistakes were overshadowed — the first one because the coach made a more questionable decision […]
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We who follow football closely, year after year and decade after decade, know that football coaches are usually conservative creatures — if not on a granular level, certainly on a larger one. Maybe a coach such as Bill Parcells — one of the all-time greats at the pro level (did you know he was also […]
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It’s commonplace in football: A team has a sound defense and — at least in first halves if not second halves — will be competitive precisely because its defense isn’t going to let a game spiral out of its control. The offensive line is capable of providing good run blocking. Just about everything’s there… … […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
On Saturday, October 3, 2015, college football coaches collectively had a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day. You’ll continue to read more about this as you stay with our site and process everything that happened over the past weekend. This is but the first of several installments in a series of articles reviewing how many […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
Age is just a number, they say. You’re only as old as you feel, they say. In many ways, those statements will always be true, but in cutthroat professions, getting on in years will introduce its fair share of limitations. Even the most accomplished head coaches in this era of college football (including one who […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 10/4/2015
It’s a Batman cartoon, or John Madden in his 1980s heyday at CBS, commenting on a hit or a devastating block. It’s most like a sprawling and drunken barroom brawl. The Pac-12, especially in the South, is wild and chaotic, straight from a John Wayne movie. Guys are staggering around, delivering punches in one moment, […]
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What, pray tell, is the “Boomerang Club?” Is it a group of all the people who have been hit by a boomerang on a Foster’s beer commercial? Is it a special cheering section at an Australian Rules Football contest, or perhaps a restaurant not too far from an AFL venue? (Said in a whispery voice: […]
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Play selection is easy to criticize in football. If you run and get stuffed, the masses will say you should have passed. If a pass is blanketed by the defense, the critics will shout about the need to have run the ball. Those are generalizations, but they’re part of how reactions to — and assessments […]
CLEMSON, SC – OCTOBER 3: Head Coach Dabo Swinney of the Cemson Tigers celebrates after defeating the Notre Dame Fighting Irish 24-22 at Clemson Memorial Stadium on October 3, 2015 in Clemson, South Carolina. (Photo by Tyler Smith/Getty Images)
0 comments by Matt Zemek
It’s become very tiresome. It’s become outdated, worn to the point of absurdity. It’s as stale as the day-old bread stand at the local supermarket… after it’s spent seven days on the shelf, unclaimed. Clemsoning — the gerund used to describe a certain ACC football team squandering prosperity — used to legitimately exist. Clemson would […]
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Remember when UCLA led Miami late in the 1998 regular-season finale between the two teams in the old Orange Bowl stadium? The Bruins somehow lost that lead and the game. They failed to make the first BCS National Championship Game in the 1999 Fiesta Bowl against Tennessee. They played the 1999 Rose Bowl against Wisconsin […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 10/3/2015
It was a very clear theme and a very central question as the month of September came to an end: In the 2015 college football season, would teams unaccustomed to being the leaders and standard-bearers for their (power) conferences be able to handle the heat? Will Utah be able to stand up to the fresh […]
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You’re familiar with the Venn diagram. Two circles share a piece of territory in the middle, but partly exist outside each other. This is the ACC Coastal Division, one weekend into the month of October. The division is once again chaotic; that’s nothing new. Unpredictability has been the ACC Coastal’s middle name ever since the […]
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The beloved Yogi Berra, in his well-lived 90 years on Earth, left us with many rich quotes, one of them being, “It gets late early out there.” The reference was to the experience of playing in the outfield at Yankee Stadium in October, during the World Series. The shadows would engulf the outfield a lot […]
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If you’ve heard or read it once, you’ve heard or read it a million times: The character of a college football season changes based on the month. September and the non-conference schedule; October and the attempt to establish the right identity; November and the attempt to play under championship pressure — they’re three different flavors […]
HOUSTON, TX – DECEMBER 29: Tyrone Swoopes #18 of the Texas Longhorns drops back to pass in the first half of their game against the Arkansas Razorbacks at the AdvoCare V100 Texas Bowl at NRG Stadium on December 29, 2014 in Houston, Texas. (Photo by Scott Halleran/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** Tyrone Swoopes
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Is there ample reason to be very concerned about the future of Texas football? Of course. Have the prospects for 2016 dimmed considerably as a result of the dumpster fire which has emerged in 2015? That question might not merit an airtight “yes,” but it’s certainly more likely than not. It’s very difficult to see […]
