0 comments by Matt Zemek on 9/27/2015
As of Sunday morning — September 27, 2015 — the college football season is still relatively young. A year ago, a wild September was followed by a stability-bearing October and a not-that-crazy November. The march to the first College Football Playoff certainly wasn’t free of clutter or controversy, but that controversy was mostly the making […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
Yes, if you’re Vanderbilt or Mississippi State — with very few SEC football championships to your name (none for the Commodores, one for the Bulldogs, in 1941) — you have lived the most impoverished existence in the conference over the longest period of time. However, for certain programs at the end of September, life in […]
LUBBOCK, TX – SEPTEMBER 26: Aaron Green #22 of the TCU Horned Frogs catches a tipped ball in the end zone for the game winning touchdown late in the 4th quarter against the Texas Tech Red Raiders on September 26, 2015 at Jones AT&T Stadium in Lubbock, Texas. TCU won the game 55-52. (Photo by John Weast/Getty Images)
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 9/26/2015
You might recall a game played 18 years ago. A national title contender played a Big 12 road game. Then came Matt Davison, riding to Nebraska’s rescue against Missouri: That was 1997. The play was called “The Flea Kicker.” Nebraska went on to win a share of the national championship with Michigan. * That Nebraska-Missouri […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
Weren’t we here a week ago? In many ways, yes, but not in one fundamental way for the University of Texas and its football program. A week ago, Texas did lose a home game on a kicking-game calamity in the final minutes of regulation. However, the emergence of a potent offense and the new credibility […]
Virginia has not beaten Virginia Tech since 2003, and the Cavaliers have defeated Frank Beamer’s boys only once since 1998. If Mike London can’t beat the Hokies now, he probably never will… because he won’t see the 2015 season as Virginia’s head coach.
0 comments by Matt Zemek
The story of the Boise State Broncos got more interesting on Friday night in Charlottesville, Virginia. A team with a new quarterback (Brett Rypien), due to an injury to the previous one (Ryan Finley), looked very strong in a road game played two time zones away from Idaho. However, it’s a little too early to […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 9/25/2015
The Memphis Tigers have given up a combined total of 87 points in their last two games. The Memphis Tigers are 2-0 in their last two games. Coach Justin Fuente’s team, which won the 2014 Miami Beach Bowl by a 55-48 score over BYU, is picking up where it left off last December. This isn’t […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 9/24/2015
See the cover image for this story, above? It’s a bus. Two years ago, USC athletic director Pat Haden pulled a man named Lane Kiffin — whom you heard absolutely NOTHING about on Thursday (wink, wink) — off a bus at Los Angeles International Airport and fired him before he got to the school’s campus. […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
Some annual college football conference games are nothing more than that: conference games. They merely exist, and nothing more. Illinois versus Purdue is a conference game. AND? What’s your point? Exactly. Other conference games are can’t-miss blockbusters each year — some over a period of decades (The Iron Bowl, Michigan-Ohio State, USC-UCLA), and some within […]
0 comments by TSS LOCKER
What’s in a name, and what’s in a word? It can be confusing. Just ask Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari. Baseball historians know all about “Merkle’s Boner” from the 1908 National League season. It was the gateway for the Chicago Cubs to win their most recent World Series title. The reference is made because “boner” […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
The schedule for week four of the season offers a fascinating blend of enlightened and familiarly depressing college football programming decisions. Some aspects of this schedule hit the sweet spot. Others don’t. Yet, the most conspicuous feature of the television slate for week four is that the better instances of time-slotting are — in some […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 9/23/2015
Bret Bielema — the big talker who belittled Ohio State’s schedule and then lost to a Mid-American Conference team at home — doesn’t deserve to be seen as a somebody in college football right now. Bielema — the man who gets into arguments with coaches after getting waxed by their teams on his own home […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
All offseason, websites and bloggers and television pundits make projections and assessments about the college football schedule. Plenty of perfectly valid points are raised. It’s not as though these analyses are incorrect or misguided. They work with the information they have available. Team X gets a midseason bye week before its biggest road game. Team […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 9/22/2015
The Kentucky Wildcats were on the verge of staging a coming-out party… but they fell short last Saturday night against a Florida offense which is clearly quite limited. The Tennessee Volunteers were also close to achieving a breakthrough a few weeks ago against Oklahoma… but a dropped pass early in the third quarter — one […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 9/21/2015
It is only September. Time and opportunity both exist for a few teams in the Group of Five conferences to make a run at a New Year’s Six bowl. However, if you have already taken the time to peruse results and standings after week three, you’ll notice something unsettling if you’re partial to the little […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
The SEC West and the Pac-12 South — these were the two best divisions in the two best conferences last season. Ohio State and Michigan State, from the same Big Ten division, both occupied the season-ending (post-bowl) top five last January, but in terms of a top-to-bottom division, the SEC West and Pac-12 South stood […]
