0 comments by Matt Zemek on 9/3/2015
Anyone who has been through enough college football seasons to appreciate the rhythms of this sport (or a lack thereof) knows that even the most discouraging week-one losses can be overcome. The sport with no preseason games puts a lot of 19- and 20-year-old athletes into a competitive cauldron they’re simply not used to. It […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
Every year, college football makes us very angry. “Us” refers to everyone who participates in the rollercoaster of emotions that is a college football season — the fans who get upset at pundits, the writers who can’t stand how the playoff system works (or fails to work), the coaches who can’t stand referees, and the […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
College basketball is, in the eyes of many Americans, a niche sport. Our internal traffic numbers here at The Student Section showed that in our first college sports cycle, basketball readership skyrocketed in March but didn’t remotely approach March levels in any other month before or since. At least in terms of content consumption (as […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 9/1/2015
Every week this season, The Student Section will offer not so much a viewer’s guide — you generally know where to find the game you want — as a vision of what a future college football schedule might look like. I will add: “Should look like.” Before going any further, let this much be said: […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
In the second part of our college football media roundtable, published a week ago, many of our panelists discussed the kinds of issues which remain a part of the annual landscape of this sport on television… but weren’t on the radar screen 25 years ago. The shifts witnessed within the college football television industry — […]
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The year 2016 is a leap year, with 29 days in February. The year 2015, as a college football television year, is a “Bo Jackson leap year” for the SEC and CBS. What could that term possibly mean, you ask? It’s actually very simple: Just as the calendar gains a day in a leap year, […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 8/31/2015
Fans, bloggers, pundits — all of us — easily recognize head coaches. On a national level — beyond the realm of the local beat writer or the team-specific specialist — the people who cover college football from a distance will more immediately identify the face of a head coach than the face of an assistant. […]
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As we prepare for a new FBS college football season, it’s worth looking at coaching once again, this time in the form of game management. One of the more remarkable aspects of the 2014 FBS season was that on multiple occasions — not just once — two highly-credentialed head coaches committed grade-school coaching errors… and […]
(Photo by Cooper Neill/Getty Images)
0 comments by Matt Zemek
Last year, the brand-new nature of the College Football Playoff made it harder to look at the whole of the season in advance and point to specific reasons for concern. Nobody really knew how the CFB Playoff committee would think through its decisions. Everyone had guesses, but no one had definitive answers. This season, it’s […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 8/28/2015
As great as a dynastic college program or professional sports organization might be, the prevailing truth about big-time sports remains intact: It’s extremely hard to win repeat championships. Go through the histories of teams that repeated as either professional or collegiate champions. There will always be an exception here and there, but for the most […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 8/27/2015
College football is messy. It always has been. It always will be, no matter how precise a playoff system the sport might devise or revise in the future. Think you have the perfect plan? A college football season’s imperfections and plot twists will usually (though not always — see Texas-USC in 2005) work around it […]
Oregon Ducks offensive lineman Hamani Stevens (54) jumps on Oregon Ducks wide receiver Darren Carrington (87) after Carrington scores his second touchdown of the second half. The No. 2 Oregon Ducks play the No. 3 Florida State Seminoles at the Rose Bowl Stadium in Pasadena, California on January 1, 2014. (Taylor Wilder/Emerald)
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 8/25/2015
Oregon Ducks 2014 Record: 13-2 (Defeated Florida State in the Rose Bowl / College Football Playoff semifinals; lost to Ohio State in the College Football Playoff National Championship Game) 1 Burning Question: What Will The Ducks Do In The Year After Marcus Heismanicus Maximus? Marcus Mariota was a special player, an historically great player, and a […]
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Monday, in part one of this college football media roundtable, Awful Announcing editor Matt Yoder and Student Section editor Matt Zemek were joined by two Student Section writers: columnist Allen Kenney and contributor Kevin McGuire. The panel discussed the new configurations of on-air talent across multiple shows, such as College GameDay, College Football Final, and […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 8/24/2015
It wasn’t even a thought in Everett Golson’s moment at the time. October 18, 2014. Doak Campbell Stadium in Tallahassee, Florida. Notre Dame played Florida State on even terms in one of the best games of the college football season. Drama, quality, systematic precision mixed with ruthless aggression — Notre Dame not only avoided a […]
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You surely heard the news over the weekend: USC head football coach Steve Sarkisian greatly embarrassed himself in a drunken incident which caused his boss, athletic director Pat Haden, to usher him offstage at an event for donors to the program. No, this won’t get Sarkisian booted from USC in the coming days or weeks. […]
