0 comments by Matt Zemek on 12/18/2015
The New Mexico Bowl, played in Albuquerque, grew up in the time — and place — of Breaking Bad. This game regularly opens the bowl season. It is typically played in the middle of the day. The event usually pits a decent Mountain West team against a middle-of-the-road Pac-12 team. Schools from Conference USA (UTEP), […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 12/17/2015
A wonderful symmetry has existed over the past 10 years of the BYU-Utah football rivalry, discontinued in 2014 but happily renewed in Saturday’s upcoming Las Vegas Bowl: Both coaches took over their respective programs at the same time. Bronco Mendenhall — who will coach his final game for BYU before leaving for Virginia — gained […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 12/16/2015
So, this happened on Wednesday afternoon, although subsequent reports indicate the divorce is not yet final: Kevin Sumlin is trying to keep Kyler Murray in College Station, but the mere possibility that A&M could lose both Murray and Kyle Allen in a matter of days is rather remarkable… not in reference to the politics on […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
The Camellia Bowl, in its second season, is one of a number of bowls created by ESPN not for the tickets sold or the attendance generated, but for the television ratings and advertising dollars that come with it. As is the case with the Bahamas Bowl, the GoDaddy Bowl, and a few other postseason contests […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
As Brigham Young University tries to nail down its next head coach, the football program with a national championship and a national schedule finds itself playing yet another bowl game before Christmas. Sure, the Saturday matchup with Utah is one of the most watchable and attractive bowls on the slate. Sure, the re-enactment of The […]
0 comments by Allen Kenney
Oklahoma and Clemson square off in the Orange Bowl on New Year’s Eve in what looks like one of the best match-ups of the college football postseason. A deep dive on the two teams reveals just how evenly matched the two teams are. Here are the big questions you should be asking about the Orange […]
Utah’s win over Pittsburgh in the 2005 Fiesta Bowl was fun. The Utes’ thrashing of Alabama in the 2009 Sugar Bowl was significant.
0 comments by Bart D
Bowl season starts in four days. Absent the annual kvetching of people who will be dying for any kind of football come June and July about how there are too many bowl games (there is no such thing as too many bowl games), one of the other annual rites of this time of year is […]
0 comments by Joe Dexter on 12/15/2015
Alabama offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin has a lot to prove heading into the 2015 bowl season. One year after his offense finished as the ninth-best unit in the country but failed to deliver against Ohio State in the Sugar Bowl, Kiffin gets a second chance at a Big Ten team in the College Football Playoff semifinals. […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
If the College Football Playoff semifinals share a fundamental similarity, they own a basic difference as well. The Orange Bowl and the Cotton Bowl are both revenge games for the lower seeds: Oklahoma will try to wash away the bitter taste of a 40-6 loss to Clemson in the 2014 Russell Athletic Bowl, and Michigan […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
There are so many ways to crack open and compare the College Football Playoff semifinals. You’ll get all the angles in due time over the course of the next two and a half weeks. Today, consider one of the foremost similarities between the Orange Bowl and the Cotton Bowl: the presence of revenge as a […]
0 comments by Bart D on 12/14/2015
Pay for Play in college is the “gun rights” of sports arguments. If you want to get a plethora of scalding hot takes, outrage, and general wailing and gnashing of media teeth, just bring up anything related to college athletes being “paid” and just sit back with a bucket of popcorn. NCAA’s Oliver Luck was […]
Heisman Trophy finalists, from left, Alabama’s Derrick Henry, Stanford’s Christian McCaffrey and Clemson’s Deshaun Watson pose for a photo with the Heisman Trophy before the start of the award presentation show, Saturday, Dec. 12, 2015, in New York. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)
0 comments by Ryan Palencer
In its 80-year history, the Heisman Trophy Award has offered mixed signals in terms of success at the NFL level. Of the three Heisman finalists this season, winner Derrick Henry will certainly have some NFL buzz in 2016. However, with his size, there are some limitations which have to be acknowledged. Henry has excellent burst […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
In the 2016 Sugar Bowl, Hugh Freeze of Ole Miss will not coach for his job. He won’t coach a game he has to win for purposes of maintaining top recruiting classes in Oxford. No, this game in New Orleans is not about Ole Miss’s future as a program. When the Rebels face Oklahoma State […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
Some coaches step into a cauldron of bowl-game pressure because their teams are doubted. To a certain extent, this is the situation Kirk Ferentz of Iowa enters as he prepares his team for the 2016 Rose Bowl against Stanford. Yet, while doubt forms a part of the backdrop to the Granddaddy, the bigger and more […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
Not every bowl game is equally important on a larger scale. Not every bowl means the same to each of the participating teams. These realities exist for various reasons. In many cases, the urgency attached to a bowl game diminishes because a coaching departure, combined with the interim coaching situation which flows from it, creates […]
