0 comments by Mike Abelson on 1/8/2016
As conference play begins the Atlantic 10 race is heating up quickly. No team truly asserted itself at the top of the conference, but leading into league play trends are starting to form. Let’s break it all down. … WANNA WIN THE LEAGUE? BEAT DAYTON. Dayton has been the A-10’s best team so far, and […]
Penn State quarterback Christian Hackenberg (14) passes during the first quarter of an NCAA college football game against Central Florida in State College, Pa., Saturday, Sept. 14, 2013. UCF won 34-31. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
0 comments by Kevin McGuire on 1/7/2016
Christian Hackenberg could have gone to Alabama and become the face of a budding dynasty with the nation’s top offensive line protecting him and a Heisman Trophy-caliber running back in the backfield with him. The pro-style passer, a five-star recruit on 247 Sports’ composite ranking system and an Under Armour All-American, would have been a star […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
The foremost drama of coaching — in terms of regularity, though not in terms of raw emotional impact — is the attempt to avoid being fired. The coaching drama which captures the heart and tugs at the emotions is the attempt of the beloved veteran to finally make a first Final Four, or a first […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
College basketball is, by nature, crazy and hard to sort out… but this season is already pushing the boundaries of what’s so fascinatingly fragile about the sport. You don’t need to write elaborate explanations in order to capture the up-for-grabs nature of this season at its Janus-inspired midpoint, with two months of regular season action […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 1/6/2016
The balance of power on the field in college football and the future of academia as we know it — these are big ideas best tackled by fertile minds. Our guest columnist today raises them and invites us to consider college sports in a much broader and far-ranging context.
0 comments by Matt Zemek
As we continue our series of guest columns on Myths and Mysteries in college sports, David Wunderlich steps to the plate.
0 comments by Bart D
The title suggests “hopefully” the way people buy $10 scratch off lottery tickets with their morning coffee before work, hoping they get a prize so large they can turn around, go home, and not give any explanation as to why they didn’t show up because they just won enough loot to buy the company. This […]
0 comments by Bart D
Bowl season is a wonderful time to make sweeping generalizations based on very little credible evidence combined with events that aren’t really representative of the whole story. We love making bowl games a referendum on a team’s entire season … when other than for four of them, they’re beefed up exhibitions where you go hang […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 1/5/2016
The Kansas Jayhawks don’t wear any green. They don’t play on a parquet floor. They don’t have a shamrock in their logo. Yet, they really and truly are the Red Auerbach-era Boston Celtics of college basketball. Monday night’s enthralling 109-106 triple-overtime victory over the Oklahoma Sooners, in the 40th 1-versus-2 game in college basketball history, […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
The NCAA and USC are still at it in the courts, but where was the press when this story acquired critical mass? That’s what a guest columnist wants to know about. * Josh Webb is one of the 10 unsung #CollegeSportsTwitter stars you were encouraged to follow for 2016. You can find him
0 comments by Matt Zemek
The Heisman Trophy certainly invites a lot of criticism. Today, a guest columnist offers a pointed takedown of the award and its level of credibility. * A week ago at Awful Announcing, I invited you to follow 10 unsung #CollegeSportsTwitter stars. Flowing from that invitation, I gave the floor to those tweeps in a series of […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
The Big 12’s now-completed college football season is a trail of regret, littered with irony and aches and a sense of unfulfilled promise… even though the conference achieved its absolutely necessary goal of making the College Football Playoff. After the TCU-and-Baylor snub of 2014, the Big 12 had to make the playoff in 2015. The […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
In many ways, the 2015-2016 Pac-12 bowl season was reminiscent of the 2014-2015 Big 12 bowl season. One heavyweight delivered a knockout punch. The other one was leading by a large margin on points after 12 rounds… but got KO’d in the 15th. Remember the bowl season a year ago? TCU crushed Ole Miss in […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 1/4/2016
The Southeastern Conference was and is a hard conference to assess this college football season. There’s no way to reasonably refute that claim — not when considering the contradictions which exist in the league. The SEC’s most fundamental contradiction at the end of the bowl season, one which will exist whether or not Alabama wins […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
If Tom Herman is number one in a ranking of all 80 bowl coaches from all 40 games, Art Briles of Baylor checks in at number two. What Briles achieved in the Russell Athletic Bowl against North Carolina doesn’t require a lot of explanation, but it’s worth briefly underscoring just how impressive Baylor’s boss was […]
