0 comments by Matt Zemek on 12/14/2015
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 […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 12/11/2015
The convergence of the past and present is constant in college football, and the Heisman Trophy — to be given to its 2015 recipient on Saturday in New York — has a way of forging that connection quite often. For fans of the snubbed players on Saturday, past snubs of note — Gino Torretta over […]
0 comments by Joe Dexter on 12/10/2015
It’s hard to imagine that we live in a world in which Ohio State and Notre Dame have met on the gridiron only five times during their long histories. Both programs will meet for the first time since 2006 — on a stage very familiar to both programs: the Fiesta Bowl in suburban Phoenix, where Jim […]
0 comments by Ryan Palencer
This all sounds very familiar. Clear deficiencies with the Indiana basketball program raise the question: Will another trip to the Big Dance — even with a “road team” seed (meaning road jerseys are worn in the first round as a lower seed) save the coach’s job again? Last season, Indiana struggled during various stretches, just […]
0 comments by Phil Harrison
Bowl season is upon us, and a whopping ten teams from the Big Ten are going bowling. Granted, two of them finished the season 5-7, but that’s a sad topic for another day. A bowl game means more practice time, more game film, and an ability to end the season on a high note. Each […]
0 comments by Bart D
The Heisman Trophy has become something of a Halloween costume. It’s supposed to be given to the “best player in college football,” and then it has this odd integrity clause which is ambiguous enough to suggest that voting members are free to get their Twitter psychology degrees and opine as to whether or not someone […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 12/9/2015
Plenty of college football writers — including some at this very site — don’t care much for conference strength debates. I actually don’t mind them at all. This is bread-and-butter water-cooler sports talk. While that kind of conversation can easily turn into a junk-food debate with lots of unsubstantiated and highly selective knee-jerk comments, it’s […]
0 comments by TSS Staff
Three writers that can’t quite agree on anything are ready to sling mud at one another once again in a weekly roundtable series. It’s time for Phil Harrison, Bart Doan, and Terry Johnson to solve the world’s problems one first down at a time in the heartland. It’s the weekly B1G Uglies series, with discussion about […]
TUSCALOOSA, AL – NOVEMBER 07: Derrick Henry #2 of the Alabama Crimson Tide rushes away from Jamal Adams #33 of the LSU Tigers in the second quarter at Bryant-Denny Stadium on November 7, 2015 in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. (Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)
0 comments by Mike Abelson on 12/8/2015
The Heisman Trophy finalists were announced Monday evening, and no one can complain about the three selected. Alabama’s Derrick Henry, Stanford’s Christian McCaffrey, and Clemson’s Deshaun Watson are the three men invited to New York for Saturday night’s ceremony. Henry had a monster season, by any metric, for the Tide. He set the SEC single-season […]
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 Bart D
Often when you’re doing either some intentional or non-intentional people watchin’, you come across two people and just turn to the person with you and say, “you know, that couple just looks like they go together.” Other times, you say, “that guy and gal just don’t seem to fit.” There’s no real nuance to it […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 12/7/2015
When conference partisans say their league has X amount of bowl games — as though that’s something to trumpet from the highest scenic overlook, rolling into the valley — I always like to do something in response at this time of year. The bowl lineup is set. All the bowl teams — 80 of them, […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
If Clemson has the best head coach in college football for 2015, Oklahoma has the best assistant. If Dabo Swinney deserves to be the 2015 Coach of the Year in the FBS, Lincoln Riley deserves to be the recipient of the 2015 Broyles Award, given to the top assistant in the sport. As is the […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
The college football regular season — save Army-Navy — is over. It is time to honor the year’s best, and few topics are more paramount at this point on the calendar than the best coach over the past three months. Saturday, the Big Ten and ACC Championship Games matched the four best power-conference coaches in […]
0 comments by Yesh Ginsburg
One of the main stated goals of the College Football Playoff was to restore the primacy of New Year’s Day in college football tradition. Part of this is obviously the two semifinal games. Another important part, though, is the collection of New Year’s Six games, which are supposed to provide top-level matchups between highly-ranked teams. […]
