0 comments by Matt Zemek on 11/8/2015
Saturday night’s annual early-November showcase between LSU and Alabama started slowly, enough to create thousands of references to the 2011 game between the two schools. If you follow college football on Twitter (as I do, using our Student Section account to live-tweet the action on Saturdays), you saw plenty of “9-6” or “2011” or “3-0 […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 11/5/2015
LSU and Alabama, united in 21st-century history by Nick Saban and the contentious 2011 season, have carved out a golden age in their football rivalry. Yet, even for a clash as celebrated and scrutinized as this one, can it be that Tigers-Tide is — dare we say it? — underrated as a rivalry? That’s a […]
BATON ROUGE, LA – SEPTEMBER 25: Patrick Peterson #7 of the Louisiana State Univeristy Tigers celebrates after scoring a touchdown by posing as the Heisman Trophy against the West Virginia Mountaineers at Tiger Stadium on September 25, 2010 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. (Photo by Chris Graythen/Getty Images)
0 comments by Mike Abelson
The Sampler Platter is always nourishing, but this week, it’s particularly tasty. This is it. It’s the main event. It’s the biggest college football weekend ever. It’s a cataclysm on the gridiron. It’s mega. There will never be a bigger series of sporting events in American history. Okay, there might have been an exaggeration or […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 11/2/2015
The story of the Miami-Duke kickoff return continued on Sunday. The ACC released a statement detailing the many errors made by the officiating crew and the replay booth. The league also handed down a brief suspension of the crews, but did not fire them. Late Saturday night, we showed you the visuals of the play […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 10/26/2015
The Tennessee Volunteers are not going to play for a division or conference title in 2015. They won’t play in a high-end bowl game. Their remaining schedule, in fact, guarantees decreased publicity and diminished centrality as far as the national press corps is concerned. The sexiest television attractions on the slate have come and gone, […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
Regardless of what is or isn’t said in public, it is very hard to deny the idea that the Miami Hurricanes reacted to the UCF Knights on Sunday afternoon. Sure, Miami faced its own upwelling of internal pressure to fire Al Golden, but when George O’Leary abruptly retired as UCF’s coach on Sunday, it became […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 10/25/2015
Saturday night in Atlanta, the Florida State Seminoles became the victims of a play called the “Block Six,” the cousin of Auburn’s “Kick Six” against Alabama two years earlier. The plays are eerily similar in more ways than one. Not only did each sequence of events involve a long run — at least three-fourths of […]
SALT LAKE CITY, UT – OCTOBER 17: Quarterback Travis Wilson #7 of the Utah Utes passes the ball in the second quarter of their game against the Arizona State Sun Devils at Rice-Eccles Stadium on October 17, 2015 in Salt Lake City, Utah. (Photo by Gene Sweeney Jr/Getty Images)
0 comments by Bart D on 10/22/2015
Much appreciation to the tens of readers who took part in the Hurt and Helped Themselves columns. With so much of the season in the books, we (or I) can get a jump on what the members of the CFB Playoff committee should be thinking (if they’re playing with a full deck). There’s no real […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 10/20/2015
The Texas A&M Aggies will do something this weekend they haven’t done at any previous point in 2015, or at any point in time since Nov. 8, 2014, roughly 50 weeks ago: Play a regular-season game outside the state of Texas. That’s pretty wild, right? Texas A&M played the last two games of its 2014 […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 10/19/2015
It was the noted philosopher Robert Goulet who once said, “On a clear day, you can see forever and ever, and evermore.” The middle of October is generally not a time when you can see forever in college football. This year, that statement seems to be especially resonant. We are (sad to say) at the […]
SALT LAKE CITY, UT – SEPTEMBER 3: Quarterback Travis Wilson #7 of the Utah Utes runs for a first down against the Michigan Wolverines at Rice-Eccles Stadium on September 3, 2015 in Salt Lake City, Utah. (Photo by Gene Sweeney Jr/Getty Images)
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 10/15/2015
Last weekend, with the night window exploding into all sorts of wonderful chaos — but, instructively, at the same time — we were treated to something incredibly intense and memorable. However, as college football fans and chroniclers, we were also forced to choose one or two games over another. The lingering problem with college football […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 10/13/2015
Plenty of great coaches come and go, winning games and receiving acclaim. In the history of the Southeastern Conference and the long existence of college football, better coaches than Stephen Orr Spurrier have walked the earth. Urban Meyer and Nick Saban are the two men who most readily come to mind in the present tense. […]
KNOXVILLE, TN – OCTOBER 10: Jalen Hurd #1 of the Tennessee Volunteers carries the ball against the Georgia Bulldogs on October 10, 2015 at Neyland Stadium in Knoxville, Tennessee. (Photo by Scott Cunningham/Getty Images)
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 10/10/2015
Butch Jones gained a win he desperately needed. Mark Richt lost most if not all of his remaining margin for error in this SEC season. Florida gained some leverage. Tennessee enjoyed a delicious serving of role reversal. That last detail underscores the nature not just of Saturday’s win over Georgia, but of this SEC season […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 10/6/2015
Before we move on to week six of the college football season, let’s take a snapshot of week five, through the lens of 20 statistics from the 20 most intriguing matchups on the schedule. This review won’t tell you everything there is to know about the past week in college football, but it will give […]
0 comments by Mike Abelson on 10/5/2015
The SEC West is a beautiful disaster. A victim of the contrivances that are preseason polls, the SEC West is nothing like people thought it would be when the season started five weeks ago. The division has been stretched, squeezed, and turned inside out. As college football reaches its midway point, it’s worth gauging who’s […]
