The Athletic has live coverage from Round 3 of The Masters. “Tradition” is a word you hear a lot in relation to The Masters. So when someone wears something that breaks from tradition in any sort of way on the grounds of Augusta National during the year’s first major, it’s likely to cause a stir….
Five years ago, this was a fairly simple exercise: Rank Alabama either No. 1 or 2, then drop Ohio State, Clemson or Georgia immediately before or after. Look like a genius 365 days later. But these days, it takes the GDP of a small country to keep a roster intact in college football. Ohio State…
One evening after the inaugural 12-team College Football Playoff concluded with four blowout games staged on campus, ESPN host Scott Van Pelt and football analyst Tim Hasselbeck held a conversation that mirrored many like it taking place on social media and in barrooms. The host teams won by an average of 19.3 points, and the…
Arizona State was picked to finish last in the 16-team Big 12. The Sun Devils are now meeting Texas in the Peach Bowl in the College Football Playoff quarterfinals. The player who sparked that incredible run also epitomizes it. Cameron Skattebo — 1,568 rushing yards, 19 rushing touchdowns, 506 receiving yards and three receiving touchdowns…
And now, 12 Final Thoughts from the first weekend of the first-ever 12-team College Football Playoff. 1. The first on-campus Playoff game kicked off at 8:10 p.m. ET in front of 77,622 roaring fans at Notre Dame Stadium. You didn’t have to be in the 25-degree South Bend weather to get the chills. Anyone watching…
Joe Burrow circa 2019 is not walking through the door of this College Football Playoff. There is no Deshaun Watson nor Trevor Lawrence to be found. It’s not that there aren’t a bunch of really good quarterbacks in the first 12-team College Football Playoff field. The teams wouldn’t have gotten this far if that were…
Who will win the first 12-team College Football Playoff? Six teams received at least one vote in our survey of 30 college football writers and editors at The Athletic, a big change from 10 years of postseason tournaments in which only four teams were in the field. Though Oregon got a majority of the votes, plenty…
Of the many things worth hating about college football, most of them are at least tacitly associated with the most hated people in sports: television executives. They fix games that hurt your team. They don’t fix games that should be fixed to help your team. They find a way to keep those games at four…
Who will win the first 12-team College Football Playoff national championship? I believe there are six teams that have the personnel, savvy and leadership to make a run and win it all, handling top competition as the margin for error gets smaller and the spotlight gets so much brighter. I love so many of these…
So much of the first season of the 12-team College Football Playoff has been spent adjusting the definition of success and reassessing what, exactly, qualifies as a “big game.” For some schools and their coaches, just getting into the field made their year. For others, simply being there is not good enough. Not even close….