PHILADELPHIA — The Penn State fans inside Wells Fargo Center rose to their feet and held five fingers in the air. In the waning seconds of Carter Starocci’s final match as a Nittany Lions superstar, one last gasp from Northern Iowa’s Parker Keckeisen ended the same way every Starocci match has gone during his five…
The top three in my annual ranking of the best coaches in college football was easy. After that, things got more complicated. How much does recency bias factor in? For me, not as much as it does for Stewart Mandel, whose Top 25 can be found here. I’ve always given coaches more credit for what…
The NFL Scouting Combine kicks off in a few days, and it provides a great callback to our annual Freaks List of college football phenoms. Some of those Freaks in this draft aren’t expected to work out this year, including East Carolina star cornerback Shavon Revel Jr., who is coming off of a torn ACL….
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…
ARLINGTON, Texas — And now, 15 thoughts from Notre Dame 27, Penn State 24 and Ohio State 28, Texas 14 — two much-needed, much-enjoyed fourth-quarter finishes in the College Football Playoff semifinals. 1. The camera operators for the mammoth video board at AT&T Stadium love their crowd shots. There were several between every play. Friday…
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — Before Mitch Jeter’s 41-yard field goal sent Notre Dame to the national championship game, before Christian Gray’s diving interception set it up or before Jeremiyah Love’s mutant performance on a braced right knee, Marcus Freeman stood before his team inside the Diplomat Hotel on Hollywood Beach on Wednesday afternoon. Notre Dame’s…
Baylor plays LSU on Tuesday night in the Texas Bowl, Dave Aranda’s team looking for its seventh straight win to finish the season in a matchup that sets the table for the Fiesta Bowl quarterfinal. The Bears bumping right up against a College Football Playoff game is fitting because one might argue Baylor could be…
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…
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — What’s remarkable is not that two women are coaching for the national championship and one will win a title for the first time in the 44 years of NCAA women’s volleyball. It’s remarkable that these women, Katie Schumacher-Cawley and Dani Busboom Kelly, are the two doing it. Because they are the ideal…