college football

At the end of the TV show The Office when the character Andy Bernard seemed to fulfill his lifelong dream when he secured a job at his alma matter Cornell yet realized he missed his life in Scranton, he famously said, “I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them.” This is one of the more prophetic quotes from a show that was famous for more satirical ones, and not just to Cornell grads who admired Andy’s reverence to the Big Red, a cappella group and all.

Perhaps every football coach’s favorite offensive formation is something called the Victory Formation. Every coach but Mario Cristobal of the University of Miami. At least that’s what it seemed like last Saturday, when Miami had a three-point lead and the ball with 33 seconds left against Georgia Tech, who had no time outs left. Which, unless it’s fourth down, is when you call Victory Formation, when the quarterback takes the snap and a knee while the offensive line huddles around. That, in this case, would have effectively ended the game and secured Miami’s win and continued their undefeated season.

There is no reason to feel bad for Les Miles, the once storied college football coach who led LSU to a national title in 2007. Miles has made his own bed, through a confluence of alleged improprieties at Oklahoma State and LSU before his final seasons at Kansas, where stories of prior sexual misconduct led to his departure. His coaching success, and it was considerable if but a bit unconventional, was clouded by life off the field.

There’s not much true analysis to give about Monday nights college football national championship game between Georgia and TCU. The game was, in a word, awful.

I apologize in advance, but I’m about to get really wonky about college football. Namely the college football playoffs, which puts the top four teams at the end of the season in a three game playoff to choose the best team in the country. These four teams are selected by a committee of experts, and they just released their first poll ranking the top 25 teams, the vast majority that have absolutely zero chance of making it.

There’s a longstanding mythology in big-time college football about thestudent walk-on. The kid who wasn’t a big-time recruit and still found his way onto the team. It’s the narrative of the 12th Man at Texas A&M and essentially the entire storyline of Rudy at Notre Dame. There’s little more intoxicating in the world of sport than the overlooked little engine that could.

If last weekend in college football had a title, it would be Reality Check. An alternative title would be, Time to Freshen Up that Resume. That’s because several teams received a cold dose of truth as they either underperformed or, as some might suggest, revealed their true self, and certainly the gap between where they are and where their fans assumed they might be.

For everyone who firmly believes that the SEC is the leading college football conference in the country, you now have some hard data to support that…

If you ask most people about the University of Connecticut football program, they would likely say, I think that’s a basketball school. Of course, history…

Perhaps the single most common word used during this whole Covid era has been change. Like how industry is changing, and schools are changing. And not…