“West Virginia’s 49 points at halftime were the most in bowl history. Not Orange Bowl history: bowl history, as in every… single… bowl… ever played. The history of bowl games, from the Rose to the Beef ‘O’ Brady. Ever, ever, ever. Likewise, West Virginia’s 70 points at the end of regulation was a bowl record – ever.”
Category Archives: NCAA Football
Best BCS line of the day
“The onus to sell tickets needs to be on the bowl games, which are getting one of the greatest deals in sports by having college football outsource its most profitable product (its postseason).”
Dan Wetzel in an excellent column on the BCS and a, dare I say it, yes I dare, “playoff.”
After Last Night
But before today’s games.
LSU is undefeated.
Alabama lost only to LSU 9-6 in OT.
Oregon lost only to LSU 40-27 in first game of season.
Arkansas lost only to #3 Alabama 38-14.
Stanford lost only to #4 Oregon 53-30.
Virginia Tech lost only to #7 Clemson.
Clemson, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Boise State all lost to an unranked team.
Houston is undefeated.
Everybody else has lost at least twice.
How would you seed the playoffs?
Letter to a Coach
Coach Saban,
First off, let me say you have a fine, fine football team. The running game and the defense are just fantastic. I’ll make this quick because you’re busy. Tuscaloosa probably has a part of town where Latinos are concentrated. If not Tuscaloosa, then certainly Birmingham. In that part of town there will be a makeshift soccer field, or maybe even a real soccer field. On this field you will find children of all ages for whom kicking a ball is easy, second nature, and who haven’t lived lives steeped in American collegiate football lore and therefore wouldn’t be super-duper nervous if asked to kick a weird-shaped ball through uprights that to them would seem a gaping target. After you’ve chosen your boy, explain that he will receive a college education at one of the top 100 state universities in the nation if a few dozen times a year he kicks the weird ball through the uprights for you. There may be a moment of confusion when the boy thinks he has to actually hit one of the uprights with the ball, and then when he realizes he merely has to kick it anywhere between the uprights, both of you will laugh, and laughter knows no borders.
The Real Tragedy
The real tragedy stemming from the Penn State case is that when they play Nebraska this Saturday I will have to root for Nebraska.
[I believe the story at The Pennsylvania State University is a tragic one — please don't think I forget that if I rant about the football coach or joke. This blog is about wisdom, whimsy and wit.]
Best Line of the Day
“Perhaps the only certainty is that Arizona wants a coach with a more stoic, less demonstrative manner – the anti-Stoops, in short.”
Pre-Snap Read in surveying the likely prospects.
Arizona Makes a ‘Difficult Decision’
I would have said, Arizona Finally Makes a Difficult Decision, but never mind.
Pre-Snap Read takes a look at Arizona’s firing of eighth-year football coach Mike Stoops.
“There’s clearly more to it than just wins and losses, even if that’s always – always, always – the ultimate motivator behind a coaching move, particularly one that occurs in October, halfway through a season. When it comes to another quote from Byrnes, you can read between the lines as you will: ‘I think (Kish will) create a culture of calmness, which is probably a good thing for us.’
“Red, redder, reddest: that’s Stoops, or that was Stoops, along the sidelines as Arizona’s head coach.”
The school has to pay Stoops $1.4 million.
Best football line of the day
“Wisconsin could have played the second-team and run all over the Cornhuskers, which says a bit about both teams.”
Exactly
Arizona at USC — 37-14, 37-10, 56-31. Arizona’s past three games. The Wildcats are the 14 and the 10 and the 31. And another loss coming up, at USC. Finished last season with five straight losses, three of them blowouts, did the Wildcats. At some schools, coaches build credit they can ride through tough times by winning a national or conference championship. In Tucson, apparently, an 8-5 season earns you that credit. Before two of those eight-win gems, Mike Stoops went 5-7, 6-6, a couple 3-8′s, maybe even a 2-10 way back there. Is this guy’s seat finally hot? Or hot again? Or genuinely hot? I’m asking. I don’t hear much news out of Arizona and I’ve spent two days of my life in Tucson — saw the Mission San Xavier del Bac, then built up an appetite walking around campus, and then relented to that appetite at one of the finest Outback Steakhouses I’ve ever been to. Let’s take this hot-seat talk in a different direction. If the Arizona athletic department doesn’t care about the football team, hire a head coach who needs the money. Hire a guy with two 11-dollar-an-hour jobs and four kids. This is a chance to help someone, to transcend sport. You can still hire regular assistant coaches to install their systems and call plays. Down South, we honestly don’t see much of a difference between losing most of your games (41-48, the Internet tells me) and losing all of them.
This alum frankly doesn’t see much of a difference between losing most of your games and losing all of them either. And the record is more like 34-48 because beating Northern Arizona five times and Stephen F. Austin and The Citadel don’t count for much.
Best line of the day
“A few strokes before midnight Sunday, a motorcycle policeman turned on his red and blue lights and led four Oregon Ducks buses from Arizona Stadium to the airport.
“It was the only time all night that anything red and blue had a step on the Ducks.”
Greg Hansen, Tucson Arizona Daily Star
Red and blue are Arizona’s colors.
Arizona has gone 63-84 since its 12-1 season in 1998.