Much of college football's allure resides in the sport's unpredictability. Yet, for as much chaos as ensues in any given autumn, the Alabama Crimson Tide provide stability. For as much as fans and pundits might insist that any four teams are surefire contenders for the Playoff, accurately forecasting the field at this juncture might as…
Each year in mid-to-late June, I promise myself that one day -- one day -- I will get to Omaha for the College World Series. The annual NCAA baseball championship may have moved from venerable Rosenblatt Stadium, but the history that comes with nearly seven decades followed the College World Series into TD AmeriTrade Park.…
In 2007, with his Ohio State Buckeyes ranked No. 1 and about to begin the march to a Final Four, Thad Matta made a statement to The New York Times that feels prescient in retrospect. "In this profession, there’s so much luck involved in how the ball bounces." Bad luck and a few awry bounces…
Save some room Thanksgiving weekend for the inaugural PK80 Phil Knight Invitational, college basketball's newest -- and arguably most loaded -- early-season tournament. The brackets for the debut PK80 were released Wednesday, and the opening rounds on both sides of the bracket feature some of the best matchups of the entire 2017-'18 nonconference slate. 8.…
ESPN released its Week 1 broadcast schedule on this, the 100-day mark until the first full weekend of college football. Thursday's release does not cover the network's entire Week 1 plan -- ESPN 2, ESPNU and SEC Network games remain TBD -- but the full slate of contests on the main ESPN and ABC are…
Precedent dictates certain criteria for Heisman contention: A candidate must typically be either the quarterback or running back of a national championship-contending team, with very few exceptions in the award's history. So, when a Florida State fan site lamented Dalvin Cook's drop in the Heisman race following the running back's best game of the season,…
ESPN airs the first College Football Playoff rankings tonight at 7 p.m. ET, and the affair is sure to be controversy-free, right? I mean, the Associated Press Top 25 and Coaches Poll both have the same unbeaten teams ranked in the Top 4, so there's no way the Playoff committee could possibly deviate, right? Well...…