Texas A&M student Karson Bell had never stormed a field before Oct. 9. Then he rushed two within eight hours. Bell started his eventful Saturday in Dallas at the Cotton Bowl for the Red River Showdown, where he watched linebacker David Ugwoegbu (a lifelong friend) and the Oklahoma Sooners pull off a miraculous comeback behind […]
The first two weeks of the college football season raised an unusual but not unreasonable question: Was Ohio State going to be less than its usual dominant self in 2021? In the season opener at Minnesota, the Buckeye defense was uncharacteristically leaky. The Gophers’ expected points added (EPA) per play was 0.08, then the fifth-highest […]
The Atlantic Coast Conference started the 2021 college football season with reason for title-contending hope. Three ACC teams ranked in the top 15 of the preseason AP poll: No. 14 Miami and the electric D’Eriq King looked like they were finally “back”; No. 10 North Carolina seemed ready for a trip to the promised land, […]
College football does not lend itself to consensus, but if you asked enough fans to name the best defense the sport has seen this century, you’d probably get a clear answer: 2011 Alabama. The Crimson’s Tide case is overwhelming, no matter the lens used to examine it. Narratively? That team won a national championship game […]
On the first full weekend of this college football season, with fans in the Camp Randall stands for the first time since 2019, Penn State and Wisconsin played the kind of game their conference does best — a 16-10 defensive struggle. Neither team scored in the first half, and only three drives crossed midfield in […]