Even by its own lather-rinse-repeat standards, the air of inevitability is particularly strong as we near kickoff for the 2022 college football season. Three teams (the Alabama Crimson Tide, Georgia Bulldogs and Ohio State Buckeyes) are dominating most national title conversations — and while that particular three-horse race isn’t terribly surprising, the degree to which […]
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 […]
College football is, generously speaking, a predictably imbalanced product. Five teams have hoarded 22 of the 28 possible bids to the playoff since the tournament was introduced in 2014, with three of those teams having accounted for six of the past seven national titles. Alabama, a program that served as arguably the biggest brand in […]
The best men’s basketball team in the Big Ten Conference over the past quarter century is in the throes of its worst year since the first season of its esteemed coach, so you could be forgiven for assuming that the rest of the conference might also struggle. Instead, the Big Ten hasn’t missed a beat. […]
We start with college football’s national championship game, in which Alabama dominated a slightly winded Ohio State. The Tide’s victory was, seemingly, inevitable. But how they did it remains impressive — with an offense of stars, including DeVonta Smith and Najee Harris. If anything, quarterback Mac Jones has gotten sold a little short, putting up […]