With the calendar turned to October, there’s no getting around it: Jalen Hurts is having a historic year in his last season of college football. He packed more into his first three years than most do in a career — two SEC titles and three national championship berths, including one in which he watched a […]
The college football season starts in less than a month, and bold predictions are rolling out. Just don’t believe everything you hear, especially when it comes to the Heisman Trophy. Making picks about the sport’s preeminent award is as difficult as ever. The Heisman is always a standard futures bet before the season kicks off. […]
There’s perhaps nothing more alluring in sports than the notion of unpredictability, that what you’re witnessing isn’t scripted, that anything could happen. George Mason. Leicester City. Buster Douglas. These narratives are the reason we keep coming back year after year. Recently, though, it seems like the improbable has taken a back seat to the foreseeable […]
One year ago, the Oklahoma Sooners fielded the worst defense to ever qualify for the College Football Playoff. Under first-year head coach Lincoln Riley, and behind Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Baker Mayfield, Oklahoma took a 17-point lead on Georgia, the eventual national runner-up, before losing in the Rose Bowl semifinal. Twelve months later, Riley has another […]
The engine powering college football’s pre-eminent outfit over the past decade has typically been a blue chip-laden, pressure-oriented, versatile defense. In Tuscaloosa, where Nick Saban has helmed the Alabama Crimson Tide since 2007, that engine has only gained steam in recent years. The winner of 87.2 percent of its games and five national titles since […]