1977 College Football Season: The Road To The Major Bowls
The 1977 college football season defined by a dramatic January 2, when the four major bowl games were played. Two big blowouts created chaos and a controversial national champion.
College Football History Articles
The Inspiring Season Of 1989 Colorado Football
The 1989 Colorado football team opened the season with the cloud of tragedy hanging over them off the field and an inferiority complex within their conference on it. They ended the season coming within one half of a national championship and providing inspiration to the country. It had been 1976 since Colorado had represented the […]
The Rose Bowl Run Of 1988 Michigan Football
The period from 1983-87 was, by the standards of Bo Schembecler’s Michigan program, a dry one. The Wolverines “only” made it to one Rose Bowl in that five-year stretch. In ‘87 they lost four games. Perhaps most galling was that in-state rival Michigan State had won the Big Ten in 1987. And at a time […]
1987 Miami Hurricanes: A Redemptive National Championship Run
The 1987 Miami Hurricanes were in need of some redemption. Each of the last two years they’d gone into the major bowls in position for a national title. Each time they lost as a favorite. The first one came to Tennessee in the Sugar Bowl following the 1985 season. Worse was a loss to Penn […]
The Rose Bowl Run Of The 1987 Michigan State Spartans
The Rose Bowl had been a long time coming for the good people of East Lansing. They hadn’t been to Pasadena since 1965 and hadn’t won there since 1955. In 1966 they were denied a trip because of a Big Ten rule preventing a team from going in consecutive years, even if they were conference […]
1976 College Football: The Road To The Major Bowls
The 1976 college football season saw several new teams step up and reach the four major New Year’s Day bowl games. No team made a bigger splash than Pitt, who produced the Heisman Trophy winner in Tony Dorsett, displaced Penn State as the top team in the East and eventually won the national title
The Rose Bowl Run Of 2000 Purdue Football
When Joe Tiller arrived in West Lafayette to take over the Purdue Boilermakers in 1997, the football program was on hard times. They hadn’t enjoyed a winning season since 1984. No consecutive bowl appearances since 1978-80. The last piece of a Big Ten title had been in 1967 and the last Rose Bowl trip was […]
The Season-Long Narrative Of The 1986 Miami Hurricanes
The 1986 Miami Hurricanes were loaded with talent on both sides of the ball, and weren’t afraid to let you know it. They spent the entire regular season backing up their talk and looked poised to secure a place in college football history. They did…but for the wrong reasons, as an infamous bowl loss has […]
The Season-Long Narrative Of The 1986 Oklahoma Sooners
The 1986 Oklahoma Sooners were the defending national champions and with a lineup loaded on both sides of the ball were in prime position to repeat. That goal got away from them early, but Barry Switzer’s team was still one of the country’s most dynamic and remain memorable thirty years later. OU was the last […]
1986 Michigan Football Makes A Rose Bowl Run
The 1986 Michigan Wolverines had a lot of momentum coming into the season, after finishing #2 in the nation in 1985. But it had been 1982 since they reached the Rose Bowl, and that was an eternity in the era of Bo Schembecler, who had guided the program to Pasadena seven times since 1969. The […]
The Seasonal Narrative Of 1986 Penn State Football & A Championship Season
The 1986 Penn State football team came into the season focused on nothing less than the national title. They had gone undefeated in the 1985 regular season, but an Orange Bowl loss to Oklahoma ended their year in disappointment. The Lions were loaded in 1986 for another run at college football’s mountaintop and in a […]
40 Years Ago: When Rutgers Never Lost
This year marks the 40th anniversary of one of the great unknown stories in college sports—the 1976 Rutgers Scarlet Knights became the only team in the modern era to have an undefeated regular season in both basketball and football. The basketball team is the better known of the two, although even they’re buried beneath the […]