The College Football Playoff semifinal bowl games were a split decision in some ways. Clemson won as an underdog, Alabama won as a favorite. From my own personal standpoint, Clemson was a team I was rooting for while Alabama was not. But this they had in common—I picked Oklahoma and Michigan State to win yesterday. […]
The College Football Playoff semifinals are on New Year’s Eve, starting at 4 PM ET with Oklahoma-Clemson in the Orange Bowl and the prime-time show with Michigan State-Alabama in the Cotton Bowl. Here’s some thoughts on both games… OKLAHOMA-CLEMSON I like Clemson. Dabo Swinney seems like a pretty good guy and I’ve liked seeing him […]
The curtain goes up on college football’s biggest stage, the six major bowl games that constitute “The New Year’s Six” over Thursday and Friday. Below is nine thoughts on the December 31-January 1 run as a whole. Over the next two days, TheSportsNotebook will be back with more specific looks at the two Playoff semifinals […]
I admit it—calling the Washington Redskins 2015 NFC East title a “Triumph of the System” may be a little over the top. It sounds like a title you’d give to a book about the Brady/Belichick era in New England or Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal political coalition, rather than about a team that they may […]
The big sweepstakes for free agent pitchers is in the books, with the four biggest names—David Price, Zack Greinke, Johnny Cueto and Jordan Zimmerman—all having made their decisions. The Boston Red Sox, the team I root for, “won” the bidding for Price, but to me this looks like a Pyrrhic victory. I think the Red […]
The Wisconsin Badger basketball team beat Texas A&M-Corpus Christi last night 64-49 and fans walked out of the Kohl Center with hope that this young team could find itself by the time Big Ten play begins in two weeks. By the postgame press conference, their coach had retired. Bo Ryan made his rumored retirement effective […]
In an NFL media culture that so often simplifies quarterback play to simple wins and losses, the underrating of Russell Wilson has been a mystery. The Seattle Seahawks’ fourth-year quarterback can win Super Bowls and engineer comebacks, but his own role is perpetually dismissed as being either the product of the Legion of Boom defense […]
Brad Stevens has the Boston Celtics on a good path. In the third year of a five-year contract, Stevens has overseen a rebuilding project that made the playoffs last year in a weak Eastern Conference and is a good bet to back there this season in a stronger East. Stevens is well-regarded in Boston, by […]
DeSean Jackson was the story, both good and bad for the Washington Redskins after last night’s crushing 19-16 loss to the Dallas Cowboys. Jackson made the game’s biggest blunder with the score tied 9-9 late in the fourth quarter when he reversed field on a punt return, tried to force something that clearly wasn’t there […]
The college bowls start in twelve days with a schedule bookended by the Arizona teams—it’s Arizona-New Mexico as the first game on December 19 and the final game on January 2 is Arizona State-West Virginia. Neither one of those games does much for me, but in between there’s a whole lot of interesting matchups, from […]
The Big Ten Championship Game had all the earmarks of a night that just wasn’t going to be Michigan State’s. They had made critical mistakes with penalties at big moments, negating drives and costing themselves points. They allowed an 85-yard touchdown pass. Connor Cook wasn’t sharp and Iowa’s secondary was sticking to Sparty receivers like […]
Even when they’re not playing, Ohio State looms large in the College Football Playoff rankings. The Buckeyes are at the center of two key questions regarding the New Year’s Six bowl games in general, and the four CFP teams in particular. And how the Committee answers those questions will tell us a lot over how […]