Category: Article

The Terminator Chronicles: Big Ten/Pac-12 edition

August 11, 2020, the Big Ten and the Pac-12 fired the first missiles. After arguing as to whether the fall college football season should be delayed or not, the conference decided that that was it: They were cancelling fall football. There were words of players practicing at Nebraska and Iowa. There was a sense of hope that everything could get sorted with a player-pushed protest. News of all but Iowa and Nebraska deciding to resist came through yesterday, but they had said there wasn’t a vote. There was. And the red button was pushed. But now, there will be no Game. There will be no bitter battles for weird jugs, trophies and helmets. We won’t be able to jump around, white out,

Read more

SEC unrolls new non-division opponents, Missouri gets screwed

The Southeastern Conference released the two new non-conference opponents for the ‘oncoming’ college football season. ALABAMA Previously scheduled: vs Georgia, at Tennessee Added opponents: vs. Kentucky, at Missouri ARKANSAS Previously scheduled: vs. Tennessee, at Missouri Added opponents: vs. Georgia, at Florida AUBURN Previously scheduled: vs. Kentucky, at Georgia Added opponents: vs. Tennessee, at South Carolina FLORIDA Previously scheduled: vs. LSU, at Ole Miss Added opponents: vs. Arkansas, at Texas A&M GEORGIA Previously scheduled: vs. Auburn, at Alabama Added opponents: vs. Mississippi State, at Arkansas KENTUCKY Previously scheduled: vs. Mississippi State, at Auburn Added opponents: vs. Ole Miss, at Alabama LSU Previously scheduled: vs. South Carolina, at Florida Added opponents: vs. Missouri, at Vanderbilt OLE MISS Previously scheduled: vs. Florida, at

Read more

SEC mandates masks on sidelines, increased testing

The SEC has announced a number of things to keep players safe during the 2020 College Football season, including increased testing and mandating masks on all sideline personnel. Players will be tested six days and three games before days, and masks “will be required to wear face coverings on the sideline and physical distancing will be employed to the extent possible”. Testing will be done through a third party which is has been put in (obviously) to assuage worries about schools deliberately scewing testing in their own favour. And in its release, the SEC has also outlined what would be the factors to stop a game happening – or even a season. They are: Inability to isolate new positive cases, or quarantine

Read more

NCAA: Schools must honour opt-out eligibility

The NCAA has said that schools must honour athletes’ scholarships if they choose to opt out of the 2020 season on health concerns, the ruling body said in a release. It added that should that happen, the scholarship MUST be honoured by the university, putting paid to worries that a player who opted-out would simply lose his scholarship – funnily enough costing teams leverage, but actually doing the right thing. Also, it said that schools “may not require student-athletes to waive their legal rights regarding COVID-19 as a condition of athletics participation”, which puts paid to a lot of schools asking players to sign waivers. Other measures included the requiring schools to cover COVID-19-related medical expenses for student athletes “to

Read more

SEC opts for a ten-game, conference-only 2020 schedule

The powers-that-be at the SEC have decided on a ten-game, conference-only schedule for 2020. Although there have been no schedule released – we can probably expect them to come next week. The decision meant that the season will start on September 26th – a month after Big 12 and three weeks after the Big Ten. South Carolina Board of Trustees member Chuck Allen told The Athletic (via Twitter): “My understanding is the vote was 13-1 with our president, Bob Caslen, being the sole dissenting vote and part of the reason for his dissenting vote was the rivalry with Clemson.” Either the SEC is waiting for another month to try and ‘get’ the numbers lower, or they are stupid. Why stupid?

Read more

The SEC should follow Ohio State’s example

Ohio State put out what their plan for college football games should be during games. Capacity will be capped at 20%. The capacity at The Horseshoe will be no more than 20,988 at any one time. There will be no tailgating. Face covering will be required at games.   Now, while you can enforce the first one, stopping 20,000 people going into local Columbus bars before games isn’t an option, so you’ll have to trust them. You can enforce the third one, by either supplying Ohio State facemasks at the game or not letting people who won’t wear them or booting those who persistently don’t wear them during the game. The SEC should do the same. Yes, we know that

Read more

Big Ten, Pac-12, ACC are moving to Conference-only games

And so the dominos continue to fall. According to multiple media sources, the Big Ten, ACC and Pac-12 have all decided that they will play a nine-game conference-only season It is an effort to cut down the season and make it work, as well as give schools some wiggle-room if there an outbreak of COVID-19 on teams and campuses. For the SEC a bunch of non-conference games will be affected, including (sadly), Clemson vs South Carolina, Georgia vs Georgia Tech, Louisville vs Kentucky and Florida State vs Florida. Notre Dame have been told that the ACC will accommodate Notre Dame in its own schedule. For the Big Ten the biggest match-ups being lost are Notre Dame’s game with Wisconsin, Penn

Read more

Ivy League cancels fall season: Will the dominoes fall?

The Ivy League has cancelled its fall sports. Not postponed, cancelled. Everyone in college football is taking a breath, now. You might think that a bunch of rich schools cancelling sports isn’t a big thing. After all: Harvard? Yale? Who cares. They aren’t going pro on ESPN or anything (unless they are Ryan Fitzpatrick)… But remember the Ivy League in March? They were the first to cancel their tournament because of COVID-19, and it created a domino effect that led to the cancellation of March Madness. Could this happen in college football with the Ivy League schools taking these extraordinary measures? Yes and no. The ‘Yes’ is the fact that what the Ivy League is very good at getting out

Read more

Vandy WR transfers to Alcorn State

Vanderbilt wide receiver CJ Bolar is transferring to Alcorn State of the MEAC for the rest of his collegiate career. The 6-1 player from Mississippi came into the SEC  as a 3-star recruit, ranked as the 105th-best wide receiver in the nation and the 13th-best in the state. Bolar had an excellent freshman year, catching 34 receptions for 440 yards and two TDs and rushing for 24 yards on just two rushes. In his sophomore year he played nine games of an injury-plagued season and had 11 receptions for 79 yards. You wonder how good Vanderbilt’s offense would have been with him playing. Leading into his time in Nashville, Bolar had offers from – amongst others – Mississippi State, Tennessee, Memphis,

Read more

Alabama WR transfers to Mississippi State

Former Alabama wide receiver Tyrell Shavers is transferring to Mississippi State. He will be available to play for Mike Leach’s offense immediately – which means he’ll be able to catch balls from CJ Costello, the former Stanford starter who transferred to Starkville earlier this year. He has two years of eligibility left after redshirting in 2017. In 2018 Shavers played in all 13 games but didn’t have a statistic, and he appeared in all of Alabama’s games in 2019, but only had a 14 yard rush and a 20 yard catch to his name, and recovered a blocked punt for a touchdown. While that is sad for him, if you look at Alabama’s wide receiving corps during 2018 and 2019,

Read more
1 … 13 14 15 16 17 … 100