The SEC and Big Ten have completed their annual three-game appetizer on the New Year’s Day afternoon undercard. The Big Ten matched up a little better this season than was the case the past three years, aided by two missing SEC quarterbacks. They handed the nation’s top conference their first loss of the college bowl season. But at day’s end, the SEC still won two of the three matchups.
The final two days of calendar year 2013 in the college bowl season saw Mack Brown coach his final game, and Johnny Manziel play what most believe will be his final game at Texas A&M. Mack didn’t get a fitting exit, but Johnny Football went out in style, leading a dramatic comeback. These two games lead up our review of December 30-31
Two of college football’s most storied programs take the field on Thursday night in New Orleans. The Sugar Bowl matchup is Oklahoma-Alabama (8:30 PM ET, ESPN). What follows are the Notebook Nine, the key points to know going into the game…
New Year’s Day doesn’t bring an end to the college football season and settle a national champion the way it used to, but in terms of raw volume, January 1 still brings the biggest feast of the college bowl season. Four games will set the table in the early afternoon, with three Big Ten-SEC matchups.
The college bowl season took a break for the NFL on Sunday, but gets back going full blast on Monday. We’ll take a look at the eight games that will go over the course of December 30-31, as the SEC swings into action and the Pac-12 looks to build off a strong early showing as most of their upper crust takes the field.
The ACC has been on display over the last two days of the college bowl season, both the present and the future and no game was more eye-opening than the whipping Louisville, arriving in the conference next year, put on current ACC member Miami.
Let’s take a look back on those first eight games and sort out what we learned. And the first lesson is that the MAC’s problems on the postseason stage aren’t anywhere close to going away.
The major bowls are past us, and the BCS National Championship Game awaits on Monday. In between there’s still a brief spurt of three more games this college bowl season, and it starts Friday night with the Cotton Bowl battle between Texas A&M and Oklahoma. We’ll look at that game, plus a brief check on the two weekend wrap-around games. Pitt-Ole Miss on Saturday (1 PM ET, ESPN) and Arkansas State-Kent State on Sunday (9 PM ET, ESPN) are wrapped around the four NFL first-round playoff games.
There are nineteen games in the books for this college bowl season but none of them have involved the SEC. The nation’s most highly regarded conference now swings into action, with teams in five of the eight games that will take place from New Year’s Eve on Monday through the first part of New Year’s Day on Tuesday. Three of those involve SEC teams currently ranked in the Top 10 and likely playing to stay there.
It’s those games—involving South Carolina, Georgia and LSU that will lead our preview of what we’ll dramatically call the New Year’s Octave, the sequence of eight games that starts at noon ET on Monday and leads up to the Rose Bowl at 5 PM ET on Tuesday.
The Big 12 has spent the regular season building a credible record as the nation’s best conference, with nine of ten teams going to bowl games, with Kansas State being a legitimate part of the national elite and Oklahoma not far behind. But just as championships aren’t won in September, nor is an honor for the nation’s best conference. The Big 12 needs to make a definitive case in the bowls, on Saturday night there are two noteworthy games. Texas plays Oregon State, followed by TCU matching up with Michigan State in an ESPN sequence beginning at 6:45 PM ET. It’s these two games that will serve as TheSportsNotebook’s focal point, as we preview the 11 games coming up on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, as college bowl season heats up.
Like a great symphony, the college bowl season functions in movements, and after last Saturday’s opening doubleheader, the first real movement begins tonight. The BYU-San Diego State game kicks off the sequence where the crescendo builds slowly, with six games between now and December 26. The best of the six is Washington-Boise State on Saturday afternoon in Las Vegas and its there where our preview of the first movement will begin.
The college bowl schedule kicks off on Saturday, with an ESPN doubleheader of Nevada-Arizona (New Mexico Bowl) and Utah State-Toledo (Famous Idaho Potato Bowl), starting at 1 PM ET. It’s definitely a warmup for better matchups down the line, but it’s also the due date for a lot of people—myself included—to get their bowl pool selections in—so we jump in with a look at what to expect tomorrow.