Texas two-step(s away?)

There is no coach I root for more in college football than Texas’ Mack Brown. Back in my sportswriting infancy, when major D-1 head coaches were intimidating, Brown went out of his way on several occasions to treat me nicely and with apparent genuine sincerity.
You don’t get that from a lot of big-time coaches.
That said, [...]

10 post-USC things

1. How’s this for a kick to the gut following a substantial Clemson basketball victory Sunday night against Butler?
ESPNU follows it with a rebroadcast of Saturday’s football game.
And some folks pretended ESPN wouldn’t unfairly toot the SEC’s horn in order to get maximum value out of its mega-TV rights deal.
(OK, sure, the programming was determined [...]

USC forecast: Sticking to form

If Clemson has as much interest in Saturday’s game as I have in writing one of my unwieldy 10,000-word forecast blogs on Thanksgiving, the Tigers could be in trouble.
Let’s keep this on point and save all of us some time.
Plenty of compelling match-ups on both sides of the ball. How will Clemson handle USC’s jump-ball [...]

Coordinator corner

Until offensive coordinator Billy Napier mentioned it, I had forgotten he played quarterback at Furman a few years while USC defensive coordinator Ellis Johnson was the head coach at The Citadel.
That’s got to make a guy feel old.
Not saying it translates into the coaching matchup, but Napier has fared well against Johnson in their so-called [...]

10 Virginia things

1. Thanks, Dabo Swinney, for spoiling a clever and brilliant “I’m 40. I’m a man” bit planned for this spot when you did your best Mike Gundy impersonation in the postgame media conference.
But I guess if there were ever the perfect time to elicit comparisons to AD Terry Don Phillips’ past “successful” “reach” hires (lots [...]

Virginia forecast: Going, Grohing, gone to Tampa

Clemson coach Dabo Swinney turns 40 today (Friday), and if this weekend goes as he surely hopes, he’ll have the means to buy plenty of tacky coffee mugs to celebrate the milestone … well, maybe one of several milestones.
The question is, will Virginia amount to his birthday cupcake?
The Cavs’ candle looks like it should have [...]

B(u)y the UVa. numbers

One snippet I failed to pass along from defensive coordinator Kevin Steele:
Steele was asked his thought at possibly winning the Atlantic Division on Saturday.
He replied that he should only be asked that if the Tigers win, and when the reporter suggested that surely Steele was thinking about it, here was his response:
“No. I’m thinking about [...]

Coordinator corner

Before getting to Tuesday’s media interviews with Clemson’s football coordinators, the basketball team’s rout of Liberty bears mentioning.
This Liberty team wasn’t half as formidable as last year, but the Tigers looked impressive in a lot of facets:

Their length and lineup versatility is wreaking more defensive havoc than I’d expected this early.
Oliver Purnell’s belief that they [...]

Bowl babble

You know, I can’t recall a year in which I covered either USC or Clemson where there was so little conjecture about which bowls the teams were factors for.
Maybe it has something to do with the parity within a lot of conferences this year. Perhaps folks also aren’t as stoked about traveling because of the [...]

10 N.C. State things

Consider this one long mea culpa … except that in admitting a few wrongs, I coyly highlight some of my rights.
1. So much for my predicted 29-27 tight outcome, although when C.J. Spiller appeared to lose a fumble midway through the third quarter with the Tigers only ahead 24-14, I thought it was headed in [...]