A surprise trip to the BCS National Championship Game has all eyes back on one of college football’s most storied programs, but the Notre Dame Fighting Irish will face a tall order in replicating last year’s feat.
The Boise State Broncos have gotten so good that an 11-2 record seemed like “down” season for the Broncos. Chris Petersen has established himself as one of football’s top coaches. Boise State is one of those rare smaller teams that is able to reload instead of rebuild on a yearly basis.
Fresno State grabbed a share of the Mountain West Conference title in Tim DeRuyter’s first year as head coach. DeRuyter certainly walked into a nice spot since Pat Hill did a great job building up this program, but not many people expected the Bulldogs to be as good as they were last year.
There is profound enthusiasm over the announcement of Kliff Kingsbury taking the reins as head coach in Lubbock, as Kingsbury is a former record-shattering Tech pivot himself. Undoubtedly, this move has fired up the Red Raiders’ fan base.
What is Wake Forest Football? For decades they were an also ran program in the ACC. They fought hard but usually came up short and then in 2006 they won 11 games, including a shutout at Florida State, and played in the Orange Bowl.
Boston did not show very well last night in this series opener between first place teams getting shutout on the West Coast. Yesterday they had just two hits off of Ricky Nolasco and things won’t get much easier this afternoon.
Ever since noted quarterback developer David Cutcliffe came to Duke the program has gotten a lot more respectable. Last year they finished 6-7 but that final loss was in the Belk Bowl, the first time the program had gone bowling since 1994.
Miami is one of the most fearsome programs in college football. Sure they have been down of late and there are some questions surrounding future penalties but everyone in college football knows that if, and when, they get things going again they will be a force to be reckoned with.
Former coach Butch Davis did a great job bringing talent to Chapel Hill but he never won enough to justify putting the program in some sticky situations. Last year the program moved on with new coach Larry Fedora and had a very solid 8-4 season.
Pittsburgh is one of two new teams to the ACC this seasonand the timing isn’t great for this once proud program as they are coming off a mediocre season and will be breaking in a new QB.
Virginia Tech really struggled last season, a year where it seemed very little went as planned. The 7-6 season marked the first time the Hokies did not win 10 or more games since joining the ACC all the way back in 2004.
The Virginia Cavaliers have not made the kind of progress expected since promising coach Mike London took over. After an initial 4-8 season the Cavs jumped to 8-5 but then dropped back to 4-8 last season.
Oakland currently sits in the final AL Wild Card position but things are tightly bunched with three teams all within a three and a half games of the A’s.
Lawrence, Kansas is the home to the University of Kansas, whose reputation is unquestionably as a basketball powerhouse. Year in and year out, it tends to stay that way.
If there ever was a NFL team that could be easily confused with a travelling circus it would be the New York Jets. Rex Ryan made his mark by leading this team to back-to-back AFC Championship Games in his first two seasons as head coach, but since then he has taken the Jets in the wrong direction with an 8-8 record in 2011 and a 6-10 mark in his fourth season at the helm.
The Bills have been trying to circle the wagons for quite a long time now with just one winning season since going 11-5 in 1999.
