Category: College Football (Page 55 of 296)

      Newton to enter NFL draft – is he a first rounder?

      January 14, 2011 /
      Auburn Tigers quarterback Cam Newton enjoys his teams 22-19 victory over the Oregon Ducks in the NCAA BCS National Championship college football game in Glendale, Arizona, January 10, 2011. REUTERS/Mike Blake (UNITED STATES – Tags: SPORT FOOTBALL)

      Let the months of speculation begin.

      Auburn quarterback Cam Newton has announced that he will forego his senior season and enter the 2011 NFL Draft. The Heisman Trophy winner finished his junior season with 2,854 passing yards, a 66.1 percent completion rate and 30 passing touchdowns to go with 1,473 rushing yards and 20 rushing touchdowns.

      Oh, and he also led the Tigers to a national championship victory over Oregon.

      Now comes the fun and nauseating part: Where will he fall in the draft? Is he a clear-cut first round pick? Is he a top 10 pick? Is he even projected to be a quarterback at the next level?

      Most people would undoubtedly answer “yes” to that last question, although some pundits believe Newton will have to make the transition to tight end in the NFL. He certainly has the arm strength and size to be a great quarterback, but can he succeed in a pro-style offense? Can he be a leader? Can he read a defense? Does he have the accuracy to make all of the throws in a NFL offense? How is his football IQ?

      It only took one man to believe that Tim Tebow was capable of developing into a starting quarterback for a team to select him in the first round. Granted, that man (Josh McDaniels) is now searching for work, but that’s more because he managed to trade away his two best offensive players (Jay Cutler and Brandon Marshall) in two years and gave away Peyton Hillis for a third-string quarterback in Brady Quinn. Only some people criticize him for trading away draft picks in order to select Tebow…

      Getting back to Newton, he’s going to wow scouts with his athleticism in pre-draft workouts but he’ll have to convince a team that he has the intelligence and work ethic needed to become a quarterback in the NFL. Because if he can’t, then he’s going to fall in the draft and he may be forced to switch positions in order to make it at the next level.

      In other Auburn-related news, defensive tackle Nick Fairley is expected to announce Friday that he too is foregoing his senior year and entering the draft. If that’s the case, there’s no question that he’s a top 5 pick.

      College Football, External Sports, NFL, NFL Draft

      Les Miles receives seven-year contract extension from LSU

      January 12, 2011 /

      ESPN.com is reporting that LSU and head coach Les Miles have agreed in principle to a new contract that will run through the 2017 season.

      LSU athletic director Joe Alleva says Miles’ annual pay of a little more than $3.75 million will remain the same.

      Miles has won 62 games and five bowls, including a 2007 national title in his first six years with the Tigers. Alleva says the university wants to maintain stability at the top of a winning program.

      Miles, who met with Michigan athletic director Dave Brandon Monday about the coaching vacancy the Wolverines had at the time, says Baton Rouge is home to his family now and that staying at LSU is “the right thing to do.”

      I think it says something that Miles (presumably) had two opportunities over the past four years to leave Baton Rouge and coach at his alma mater and he chose to stay. He has shown loyalty to the LSU program and in turn, the Tigers have given it right back.

      I still think the guy is bat sh*t crazy though. He obviously knows how to win but I wonder if he goes home sometimes and thinks to himself, “How the hell did I pull that one out of my ass?”

      Only Miles could get called for a delay of game penalty on fourth-and-nine and then call a timeout. And only he could then get bailed out when his opponent (Tennessee) had 12 men on the field during the final play and therefore found a way to pull victory out of the jaws of defeat.

      Oh, Les Miles.

      College Football, External Sports

      Miles stays at LSU, Michigan hires Hoke

      January 11, 2011 /

      Les Miles isn’t headed to Ann Arbor, which means Brady Hoke is.

      The Los Angeles Times is reporting that after meeting with Michigan officials about the Wolverines’ football vacancy on Monday, Miles will stay at LSU. The former UM graduate is 62-17 with the Tigers, which includes five bowl victories and one national title in his previous six seasons. Following Miles’ decision, Michigan moved quickly to hire Hoke.

      When Rich Rodriguez was fired last week, two names emerged as leading candidates to replace him: Stanford’s Jim Harbaugh and San Diego State’s Hoke. And once Harbaugh agreed to terms with the 49ers, Hoke become the clear favorite to land in Ann Arbor.

      It would have taken a truckload of money to get Miles to come to Michigan and in the end, it would have been a riskier move than what AD David Brandon wanted to make following the Rich-Rod debacle. Hoke is the safer choice and he may be the better long-term fit for the program, too. He has ties to the team, he’s an up-and-comer and he’s cheap. It just makes sense following what happened with Rodriguez.

      Is Hoke the right fit? We’ll see. He certainly isn’t a big name but the Wolverines got a big name in Rodriguez and look how that turned out. I know some UM fans would have rather seen Rodriguez retained for another year than hire Hoke. But at least he’ll put the emphasis back on defense after Rich-Rod completely ignored that side of the ball for three years. (Maybe Hoke will actually recruit a kicker that knows that the ball is supposed to go between the uprights and not to either side of them, too.)

      Hoke may be a ho-hum hire in some people’s minds, but maybe that’s exactly what UM needs right now.

      College Football, External Sports

      How was this bowl season better than a playoff?

      January 11, 2011 /
      Auburn Tigers quarterback Cam Newton (R) is tackled by Oregon Ducks Spencer Paysinger during the second quarter in the NCAA BCS National Championship college football game in Glendale, Arizona, January 10, 2011. REUTERS/Mike Blake (UNITED STATES – Tags: SPORT FOOTBALL IMAGES OF THE DAY)

      Bill Hancock seems like a nice enough guy but he’s delusional if he thinks that this past bowl season was a rousing success and that it proved that there’s no need for a playoff.

      First and foremost, that title game was terrible. It may have had an exciting finish but a great game it was not.

      Two of the most explosive offenses in the nation were on display Monday night and yet, you couldn’t have asked for worse field conditions. This should have been the most entertaining game of the season but from the opening kickoff, players resembled hockey players sliding on a sheet of ice. Neither team could catch their footing, which is probably why the combined score totaled only 41 points (or 31 fewer points than what Vegas installed for the over/under). How does this happen in an indoor stadium when the grass can easily be maintained?

      Granted, it’s not the BCS’ fault that the game was rather lousy on a whole. Even if there were a playoff, there would be no guarantee that all the games would be exciting. But at the very least, the teams would be playing for something every week.

      The matchup between Auburn and Oregon was dead on, but the BCS largely struck out with its other games. They made Stanford fly cross-country just to crush an overmatched Virginia Tech team and there’s no reason to relive the Oklahoma-UConn debacle.

      The Rose Bowl and the Sugar Bowl were both highly entertaining – I’ll give the BCS that. But why must there be a long delay between the BCS bowl games and the championship? And for the love of college football, why were the Go Daddy.com Bowl, the Cotton Bowl, the BBVA Compass Bowl and the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl shown as a lead up to the national title game? I felt bad for the kids who played in the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl because nobody cared by that point. They made those poor kids play on Sunday night following four NFL playoff games – only action junkies tuned into that one.

      Continue reading »

      College Football, External Sports

      Dyer’s fourth quarter run saves Newton, propels Auburn to national title victory

      January 11, 2011 /
      Auburn Tigers quarterback Cam Newton holds the championship trophy after the Tigers defeated the Oregon Ducks in the NCAA BCS National Championship college football game in Glendale, Arizona, January 10, 2011. REUTERS/Mike Blake (UNITED STATES – Tags: SPORT FOOTBALL)

      Here are five quick-hit thoughts about Auburn’s wild 22-19 win over Oregon in the 2011 BCS National Championship Game.

      1. In the end, it was a freshman and not a Heisman winner who won it for Auburn.
      Cam Newton played a great game. He completed 20-of-34 pass attempts for 265 yards with two touchdowns and one interception while also rushing for 65 yards on 22 carries. But he didn’t put together one of those special performances that Auburn fans were accustomed to seeing all year. His fourth quarter fumble set up LaMichael James’ touchdown run and Darron Thomas’ wild 2-point conversion pass to Jeff Maehl, which tied the game at 19-19 with 2:33 remaining. But in the end, Michael Dyer’s “controversial” 37-yard run set the Tigers up for Wes Byrum’s 19-yard game-winning field goal. I put “controversial” in quotation marks because it wasn’t really controversial, per se. He definitely wasn’t down and the refs never blew the whistle, but I’ve seen officials stop plays when a player’s forward momentum was less stopped than that. Still, credit Dyer for having the wherewithal to keep his knees off the ground when he was being tackled and the Auburn sideline for instinctively telling him to keep running when they saw he wasn’t down. The Tigers’ Heisman-winning quarterback played well but Dyer and Auburn’s defense were the main reasons the Tigers won their second national championship in school history. Seeing as how Dyer is only a freshman, Auburn’s backfield is set for the next couple of seasons.

      2. Ted Roof defensive game plan was tremendous.
      Roof will certainly sleep easy tonight. He had six weeks to figure out how to slow down Oregon’s explosive offense and that’s exactly what he did. This was an offense that led the nation in points per game (47.5) and was fifth in rushing yards per contest (290.1). Yet the Tigers held the Ducks to 19 points and 81 total rushing yards. That’s amazing. For weeks pundits debated whether or not Auburn’s defense would rise to the challenge and yet Roof’s squad made it look easy for most of the game. Even when the Ducks scored late to tie it at 19-all, Auburn didn’t make it easy for them around the goal line. And that drive was set up when Casey Matthews punched the ball out of Newton’s hands to give Oregon the ball at the 40-yard line, so Roof’s squad was put in a bad spot. What an incredible effort.

      Continue reading »

      College Football, External Sports

      « Older posts Newer posts »

      © 2026 The Scores Report – The National Sports Blog

      Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑