Tag: college stadiums

Jalen Hurts Might Go From Benched To Super Bowl Champion: Daily Cavalcade

Jalen Hurts might win the Super Bowl, but there was a time in college when that didn’t seem remotely possible.

Jalen Hurts was an amazing college player, but there was a moment when the idea of him leading a team to a Super Bowl win seemed a bit crazy.

Jalen Hurts has gone from benched to a possible Super Bowl champion

– Contact/Follow @ColFootballNews & @PeteFiutak

[mm-video type=playlist id=01f1343a1wt7q817p7 player_id=none image=https://collegefootballnews.com/wp-content/plugins/mm-video/images/playlist-icon.png]

Sorry if this take sucks, it’s not my fault …

I still see no reason to pivot off my unshakeable belief that Danny Wuerffel would win as many Super Bowls as Peyton Manning.

– 2023 College Football Rankings 1-133 First Look

And as a freshman, coolest … hair … ever for an Alabama starting quarterback

If you had told me late in the evening of January 8th, 2018, that Jalen Hurts would one day lead a team to a Super Bowl win …

(At least I think he’s about to, and become the Super Bowl MVP.)

Really? That guy?

I was on the field in Atlanta watching Hurts compile an intriguing combination of worm burners and air mail – completing just three of his eight passes for 21 yards – before being replaced by Tua Tagovailoa at halftime of the 2018 National Championship against Georgia.

College football history changed forever after that game, and because of what Tagovailoa did, and with Hurts eventually transferring to Oklahoma, now we’re here just a few days before the Super Bowl.

Now it seems obvious that Hurts was going to be amazing, but it sure didn’t when DeVonta Smith was running through the end zone in Atlanta.

– CFN Super Bowl Preview, Prediction

I was a massive fan of Hurts as a college player. Did I ever think he’d be an NFL starting quarterback? Yeah, after he was done at Oklahoma, but after 2018? No way, no how, no chance.

There was no questioning Hurts’ leadership, personality, or ability to run an offense, but compared to Tua – and later Mac Jones and Bryce Young – when it came to his potential as an NFL passer, I will fully admit that I didn’t see it when he was at Alabama.

Tagovailoa was going to be the main man for the Tide in 2019, and Hurts wasn’t transferring, so my cockamamie suggestion was to turn him into a jack-of-all-trades runner/backup quarterback – or maybe even a safety – just to get 2 and 13 on the field at the same time.

That didn’t happen, and it took a while, but things turned out just fine.

Outside of the national title games, Hurts was a better college passer than he got credit for with the Tide – he hit 65% of his throws with 48 touchdowns and just 12 picks, just one as a sophomore, in what amounted to 2.5 seasons of work – and was deadly on the move with close to 2,000 yards and 23 touchdowns.

I can’t quite remember, but I think he made the third slot on my Heisman ballot in 2016 after Deshaun and Lamar.

Beyond that, he had a flair for making big things happen at the right time, most notably to save the team’s bacon in the 2018 SEC Championship win over Georgia, and in the 2017 College Football Playoff National Championship against Clemson.

It’s totally lost in history how he almost had one of the greatest national title-winning drives of all-time.

Hurts only hit 13-of-31 passes against Clemson, but down four with just over two minutes to play, he calmly rolled the offense 68 yards, finishing up with a 30-yard touchdown run that appeared to give the Tide the title. And then one epic Deshaun Watson drive – and a pick play for a touchdown with one second to go – erased it all.

Of course, Hurts became legendary for the genuine happiness and class with how he handled being replaced by Tagovailoa in that national title game, and obviously the move to Oklahoma was huge as he took his skills up a few notches.

But this? Carson Wentz was supposed to be the star of the show when the Eagles selected Hurts.

We should’ve seen it coming. Some players are just different. Some just have it, and that’s obviously Hurts.

Green Bay took Jordan Love in the first round, and Hurts was the next quarterback off the board 27 picks later. That was a mega-miss in the draft, but that Joe Burrow guy seems to be okay at Cincinnati, Tagovailoa was hardly a bad pick talent-wise for Miami at the five, and Justin Herbert has MVP upside as the sixth pick for the Chargers.

And now all of them are about to watch Hurts lead Philadelphia in the Super Bowl.

He was a good guy as a young freshman – mature and poised beyond his years – when thrown into the national title level fire, and now he’s the young Face of the Franchise MVP-caliber quarterback every NFL team would love to have.

There’s still going to be that January 8th, 2018 side that won’t quite believe it, even when he’s telling the world his plans to go to Disney World.

[protected-iframe id=”361699434b6d70baf15f631ed2408ac1-97672683-92922408″ info=”https://www.googletagservices.com/tag/js/gpt.js” ]

It’s COLLEGE Football. Enough With The Neutral Site Games: Daily Cavalcade

College football games should be played in college stadiums. One man’s plea to keep the games out of neutral sites and away from the kitsch.

College football games should be played in college stadiums. One man’s desperate plea to keep the games out of neutral sites and away from the gimmick.

Keep COLLEGE football games at colleges

– Contact/Follow @ColFootballNews & @PeteFiutak

[mm-video type=playlist id=01f1343a1wt7q817p7 player_id=none image=https://collegefootballnews.com/wp-content/plugins/mm-video/images/playlist-icon.png]

Sorry if this take sucks, it’s not my fault …

I’d move this take to Wrigley Field but there’s no parking.

– 2023 College Football Rankings 1-133 First Look

Now, if you could figure out how to play a game on an aircraft carrier like college basketball does early in the season, I’m in

It’s called COLLEGE football.

I’m not a total idiot – just a partial one – and I’m fully aware that college sports is first and formost a business.

Of course we’re in a new age of college athletics where the quiet part is being said – and paid – out loud, but can’t we at least pretend that college football is different because of the college part?

Yeah, college football is about generating revenue, cranking up national interest, and occasionally coming up with something special and unique when games are played outside of their normal venues, but …

Enough with the occasional games being played in dumb baseball stadiums – it’s cool once, and that’s it – with dumb sight lines and dumb configurations.

 

Enough with the neutral site games other than the obvious traditional mainstays like Florida vs Georgia in Jacksonville and Texas vs Oklahoma in Dallas.

Quit playing the “Classic” or the “Kickoff” in some antiseptic NFL stadium – by the way, ignore all of this when it comes to the NFL, which should play all of its games in billion-dollar palaces with all of the ultimate creature comforts – instead of on or near a college campus on an early Fall day.

When – not if – I become the Czar of College Football, I’m forcing the branding to be all about the environment, the campus, the atmosphere … the COLLEGE.

That’s the No. 1 distinguishing factor of college football.

Take the romantic notion of a September day with the youthful energy and life of a college campus out of it, and what do you have, really? Minor league professional football.

Of course, not all stadiums are right on the campuses – like UCLA playing in the Rose Bowl – but almost all are close enough to either be a part of the overall environment.

It became more real now that I have a kid in college. She likes sports about as much as I understand why 19-year-old young women wear unnecessarily giant pants, but being around a big-time college basketball environment has turned into a big deal.

Being able to go to the football games – and the buzz around them – matters. That’s the part that’s starting to get lost – and this goes for the Tuesday night games, too, but that’s for another time – it’s supposed to be about the student experience. It’s supposed to be for the fans and alumni who get to escape to a college environment for a Saturday.

And it’s supposed to be about the games themselves.

It gets blown off whenever the big showdowns are put in NFL houses, and I have no idea why the conferences haven’t figured this out. The games take on a greater sense of importance when they’re in college home stadiums.

How cool was it that Michigan State played across the country in Washington’s Husky Stadium?

How big a deal did it turn out to be that Penn State went to Jordan-Hare and performed like THAT against Auburn?

How much more did Alabama’s win over Texas feel like a big deal because it was in Austin and not in Jerry World? How much more insane would Florida State’s win over LSU have been if that was in Tallahassee?

Fans only get a few of these college football home games a year. It’s not like there are 81 home baseball games to suffer through or 41 NBA relative exhibitions to pretend to care about.

If you’re going to give the home fans the Central Directional State matchups, give them the games against the big guys, too. Always give them the experience of having a powerhouse in their house.

This is a layup, college football. Feed into your own mythology.

Stay college football, college football.

[protected-iframe id=”361699434b6d70baf15f631ed2408ac1-97672683-92922408″ info=”https://www.googletagservices.com/tag/js/gpt.js” ]