Dave Nathan is a reporter/anchor for 99.9 FM The Fan who regularly contrbutes to the station's "Inside the ACC" program.
Oct 25, 2008
11:37 a.m., Rainy conditions in Chapel Hill: The field is soggy less than a half-our away from kick-off.
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Oct 13, 2008
With their uninspiring 12-7 loss on Thursday night to Wake Forest and Tommy Bowden’s subsequent ouster, Clemson’s football team is on the precipice of complete collapse. Through six games, the preseason No. 9 team in the country is 3-3 overall and 1-2 in the ACC.
The Tigers got off to an inauspicious 0-1 start against a young Alabama team in Atlanta and have never recovered. That got me thinking, who else has gone from preseason darling to regular season disaster?
A review of every preseason ranking dating back to 2000 revealed the pollsters (and coaches) have grossly over-estimated multiple teams almost every year. If a preseason top-10 team had four-plus losses and fewer than ten wins, that equaled a disaster in my estimation.
2000: For the sake of continuity, let’s start first with Alabama, the team that sent Clemson into its tailspin. The 2000 Tide squad has been by far the biggest preseason failure
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Oct 2, 2008
The National Championship hunt is wide open as the middle of the season is quickly approaching. We've already had three No. 1 teams and a flurry of upsets within the top five. Nothing seems to be for sure as college football's unpredictability is at an all-time high. However, I'd bet the farm that the ACC is the only league among the BCS conferences that won't have a school in the national championship discussion from here to the finish line. With the first BCS poll still a couple of weeks away from being released, here's how I see things:
The most recent AP poll has 19 schools ahead of the highest rated ACC team, Virginia Tech. That includes two teams from the mighty Mountain West Conference. BYU is No. 8 and Utah is ranked 15th. The Cougars and Utes play each other during the last week of the season. If they are both undefeated, and that's still a big if, the BCS folks will be squirming. How will it look to have a non-BCS
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Sep 29, 2008
10:59 p.m., Game over: The Bulls win it 41-10. We can go home now.
10:51 p.m., Tick tock: State has the ball and is trying to just run the clock out. They trail 41-10 with under three minutes to play.
10:40 p.m., Grothe finally out: South Florida coach Jim Leavitt finally takes out Matt Grothe. You don't want to risk anything in this game when you are up 41-10. Grothe finished with 259 yards on 20-29 passing and one touchdown. The N.C. State rushing attack totals four yards. Good job.
10:28 p.m., Bulls score: Moses Plancher walks in from ten yards out to make the score 41-10 with 9:42 to play. One stat to make a note of that I see here. The Wolfpack had negative 12 rushing yards at the end of the third quarter. They built off the negative 33 at halftime.
10:25 p.m., Beck winging it around again: Only the problem is he wings it to the wrong guys.
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Sep 29, 2008
3:14 p.m., Duke scores: A 1-yard rushing TD by Tielor Robinson has made it 31-3 with 1:41 to go.
3:10 p.m., Another Int for UVA: Glen Williams picks off Verica at the Cavs 25. 24-3 Duke with 4 minutes to go in the 4th.
3:02 p.m., Turnovers killing Cavs: Duke has recovered the latest fumble by UVA and has it at their own 36. 24-3 Duke with 6 minutes left in the game.
2:59 p.m., UVA drive stalls: The Cavs have just turned it over on downs at the Duke 29. 24-3 Duke with under 9-and-a-half minutes to go.
2:44 p.m., Duke's defense adds a TD: Jabari Marshall intercepted Verica and returned it 40 yards for a score to put the Devils up 24-3 with 13:08.
2:39 p.m., Another pick for Duke: Michael Tauillili has intercepted Marc Verica and returned it near the Duke 40. 17-3 Duke with 14 minutes to go in the game.
2:34 p.m.,
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Sep 28, 2008
Most college football coaches I’ve spoken with over the years have told me that things are cyclical. In other words, the traditional powers will have some rough times, but they almost always return to prominence.
I decided to test that theory over the course of the last 20 years with 18 schools that have either won titles, or could have won titles if given the opportunity. As it turns out, I wasted a bunch of time on research. For the most part, the coaches are exactly right.
The most recent BCS Champion, LSU, has suffered through the most losing seasons of the applicable schools. The Tigers have finished below .500 eight times in the last 20 years. Despite winning a pair of titles and registering a 56-10 mark from 2003-07, the Bayou Bengals were just 24-32 from 1988-1992. LSU also had six straight losing seasons between 1989 and 1994.
Florida took home titles in 1996 and 2006. But just like LSU, their leanest five-year
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