usf Page 3 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Don’t celebrate just yet, SEC fans, there’s another independent who could claim a CFP bid
For the segment of college football fans who blackout with anger every time Notre Dame makes the College Football Playoff, this season could not have started better. Marcus Freeman’s team came up short against Ohio State and then stumbled trying to get back up against Marshall, and there’s really no...

Scott Frost was destined to be college football’s ‘Great White Nope’
Scott Frost’s whiteness kept him employed for as long as it could. But, when you suck as bad as he did, even your “All-American” charm can’t save you....

There’s losing to Kentucky and Marshall, and then there’s losing to App State and Georgia Southern
The unassuming weeks are always the most dangerous for college football, but especially so early in the season when the rankings are more guesses than earned distinctions. Still though, when you schedule an FCS school and pay them to come play non-conference patsy during homecoming or whatever else,...

Howelling at the moon: Washington not getting anywhere with Wentz at QB
Entering his junior season at Chapel Hill, Sam Howell had NFL Draft experts salivating. He and Spencer Rattler were thought to be the franchise-changing quarterbacks of the 2022 class. How quickly they both fell out of favor. Rattler lost his starting job at Oklahoma and transferred to South Carolin...

Is any college coach under more pressure than Jimbo?
There’s a different brand of pressure mounting around Texas A&M head coach Jimbo Fisher. It’s not the-hot-seat-reaching-an-inferno temperature coaches like Nebraska’s Scott Frost are facing. This isn’t a battle to stay relevant on a national scale like the Deion Sanders-led charge from Jackson State...

Predicting college football’s New Year’s Six teams
College football starts in a little more than two weeks. And for 135 days, the jostling to become a national champion will be ongoing. Obviously, only four teams will compete in the College Football Playoff but a dozen teams will be selected to the most lucrative bowls, otherwise known as the New Ye...

Now it’s time to get on the Brandon Vazquez train for USMNT
Yeah, I know. We do this every few months. Have for basically our entire lives, except for maybe that brief Jozy Altidore interlude…right until he popped his hammy in Brazil. And we’ll continue to do this every few months for the rest of our lives, pinning our hopes for a genuine No. 9 for the USMNT...

This isn’t good for Christian Pulisic
Stages of development aren’t linear, and not every stage as you move along the line are pleasant. As the USMNT has more and more players making their mark in the biggest leagues in the world, one stage before they are main stars on the biggest teams is that they’re going to be shuffled around a bit ...

What, if anything, do we take from the USMNT draw with El Salvador?
Let’s start by not overreacting to a 1-1 draw against El Salvador. It was the same result that kicked off the United States’ Octagonal round of World Cup qualifying. That matchup from last September mattered way more to the US. And the Yanks didn’t score in that game....

Guess poor recruiting was all Brian Kelly’s fault
Notre Dame has landed a five-star quarterback — their highest-rated offensive commitment in a decade — in none other than C.J. Carr, the grandson of national-title winning Michigan head coach Lloyd Carr. This is the latest in a series of offseason wins for Marcus Freeman, who has yet to clock an act...

The biggest thing to happen to the USMNT this weekend was not becoming the villain
The USMNT played two friiendlies this week, and in a normal year these would be the “World Cup Sendoff” games where the roster would basically be finalized. They would have been a lot more intensely watched by both Gregg Berhalter and fans alike, with the final cuts following soon after. The matches...

Miguel Andújar's fall from grace
In 2018, young Yankees were taking over AL Rookie of the Year ballots. New York’s third baseman Miguel Andújar and shortstop Gleyber Torres finished second and third respectively in rookie of the year voting, losing out to Angels’ two-way phenom Shohei Ohtani....

At least know why you’re voting for Patrice Bergeron for Selke
It’s an unwritten law in the NHL. If Patrice Bergeron is upright, averagely ambulatory, and plays more than 50 games, he’s going to win the Selke Trophy for the league’s best defensive forward. And it’s not easy to argue against this, as Bergeron has been the league’s smartest player for a decade or...

The Brian Kelly-Notre Dame breakup gets even messier
We’ve got a new rivalry on our hands — the tension has been brewing all off-season between LSU and Notre Dame, and it escalated this week when former Tigers head coach Ed Orgeron was photographed observing a spring practice in South Bend. ...

Brian Kelly can't stop trashing Notre Dame
Brian Kelly is on a mission to make himself Public Enemy Number One in South Bend, Indiana, for reasons unknown. His daughter will be graduating from Notre Dame next month, and at this point, if I were Kelly, I wouldn’t be too keen about showing my face on campus....

Notre Dame keeps highlighting HBCUs on national TV — who woulda thunk it?
Sometimes, olive branches can be extended from unlikely sources. ...

Who are we taking to Qatar?
The USMNT punched their ticket with a true let’s-not-fuck-this-up-royally performance in Costa Rica. So now the attention turns to who are the 23 souls that Gregg Berhalter will be putting on the plane for the tournament. Our intrepid soccer goofuses Sam Fels and Eric Blum have some ideas....

Is the USMNT midfield better off without Weston McKennie?
On the surface, it’s a patently ridiculous question. Of course the US can’t go without a player who regularly plays for one of the biggest clubs in the world, where his manager loves him, and comes up with goals for a national team that still struggles to find them. And to ask this question after ju...

Tis but a glimpse
It’s not official yet. The USMNT still has to dot the i’s and cross the t’s and all that. Which means they have to manage to not lose to Costa Rica by six goals or more on Wednesday. Quite frankly, the more impressive feat than qualifying for the World Cup would be losing by six in Costa Rica, and e...

I know just the coach for Auburn
The writing is on the wall for Bryan Harsin at Auburn, to the point where Paul Finebaum is openly speculating about Hugh Freeze coming in from Liberty — after five years of SEC exile — to take the Tigers job....