Keith Arnold of Road to Game Day is at the Fiesta Bowl in Glendale Arizona. He has opinions on many things, especially ladies in chaps.

After a nice first half, the Texas offense has finally got on track and put up two quick touchdowns. Pretty much what everyone expected, and now it’s up to Jim Tressel’s offense to come from behind. As much as you’re looking for me to breakdown the X’s and O’s here at the Fiesta Bowl, I thought I’d give a little analysis of the things that really matter here at University of Phoenix Stadium. 



(Sidenote: You have to wonder how the bidding process went for naming rights at the stadium here. University of Phoenix must’ve just handed a blank check over and said, “name the price,” because I’d be pretty hesitant to name my stadium after an online college that’s best known for it’s annoying pop-up adds and shoddy online curriculum.)

THE MASCOTS

A proud history of mascots here, and both Brutus and Bevo are pretty awesome mascots. Read the rest of this entry »

Keith Arnold from Road to Game Day is at the Fiesta Bowl. He has seen Terrelle Pryor. He is impressed.

It was nice for Jim Tressel to give Todd Boeckman the start. Because after that, it was all Terrelle Prior. Relegated to WR for the opening snap from scrimmage, the freshman is clearly the best athlete wearing white tonight, as he’s moved effectively in the shotgun and continued to befuddle a Texas defense that has more than its fair share of athletes on its side of the ball.



While Ohio State has used three and four wide-receiver sets to spread out the Longhorn defense, they’ve also effectively managed the time of possession battle, with Beanie Wells running for almost 100 yards already as the Buckeyes are out-rushing the Longhorns 140 yards to minus 9.

Yet while Wells’ efforts have been anything but minimal, Terrelle Pryor is clearly the engine that makes things go. Even when he makes a rookie mistake, he’s the most dangerous man on the field for Ohio State. With the ball in Prior’s hand, and the pocket empty, the field instantly looks bigger, as his combination of size and speed forces the Longhorns to dedicate a linebacker to spying the freshman signal caller on every snap.

The Buckeyes have to be kicking themselves that they’re only up a field goal after dominating the first quarter and a half of play, and only because of an extremely rare mistake in the red zone by Colt McCoy. It will be interesting to see how the Buckeyes react when the high-powered Longhorns offense gets into gear. So far, it looks like Ohio State is dominating the battle up front, which is certainly a vital ingredient in the recipe to upset the Longhorns.

Keith Arnold of Road to Game Day is at the Fiesta Bowl and will be posting from Glendale tonight. He swears he had nothing to do with those empty beer cans.



Welcome to the Fiesta Bowl, or the bowl game better known as the Coronation of Disappointment! Two proud teams, both dealing with massive heartaches, face-off tonight to salvage something from this disappointing season. Ohio State, hoping to save face and end a streak of embarrassing BCS appearances, and Texas, hoping to find some sort of redemption from being left out of the Big 12 Championship and complete their argument for a fraction of the national title.

University of Phoenix Stadium is shiny and new. Read the rest of this entry »

10. Matt Vasgersian. Let not a single "Ten Reasons To Watch X" list go without mentioning how awful Fox's broadcasts are, but do not throw the baby of Matt Vasgersian out with this bathwater. Vasgersian can not only call a game well, but he dropped the Owen Schmitt "Beer Truck" line last year, and thus earned our eternal admiration.


9. Brian Orakpo's Mind-Bottling Strength. Texas DE Brian Orakpo is one of the most well-wrought players you will see in college football, a monster who power cleans 380 pounds and took years off the life of Phil Loadholt in the Oklahoma/Texas game earlier this year. (Hey, did you know Texas won that game? If not, a Texas fan will remind you of that this week.) Ohio State's tackles have fared miserably against fast ends, so skip watching Planet Earth on Discovery HD tonight and instead watch Orakpo chase Terrelle Pryor around for predator/prey drama.

8. Jim Tressel, Gambler. It's fun to watch Jim Tressel gamble on 4th down conversions and fakes, staples of any quality bowl game. Watching the tightypants Buckeye coach play fast and loose with things is like watching the accountant in The Untouchables pick up a shotgun and begin gunning down Al Capone's men: it's all kinds of right and wrong all at the same time.

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Award whomever you like a national title, you rebel, you. At this point, any one of four teams will do, and each provides a little something for everyone.

1. Utah. Undefeated, beat five ranked teams, won their conference, and got a convincing win over Alabama to bump them from "Thanks for playing, mid-major wonder" status into real consideration for national title contender. BYU got a national title on less; Utah is deserving of the same consideration.

2. USC. Decimated all out-of-conference opponents, won their conference, and had the best defense in the country by many, many furlongs. Had one loss, but so do the remaining two Mythical National Championship contenders.

3. Texas (provisional) This is a conditional based on tonight's Fiesta Bowl, where Texas should come out in a justified blind rage at not being chosen for both the Big 12 Championship game or for the national title, but we can all thank the Big 12's inability to properly write up the correct and just procedure for a three-way tiebreaker making any sense. They beat Oklahoma.

4. Floridoklahoma/Oklahomida The team emerging from Thursday night's BCS Title game gets a legitimate vote, as well, having charmed the cold hearts of both voters and computers into this year's nominal BCS National Title Game.

Read the rest of this entry »