Two Good Blogs From The MWC

http://www.mwcconnection.com/2013/11/12/5094786/walk-on-leads-aztecs-to-bowl-eligibility

This first post is by Mike Rose from the blog Mountain West Connection. I liked this article because it builds up the San Diego State come from behind very well while also keeping to the theme of what’s next for the Aztecs behind their walk-on quarterback, Quinn Kahler. It hints on SDSU’s weaknesses and lets the reader know what SDSU really does need to work on if they want to become bowl eligible after an 0-3 start.

http://www.mwcconnection.com/2013/11/13/5102408/northern-illinois-ball-state-final-score

In another article from the blog Mountain West Connection, writer Jeremy Mauss looks into MWC member Fresno State’s biggest mid-major competition: Northern Illinois. The article focuses a lot on NIU’s star quarterback Jordan Lynch, and I like how Mauss approached the subject of Lynch with a touch of humor with the memes and gifs he added. Sometimes a blog post needs a little something to make it a great post and I think Mauss really nailed this one for that reason.

Caitlyn Stroh

Caitlyn Stroh was born on Super Bowl Sunday in 1994, so it was pretty much destiny for her to fall in love with sports. 

Stroh grew up in Thomasville, GA, only 30 minutes away from her birthplace of Tallahasee, FL and from her childhood team the Florida State Seminoles. She also had an affinity for the sport of baseball, growing up a daddy’s girl with a former collegiate baseball player at South Dakota State as a father, and has been a diehard Tampa Bay Rays fan her whole life.

“I grew up going to baseball games with him and watching him play flag football when I was little,” Stroh said of her father. “I’ve just always watched sports with him.”

Growing up, Stroh played softball. She played all over the diamond, from pitcher to catcher to 1st and 3rd base. She also was a bat girl for her high school baseball team and always seemed to find herself on the diamond.

“I always grew up liking sports and I took journalism my freshman year,” said Stroh. “That was the year that Yankee Stadium closed, and my teacher asked me if I wanted to write a piece on it because she knew I loved baseball.”

From then on, she kept writing about sports and became interested in sports journalism.

Stroh is a magazine journalism major at the Grady College of Journalism at UGA. She loves magazine sports journalism so much that she used to have her own subscription to Sports Illustrated throughout high school and it always got a good laugh that it was in her name on the magazines instead of her dad’s. 

“My dream job would be to work for Sports Illustrated,” said Stroh. “I used to want to work for newspapers, but I decided I wanted to do more feature and long-form journalism.”

Stroh writes for the Athens-Banner Herald while at school and for her local newspaper when she’s back home. She used to also write for In The Game Magazine when she was in high school as well. On top of all that, Stroh has hosted UGA football recruits at home games all year. She hopes it all pays off someday, and she has even applied for an internship with Sports Illustrated for this upcoming summer. 

But for now, all she wants is to see the Seminoles take on the Alabama Crimson Tide in the National Championship this year. The rest will figure itself out.

 

 

 

 

 

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BCS Shakeup in the MWC After Week 8

In the beginning of the end for the BCS National Championship, with the college football playoff starting next season, the last weekend before the first BCS standings of the year was a wild one for the Mountain West Conference. 

Fresno State continued their dominance in the conference last weekend, beating UNLV soundly 38-14. Stud quarterback Derek Carr set more school records in the game, including the records for career touchdowns and completions. With Carr setting the pace, Fresno State has seemingly not slowed down at all on their chase of an undefeated season and a BCS bowl birth. 

The Bulldogs enter the initial BCS standings at number 17, with no other MWC being represented at this point in the season. The next most likely team from the MWC to break the BCS Top 25 would seem to be perennial power Boise State, but after this past weekend their chances seem dismal.

Boise State veteran quarterback Joe Southwick went down with a broken ankle in their win against Nevada that could cost him the rest of the season. That leaves the Broncos offense in the hands of junior Grant Hendrick, who did an alright job of managing the rest of the 34-17 win over the Wolfpack. This leaves the Broncos with a few questions. Can Hendrick lead them to the conference’s first ever championship game on December 7th? And if they were to get there, could he win the likely rematch between the Broncos and the undefeated Fresno State Bulldogs?

Things are heating up in the mountains this season, and there seems to be a lot more twists to come.

Second Day Story Post

In this blog from Mountain West Connection, Hank Corless takes a look at Boise State’s 34-17 win over Nevada in which the Broncos lost their star quarterback Joe Southwick. I liked this post because it uses a lot of good stats and I can tell Corless really did his research for the article while still being able to provide good analysis, especially in regard to what’s next for the Broncos after their quarterback suffered a broken right angle on their first offensive play of the day. Corless did a good job of making a mostly one-sided game really seem interesting while also noting the importance of the injury.

Fresno State is the Tops in the MWC, but Which Team is Number Two?

Fresno State has been the class of the Mountain West Conference this season, starting off the year 5-0 and coming into this week ranked #21 in the AP Top 25 Poll. With all the success in Fresno this year, there seems to be one main question around the rest of the conference: who is the second best team in the Mountain West?

Out of the eleven remaining teams in the conference, five of them have a record of either 3-2 or 3-3. Those teams are UNLV, Nevada, Utah State, Wyoming, and Boise State. In the season’s first Mid-Major top 10 poll, ran by Hustle Belt and reported by MWConnection, Boise State is the next highest ranked MWC team with Wyoming rounding out the top 10.

Boise has been a national powerhouse over the past few years, but after their shaky start and loss to Fresno State earlier in the season many people think the Bronco’s continued success might have finally come to an end. Wyoming is a different story though. The Cowboys have gone through the last few years without having much overwhelming success, both in the conference and on the national scale. This year though, there’s a new swagger in Laramie. Off to a 3-2 start, with only a 3-point loss in the season-opener against Nebraska and a somewhat forgettable loss in a poor effort against Texas State, the Cowboys are playing at a higher level than they have in the past. Behind the arm of third-year-starting junior quarterback Brett Smith, the ‘Boys have their eyes set on a bowl game; and if they keep playing as well as they have been, there could be big things to come for Wyoming.

Denver Broncos vs Dallas Cowboys Storify

http://storify.com/mattsinger626/denvsdal-10-6-13-4-25-pm

Derek Carr Should be a Heisman Trophy Finalist Come December

Going into this past weekend, Fresno State had not beaten perennial Mountain West power Boise State since 2005. Thanks to senior signal caller Derek Carr, the Bulldogs have claimed a victory against their in-conference rivals once more. Carr threw for 460 yards and 4 touchdowns and led a late fourth-quarter drive to seal a 41-40 win in Fresno. With a performance like last weekend’s along with his 373.3 yards per game passing and 12 passing touchdowns this season, one cannot help but start to wonder about Carr’s Heisman Trophy prospects.

Traditionally, players from mid-major schools have not had much success at winning the Heisman, with the last mid-major winner being Ty Detmer in 1990 for BYU. Unfortunately for Carr, he has a lot more than history going against him. Fresno State has already had a game postponed this year, against a lowly Colorado team whose defense would have been no match for Carr, and if they cannot reschedule the game it is just one less opportunity for him to prove himself on a national stage. He also plays in the Mountain West, which has long been underrated as a conference on the national level.

Fresno State just jumped back into the Top 25 of the BCS Guru’s rankings, usually a pretty good determiner of what teams will see postseason success; and none of it would have been possible without the play and leadership of Carr. If he continues to play at the high level he has been this season and Fresno State continues winning each test left on their schedule, he not only should be a Heisman finalist, he needs to be one. And a Heisman finalist with a real chance at winning the award at that.

Advances From The Weekend

The first advance I found is a piece from ESPN’s NFL Nation blog about the game between the Detroit Lions and Arizona Cardinals on Sunday. I liked this article because it started off with interesting facts about the game that really help set the stage for the game and gave good background on the matchup; for instance the fact that the Lions haven’t won in over 20 years in Arizona was interesting to me and showed me some possible motivation the Lion’s players may have going into the game. I also liked how they set up the article, by naming the top four keys to the game the Lions need to meet if they want to win.

The second article I liked happened to be from my blog beat in the Mountain West, off the blog Mountain West Connection. The piece is a game preview of Central Michigan and UNLV, and does a very good job of explaining how UNLV has struggled this season (leading to their 0-2 record entering the game) and what they need to do to win for the first time this season. I also really liked how they laid out who the key players were and what they need to do to help their teams win.

MWC Elite Winning But Still Unrecognized On National Scale

The top teams in the MWC continue to impress, but voters for the AP don’t seem to agree with Fresno State and Boise State being the only teams receiving votes in the whole conference. While the elite teams in the MWC continue to put up big numbers in their wins, their problem seems to be in strength in schedule. The MWC traditionally has trouble scheduling big games, because its stronger teams are seen as a threat by big conference schools and its weaker schools are often no match for any of the teams from the larger conferences. This is a problem that has no clear solution in the immediate future, but the easiest way for the conference to gain more respect on the national stage is to make a splash in the polls. If the conference cannot schedule bigger games anytime soon, its teams must win by large margins and on a consistent basis.

There are many stars in the MWC such as Fresno State’s quarterback Derek Carr or San Jose State’s quarterback David Fales, but it must rely on young stars such as Boise State’s true freshman running back Aaron Baltazar to carry it to the future success it could have as a conference.

The recent realignment in college football has been a blessing and a curse to the MWC, gaining back key members such as Boise State and San Diego State, but it makes it harder for them to gain national prominence with the rich getting richer in such conferences as the SEC (who added powerhouses Texas A&M and Missouri last year to their already stacked conference).

The future is bright for the MWC, but it will take the continued success of its elite schools and players as well as its weaker members building their programs to the same status as their counterparts.

Norte Dame’s Prospects for the 2013 Season

From their storied undefeated season last year, to their BCS Championship Game loss to Alabama, to Manti Te’o and Everett Golson’s off the field woes, Norte Dame football has been in the headlines quite often over the past year. After all the publicity, both negative and positive, the program has received one might wonder how the Fighting Irish will fair this upcoming season, especially with the loss of so many key playmakers from last year’s squad. Something has got to give.

Head Coach Brian Kelly thinks that “consistent performance” will be key to the teams success this year, especially for freshman linebacker Jaylon Smith. Smith is a five-star prospect who will be filling the spot of Te’o, no easy task for a true freshman. Along with the rest of the defense, one filled with many other first-time starters, Smith will have to uphold the tradition of stout Irish defenses. Last year’s defense ranked among the best in the country, and the entirety of college football will be watching this year’s team with scrutiny. 

If anything is apparent about this year’s squad, it is that they will have to keep their attention focused on their ultimate goal of a National Championship being brought back to South Bend. The Notre Dame coaching staff believes they have a team that can really do something big this year, but the adversity and scrutiny they will face might be more than this young team can handle. Only time will tell if the irish can get back to their winning ways.

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