"DE-FENSE!"

For millions of Americans, the holiday season isn’t only a magical time because of the standard stocking stuffers and gingerbread houses, but also because it means college football bowl season is here (!!!!).

Unless you’re a die-hard football fan or your team is playing in one of these games, you probably won’t have the time to tune into some of the smaller bowl games such as the Beef ‘O’ Bradys’ St. Petersburg Bowl (yup, this is an actual name of a bowl game). But for everyone else (and yes, I mean everyone – from the dedicated college football fan to the dedicated Saturday tailgater), the big bowl games are fun and exciting to watch.

Here is a quick guide to the biggest bowl games this season, and the deets you need to know while watching each. So grab a couple friends and a couple beers (optional) and park yourself on the couch. It’s time to go “bowling”!

Be honest, what else do you have to do over winter break?

Rose Bowl (January 1, 5:00 ET on ESPN)
Who: TCU Horned Frogs (3) v. Wisconsin Badgers (5)
What to know: The third-ranked Horned Frogs (intimidating right?) will take on the fifth-ranked Badgers in the Rose Bowl, the historical New Years day game held in Pasadena. TCU offense is led by quarterback Andy Dalton who is coming off a successful senior season, and their much-hyped defense is number one in the nation for holding their opponents to the fewest points. TCU will be playing with a lot of emotion; they finished the season undefeated and feel as though they should be playing for the national championship.

Wisconsin offense is led by quarterback Scott Tolzien and three standout running backs. Badger linemen Gabe Carimi and John Moffitt were just named all-American first team and will provide a note-worthy match up with the TCU defensive line.
Fun Facts: The Rosebowl is known as the ‘Granddaddy of Them All’ because it is the oldest and formerly most prestigious game… Wisconsin has scored over 70 points in three of its wins this season… This is the first ever Rosebowl for TCU. Read More »

Our hats go off to the UConn women’s basketball team for winning their 89th consecutive game! This latest win makes these talented ladies the winningest team in NCAA basketball history, topping the 88-game winning streak set in the 1970s by the UCLA men’s basketball team.

It’s important to recognize an achievement this major, yet these girls are kicking butt, stealing records and getting very little media attention for it. This wining streak started a full two years ago and it’s taken that long to get any sort of national attention.

Celtics coach Doc Rivers says:

“…If it was the UConn men’s program, we would be talking about it every day, and that’s part of it. What [the UConn women are] doing is extraordinary and amazing.”

We agree, still, even after the team’s tremendous accomplishment, no one is talking about how the team is dripping with talented athletes, but rather how it is nothing like men’s basketball and shouldn’t be compared to it. Many sports writers feel that women’s basketball is far inferior to men’s basketball, asking whether the female team should even be compared to the UCLA men’s basketball team. They go on about how men and women are very different “just like apples and oranges” and blah blah blah, pointing out the differences between men’s and women’s basketball to make their point: Read More »

Welcome back to The Rival Rundown! If you’ve always wanted to give props to your school on CC, now’s your chance! Shoot us an email explaining what’s awesome and unique about your school (or what stinks about Rival U) at rivalrundown [at] collegecandy.com!

This week we deviate from our typical Rival Rundown in two ways. First, we’ll be covering a (women’s!) basketball rivalry, as the athletic calendar moves into a new season. Second, this rivalry–between the University of Connecticut and the University of Tennessee–has been canceled! Though lauded by Sports Illustrated as one of the most intense rivalries in any sport this decade, in 2007, officials at Tennessee mysteriously elected not to renew their contract to schedule any further seasonal games against UConn.  What makes this rivalry, apart from its shocking termination, unique? Read on to find out!

Quick Facts

UConn: Public land-grant research institution in Storrs, CT with 17,000 undergraduates. Founded in 1881.
Tennessee: Public research institution in Knoxville, TN with 21,000 undergraduates. Founded in 1794.

1. Women’s Basketball Record

UConn: 13-9
Tennessee: 9-13

Three credits to: UConn Read More »

[Every week, CC and John bring you some of the weirdest, funniest, saddest things he hears on his college campus. Join the Overheard revolution!Leave your own overheard convos in the comments or send ‘em over!]

(Heard from physics students walking behind me.)
Guy 1: So the senior design engineer says, hey, that’s a mismatched transistor! The deficient fusion constants differed from the manufacturing!
(General laughter.)
Guy 2: Oh, naw, man, you told it wrong. You messed it up.

(From a reader: Two girls, talking earnestly in a shopping center.)
Girl 1: Yeah, I know, that’s like… the worst fish to be, if you were a fish.
Girl 2: Yeah, like I would never want to be that fish. Literally.

(Two guys on a bench.)
Guy 1: You can’t just push people over because they’re poor!
Guy 2: Why not? I think that’s a great reason! Read More »

And so it begins. After 11 long, tortuous, pain-staking months of waiting… the Big Dance is finally here.

Once you get past the fact that the NCAA Selection Committee made the mistake of not including some of the best teams that could have been this year’s Cinderella (Arizona State instead of St. Mary’s? come on), the board actually came up with a pretty good draw. And for the next 2 weeks, I will be fully immersing myself in the insanity and awesomeness that is the most exciting sporting event of the year: March Madness.

The best conference in the country (and maybe in history) is hands-down the Big East. 3 out of the 4 number 1 seeds are from the Big East: UConn, Louisville, and Pitt. Even Barack Obama believes in the dominance of this conference, since his bracket that he filled out on Wednesday (live on ESPN! what a cool prez) shows it filling half of his Elite Eight. Although Obama didn’t have our lovely school in his Final Four, Coach K isn’t worried. Read More »

In 2008′s least shocking expose, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution dredged the sweat-stained pit of college academics and came up with, essentially, a national “dumb jock” joke.

Hating on athletes is pretty standard practice for the squishy intellectual set, probably because we’ve got a few bones to pick about getting stuffed in lockers and picked last for dodgeball. (As an aside, has anyone actually been stuffed into a locker in the past thirty years? The jocks these days just steal our iPods.)

But, whether we hear it from major newspapers or the bottom of locker no. 104, the news is the same: at the corner of college athletics and college admissions, something is gravely ill. Read More »