On Aug. 29, 1998, Nebraska and Louisiana Tech staged what has to be categorized as the most memorable 56-27 game in college football history. At the height of their Big Red powers with three national championships in the previous four seasons, Nebraska had the better team, but they did not have the best player on the Memorial Stadium astroturf that day.
Louisiana Tech wideout Troy Edwards absolutely dominated the proud Blackshirts that day, catching 21 passes for an FBS-record 405 yards and three touchdowns. Edwards used the game as a springboard for a historic season, catching 140 passes for 1,996 yards and an FBS-record 27 touchdowns. (Both the single-game yards and single-season touchdown records stand to this day.) That December, Edwards won the Biletnikoff Award as the nation’s top receiver.
“He kept telling us that we couldn’t cover him and that he was the best,” Nebraska safety Mike Brown told the Omaha World-Herald after the game. “And he is the best.”
Nebraska was never in danger of losing the game, leading 14-0 after the first quarter and 35-6 at the half. As would be expected, the Huskers dominated the Bulldogs on the ground, out-rushing them 289 to minus-21. But La Tech quarterback Tim Rattay went 46-of-68 for 590 yards with four touchdowns and one interception. Most of that damage went to Edwards, obviously; with scores of 52, 94 and 80 yards, Edwards racked up 226 yards on his three touchdown catches alone.
All this to say, the schools will get together in 2023 to unofficially celebrate one of the most impressive individual performances in college football history. Nebraska announced Thursday it will host Louisiana Tech on Sept. 23, 2023.
The game will be the schools’ first reunion since the Troy Edwards Game (they played in 2006) and third all-time. It also completes the non-conference schedule for both teams — Nebraska will visit Colorado (Sept. 9) and host Northern Illinois (Sept. 16), while Louisiana Tech visits SMU (Sept. 2) and hosts Baylor (Sept. 16) and Bowling Green (Sept. 30).
Following in the fresh footsteps of Houston quarterback D’Eriq King and wide receiver Keith Corbin, West Virginia safety JoVanni Stewart is considering pulling himself from the remainder of the season, using his redshirt and pursuing a graduate transfer elsewhere in 2020, according to multiple reports out of West Virginia.
Stewart will sit out WVU’s game Saturday versus No. 11 Texas (3:30 p.m. ET, ABC) for “personal reasons” as he contemplates a transfer.
A 5-foot-8, 196-pound starter at West Virginia’s “spear” linebacker position, Stewart has started all four games to date for the Mountaineers this fall, collecting 17 tackles with one tackle for loss and two pass breakups. The Katy, Texas, native played in 37 games over his first three seasons, cracking the starting lineup as a Sam linebacker last season, a year in which he tied for fourth on the team with 54 tackles, four sacks, 10.5 TFLs and a fumble recovery.
Stewart has not used his redshirt year which means, per the NCAA’s new redshirt rule that passed last year, he can sit the rest of the season, count his four games in 2019 as a redshirt and transfer elsewhere to play in 2020.
Stewart is the third player to pursue such a move, following King and Corbin at Houston. All three players are fourth-year seniors, and all three are playing under new head coaches. Ironically, the situation all three find themselves in was triggered when Dana Holgorsen left West Virginia for Houston in January. Oklahoma State-turned-Tulane wide receiver Jalen McCleskey executed a similar move in 2018, though King is by far the most high-profile player to consider executing such a move to date.
Playing in another game would void those plans, which is why the underdog Mountaineers will be without one of their best, most experienced defenders as the Longhorns come to town on Saturday and, perhaps, in perpetuity.
It’s been an unbelievably good season for LSU’s passing offense, but as for its passing defense? Things could be better. The Tigers rank 50th nationally in pass efficiency defense and 49th in scoring defense through four games, down 46 and 23 spots from a year ago.
And Thursday’s news isn’t exactly going to help.
Safety Kenan Jones announced he has entered his name into the NCAA transfer portal. “I have officially entered my name into the NCAA transfer portal,” he wrote in a Twitter post. “I want to thank Louisiana State University, and most importantly my teammates for allowing me to be part of such a program. My recruitment is now officially open!”
— Kenan Jones (@kenanballout32) October 3, 2019
Brody Miller of The Athletic reported Jones is leaving for personal reasons, as playing time was not going to be a problem had he stuck around. Though he recorded just one tackle as a Tiger, he was set to slide up the depth chart following Todd Harris‘s season-ending injury.
The Berwick, La., native was a 4-star wide receiver recruit upon signing with LSU in 2018. He chose LSU over Florida State, Louisville, Ole Miss and others, according to his 247Sports profile.
Big 12 fans were understandably skeptical when the conference announced its partnership with ESPN this spring that would see conference games move to the Worldwide Leader’s streaming platform, ESPN+. In an age where the other four Power 5 conferences now have their own cable networks, the Big 12 moved games to a platform that is literally not available on any cable service.
The second conference game arrived on Saturday with No. 21 Oklahoma State’s win over Kansas State (West Virginia at Kansas aired on ESPN+ the previous week), and those fears were not allayed by the actual product. Viewers missed the final minutes of the second quarter as the ESPN+ production was slow to return from a lightning delay, and “technical difficulties” prevented viewers from seeing a Kansas State touchdown.
Add in that viewers paid an extra $5 to see the game on top of their traditional television package, and people were understandably upset.
“Those things just wouldn’t happen if the game was on ESPN or ESPN2,” K-State athletic director Gene Taylor told the Wichita Eagle. “We were told any conference game on ESPN+ would be produced at that level and it clearly wasn’t at that level. We do a better production job when we do games in house than they did at Oklahoma State.”
ESPN apologized for the technical difficulties, while Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby did his best Baghdad Bob impression.
“I don’t have an answer for you as to why that would be,” Bowlsby said, “probably something was malfunctioning, because the production is exactly the same as they are doing on every other game. At least it’s supposed to be.”
Bowlsby told the Eagle that ESPN has free rein to put any conference game it so chooses on ESPN+ (outside of Oklahoma and Texas games) but the network assured K-State fans their remaining eight Big 12 games will remain on regular television.
Note: It should be mentioned Big 12 teams have appeared on ESPN+ a total of six times this season and ESPN has reported no issues in their five other streaming broadcasts. As always, individual viewer experiences may vary.
Ron Prince is back in the headlines, but not for reasons he’d want, I’m certain.
Earlier this week, Caylin Newton, brother of 2010 Heisman Trophy winner, announced on Twitter that he had decided to transfer from Howard. A day later, a report surfaced that has cast Prince’s FCS program in a decidedly negative light.
The website HBCU Gameday reported Wednesday that they had “been contacted by several parents of Howard football players who accuse Prince of being verbally abusive and intimidating to the student-athletes. Additionally, the website writes that “parents accused Prince of sending injured players home without treatment and creating an atmosphere of intimidation within the program by the constant threat of loss of scholarships.”
The site also published an anonymous letter that been sent to not only the university’s president and athletic director but also to the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference as well as the NCAA. In the letter, an unnamed parent described Prince as a “hostile and abusive head coach,” stating that “Prince has been threatening, hostile, abusive, and disrespectful of the young men and coaching staff at Howard University since his arrival.”
“The harassment, bullying, verbal, and mental abuse needs to STOP!” the letter continued. “He has demoralized, ridiculed, and threatened the players on the team since his arrival. …
“You hold all [student-athletes] to a very high standard, if there is an allegation about misconduct they are suspended and or removed from the team, and maybe from the institution. Why are coaches not held to the same standard when it comes to blatant disrespect and harassment of [student-athletes]?”
The letter also levies various accusations at Prince, including calling players “cowards” or “sorority sisters”; making church service attendance mandatory; a bizarre alleged threat of an FBI investigation over point-shaving; and telling players he knows someone in the locker room is gay and he wants them to come out because he wants to have the first openly homosexual player in the country.
“I know currently these are just allegations,” the parent wrote. “I sincerely hope that there is an investigation into what is being reported and that the hostile environment is addressed before a student has a mental breakdown or commits suicide because of this treatment.”
Prince has claimed he has no knowledge of the allegations, the website noted. An email sent from CFT to the university seeking comment on the accusations has yet to receive a response.
The 50-year-old Prince is in his first season as the head coach at Howard, with the Bison off to a rough 1-4 start to the season that included a 79-0 loss to Maryland in the opener. A longtime college football coach, Prince spent three years (2006-08) as the head coach at Kansas State after succeeding Bill Snyder following his first retirement.
This past season, Prince was an offensive analyst for Jim Harbaugh at Michigan.