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1998 Gator Bowl
The 1998 Gator Bowl was a post-season American college football bowl game between the Virginia Tech Hokies from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and the North Carolina Tar Heels from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The 53rd edition of the Gator Bowl, it was played at Alltel Stadium in Jacksonville, Florida, on January 1, 1998. The game was the final contest of the 1997 NCAA Division I-A football season for both teams, and ended in a 42–3 victory for North Carolina. Virginia Tech was selected to play in the Gator Bowl following a 7–4 regular season. Facing the unranked Hokies were the No. 7-ranked North Carolina Tar Heels. The Heels had gone 10–1 during the regular season and were ranked seventh in the Associated Press poll heading into the game. North Carolina narrowly missed an at-large selection to a higher-prestige Bowl Alliance postseason game and was playing under new head coach Carl Torbush for the first time. Torbu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Big East Conference (1979–2013)
The Big East Conference was a collegiate athletics conference that consisted of as many as 16 universities in the eastern half of the United States from 1979 to 2013. The conference's members participated in 24 NCAA sports. The conference had a history of success at the national level in basketball throughout its history, while its shorter (1991 to 2013) football program, created by inviting one college and four other "associate members" (their football programs only) into the conference, resulted in two national championships. In basketball, Big East teams made 18 Final Four appearances and won 7 NCAA championships as Big East members through 2013 (UConn with three, Georgetown, Syracuse, Louisville and Villanova with one each). Of the Big East's full members, all but South Florida attended the Final Four, the most of any conference, though Marquette, DePaul, Notre Dame, Rutgers, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh made all their trips before joining the Big East. In 2011, the Big East ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Virginia Tech
Virginia Tech (formally the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and informally VT, or VPI) is a Public university, public Land-grant college, land-grant research university with its main campus in Blacksburg, Virginia. It also has educational facilities in six regions statewide, a research center in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, and a study-abroad site in Riva San Vitale, Switzerland. Through its Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets, Corps of Cadets Reserve Officers' Training Corps, ROTC program, Virginia Tech is a United States Senior Military College, senior military college. Virginia Tech offers 280 undergraduate and graduate degree programs to some 34,400 students; as of 2015, it was the state's second-largest public university by enrollment. It manages a research portfolio of $522 million, placing it among the top 50 universities in the U.S. for total research expenditures, top 25 in computer and information sciences and top 10 in engineering, with the latter t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Most Valuable Player
In team sports, a most valuable player award, abbreviated 'MVP award', is an honor typically bestowed upon an individual (or individuals, in the instance of a tie) whose individual performance is the greatest in an entire league, for a particular competition, or on a specific team. The purpose of the award is recognize the contribution of the individual's efforts amongst a group effort, and to highlight the excellence, exemplariness, and/or outstandingness of a player's performance amidst the performance of their peers in question. The term can have different connotations depending on the context in which it is used. A 'League MVP' is the most valuable player in an entire league, and refers to the player whose performance is most excellent in the league. Similarly, a "Team MVP" is the most valuable player on a team, referring to the player whose team contribution is greatest amongst their teammates. In many sports, MVP awards are presented for a specific match—in other words, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shayne Graham
Michael Shayne Graham (born December 9, 1977) is an American football coach and former placekicker. Graham played 15 seasons in the National Football League (NFL). He played college football at Virginia Tech. He made his professional debut in May 2000 with the Richmond Speed of the Arena Football League's now-defunct developmental league, AF2. His first NFL contract was with the New Orleans Saints where he signed as an undrafted free agent in 2000. A journeyman most of his career, he played for 14 different NFL franchises over 9 seasons, excluding the 7 seasons he spent with the Cincinnati Bengals. With the Bengals, he made the Pro Bowl in 2005. In the latter part of his career, he was signed as an injury replacement or to provide competition during training camps for a number of teams. In 2018, Graham was hired as a special teams intern at Michigan State University. Early years Graham attended Pulaski County High School in Dublin, Virginia, graduating in 1996. He holds many o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Field Goal (football)
A field goal (FG) is a means of scoring in gridiron football. To score a field goal, the team in possession of the ball must place kick, or drop kick, the ball through the goal, i.e., between the uprights and over the crossbar. The entire ball must pass through the vertical plane of the goal, which is the area above the crossbar and between the uprights or, if above the uprights, between their outside edges. American football requires that a field goal must only come during a play from scrimmage (except in the case of a fair catch kick) while Canadian football retains open field kicks and thus field goals may be scored at any time from anywhere on the field and by any player. The vast majority of field goals, in both codes, are place kicked. Drop kicked field goals were common in the early days of gridiron football but are almost never done in modern times. In most leagues, a successful field goal awards three points (a notable exception is six-man football in which, due to t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Touchdown
A touchdown (abbreviated as TD) is a scoring play in gridiron football. Whether running, passing, returning a kickoff or punt, or recovering a turnover, a team scores a touchdown by advancing the ball into the opponent's end zone. In American football, a touchdown is worth six points and is followed by an extra point or two-point conversion attempt. Description To score a touchdown, one team must take the football into the opposite end zone. In all gridiron codes, the touchdown is scored the instant the ball touches or "breaks" the plane of the front of the goal line (that is, if any part of the ball is in the space on, above, or across the goal line) while in the possession of a player whose team is trying to score in that end zone. This particular requirement of the touchdown differs from other sports in which points are scored by moving a ball or equivalent object into a goal where the whole of the relevant object must cross the whole of the goal line for a score to be a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Texas Longhorns Football
The Texas Longhorns football program is the intercollegiate team representing the University of Texas at Austin (variously Texas or UT) in the sport of American football. The Texas Longhorns, Longhorns compete in the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly Division I-A) as a member of the Big 12 Conference. Their home games are played at Darrell K Royal–Texas Memorial Stadium in Austin, Texas. With over 900 wins, and an all-time win–loss percentage of .705, the Longhorns rank 3rd and 7th on the all-time List of NCAA football teams by wins, wins and NCAA Division I FBS football win–loss records, win–loss records lists, respectively. Additionally, the iconic program claims 4 national championships, 32 conference championships, 100 First Team All-Americans (62 consensus and 25 unanimous), and 2 Heisman Trophy winners. History Beginning in 1893, the Texas Longhorns football program is one of the most highly regarded and historic programs of all time. From 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mack Brown
William Mack Brown (born August 27, 1951) is an American college football coach. He is currently in his second stint as the head football coach for the University of North Carolina, where he first coached from 1988 until departing in 1997, when he left Chapel Hill to become head coach for the University of Texas. In 2018, Brown was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. Two days after Carolina fired Larry Fedora in November 2018, Brown was announced to return as the Tar Heels' head coach after a five-year hiatus from coaching, which he spent as an ESPN analyst. Prior to his head coach positions at Texas and North Carolina, Brown was head coach for Appalachian State and later, Tulane. He is credited with revitalizing the North Carolina and Texas football programs. Brown coached the Longhorns to victory against the top-ranked USC Trojans at the 2006 Rose Bowl game to cap off an undefeated season, win a second consecutive Rose Bowl, and the national championship in w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bowl Alliance
The Bowl Alliance was an agreement among college football bowl games (specifically the Sugar, Orange, and Fiesta Bowls) for the purpose of trying to match the top two teams in a national championship game and to provide quality bowl game matchups for the champions of its member conferences. The agreement was in place for the 1995, 1996, and 1997 seasons and had replaced the Bowl Coalition. Each participating team in the Bowl Alliance Championship received $8.5 million from the television sponsors. Background In its beginnings, the Bowl Alliance involved the SEC, Big Eight, SWC, ACC, and Big East conference champions, as well as independent Notre Dame. Because of this, only one at-large slot was available for teams to vie for. With the disbanding of the Big Eight and SWC following the 1995 football season and the formation of the Big 12 Conference in its wake, an additional at-large bid became available. The Alliance bowls were held on three successive days in each of the three ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
AP Poll
The Associated Press poll (AP poll) provides weekly rankings of the top 25 NCAA teams in one of three Division I college sports: football, men's basketball and women's basketball. The rankings are compiled by polling 62 sportswriters and broadcasters from across the nation. Each voter provides their own ranking of the top 25 teams, and the individual rankings are then combined to produce the national ranking by giving a team 25 points for a first place vote, 24 for a second place vote, and so on down to 1 point for a twenty-fifth place vote. Ballots of the voting members in the AP poll are made public. College football The football poll is released Sundays at 2 pm Eastern time during the season, unless ranked teams have not finished their games. History The AP college football poll's origins go back to the 1930s. The news media began running their own polls of sports writers to determine, by popular opinion, the best college football teams in the country. One of the earliest su ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1997 NCAA Division I-A Football Season
The 1997 NCAA Division I-A football season, play of college football in the United States organized by the National Collegiate Athletic Association at the Division I-A level, began in late summer 1997 and culminated with the major bowl games in early January 1998. The national championship was split for the third time in the 1990s. The Michigan Wolverines finished the season atop the AP Poll after completing a 12–0 campaign with a Big Ten Conference championship and a victory in the Rose Bowl over Washington State. The Nebraska Cornhuskers garnered the top ranking in the Coaches' Poll with a 13–0 record, a Big 12 Conference championship, and a win over Tennessee in the Orange Bowl. Michigan's Charles Woodson, who played primarily at cornerback, but also saw time on offense as a wide receiver and on special teams as a punt returner, won the Heisman Trophy, becoming the first primarily defensive player to win the award. The 1997 season was the third and final season in w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Florida
Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to the south by the Straits of Florida and Cuba; it is the only state that borders both the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. Spanning , Florida ranks 22nd in area among the 50 states, and with a population of over 21 million, it is the third-most populous. The state capital is Tallahassee, and the most populous city is Jacksonville. The Miami metropolitan area, with a population of almost 6.2 million, is the most populous urban area in Florida and the ninth-most populous in the United States; other urban conurbations with over one million people are Tampa Bay, Orlando, and Jacksonville. Various Native American groups have inhabited Florida for at least 14,000 years. In 1513, Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León became the first k ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
