Benefield, Boise State set for Fiesta Bowl, Penn State on NYE; Elad enters transfer portal
McMaster hires Western LB coach, special teams coordinator
Welcome to the thick of bowl season!
Heading south ✈️
The Indiana Hoosiers and star Canadian quarterback Kurtis Rourke (Oakville, Ont.) lost to Notre Dame, 27-17, last Friday in the College Football Playoff kickoff.
Rourke won the 2024 Jon Cornish Trophy, TSN Gridiron Nation announced on Monday. The annual award honours the top Canadian football player in the NCAA. Rourke’s older brother, Nathan, a BC Lions QB, won back-to-back Cornish Trophies in 2017, the award’s inaugural year, and 2018. This year’s finalists included Boise State Broncos safety Ty Benefield (Vancouver), Rutgers Scarlet Knights linebacker Dariel Djabome (Longueuil, Que.), UNLV Rebels S Jett Elad (Mississauga, Ont.) and Stanford Cardinal wide receiver, and 2023 winner, Elic Ayomanor (Medicine Hat, Alta.).
Benefield highlights the six remaining Canadians in the CFP. The Vancouver native and Boise State will play the Penn State Nittany Lions in the Fiesta Bowl on New Year’s Eve. Penn State is coming off a first-round win over the SMU Mustangs while the Canadian’s Broncos have enjoyed a long break since its Mountain West championship victory over Elad’s UNLV on Dec. 6.
H-back Rohan Jones (Montreal) and the Montana State Bobcats are heading to the FCS national championship in Frisco, Texas on Jan. 6, 2025. Montana State beat the South Dakota Coyotes and their Canadian trio, 31-17, on Saturday.
Canadians went 3-4 in non-CFP bowl games since last Friday, brining the record to 6-4. Ohio Bobcats QB Callum Wither (Mississauga, Ont.), Northern Illinois Huskies S Cyrus McGarrell (Windsor, Ont.) and Arkansas State Red Wolves defensive lineman Nate Martey (Ottawa) were among the winners. Tulane Green Wave longsnapper Andrew Goodman (Montreal), Coastal Carolina Chanticleers WR Malick Meiga (Montreal), the seven Canadians on Rutgers and Bowling Green DL Ali Saad (Windsor, Ont.) lost their bowl games. Martey beat Saad in the 68 Ventures Bowl on Thursday night in the first of seven Canadian-v-Canadian non-CFP bowl games this season.
There are 27 Canadians playing on 19 teams in 13 non-CFP bowl games in the next seven days:
DirectTV Holiday Bowl: Syracuse (2) vs. Washington State (2)
Birmingham Bowl: Georgia Tech (0) vs. Vanderbilt (1)
AutoZone Liberty Bowl: Texas Tech (1) vs. Arkansas (0)
*Pop-Tarts Bowl: Iowa State (0) vs. Miami (3)
*Will Miami’s three Canadians, including defensive lineman Akheem Mesidor, get to eat the edible Pop-Tarts mascot on Saturday?
Snoop Dogg Arizona Bowl: Miami OH (2) vs. Colorado State (1)
Go Bowling Military Bowl: East Carolina (1) vs. NC State (1)
Valero Alamo Bowl: BYU (1) vs. Colorado (1)
Wasabi Fenway Bowl: UConn (2) vs. UNC (0)
Bad Boy Mowers Pinstripe Bowl: Boston College (2) vs. Nebraska (0)
ReliaQuest Bowl: Alabama (1) vs. Michigan (1)
Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl: Louisville (1) vs. Washington (1)
Kinder’s Texas Bowl: Baylor (0) vs. LSU (1)
TaxSlayer Gator Bowl: Duke (2) vs. Ole Miss (0)
Elad has entered the transfer portal, the UNLV S announced Tuesday on X/Twitter. Elad has played the last two seasons with the Rebels. He started his career with the Ohio Bobcats in 2019, but left for Garden City Community College after the 2021 season to play junior college football for a year in 2022 before heading to UNLV in 2023. Elad is taking advantage of a new NCAA rule allowing former JUCO players extended eligibility for the 2025-26 season; 2025 will be his final year of college football.
For a more detailed CFB breakdown, read my latest Canuck U report:
Back north: U Sports offseason headlines 🍁
The McMaster Marauders have hired Adam Grandy to be the new defensive coordinator, the team announced on Monday. Grandy spent the last six years with the Western Mustangs as the LB coach and then took over as special teams coordinator later in his tenure. He started his playing career at McMaster in 2003 under former head coach Greg Marshall, who hired his former LB to lead the position group at Western in 2019 following his time as the Guelph Gryphons’ defensive coordinator.
Laurier Golden Hawks QB Taylor Elgersma was voted The College Football Network’s U Sports Offensive Player of the Year, the media outlet announced on social media on Monday.
Former UBC Thunderbirds and current NFL offensive linemen Giovanni Manu and Theo Benedet snapped a photo together at the Detroit Lions and Chicago Bears game. Manu, an OL for Detroit, and Benedet, an OL for Chicago, became the first-ever UBC alumni to hear their names called in the NFL Draft when they were both selected in April 2024. Benedet shared the photo on his Instagram account on Monday.
ICYMI: Read last week’s Pressure Package newsletter:
Student shout-outs 📢
I got my start in multimedia storytelling and sports journalism at a student newspaper. It’s important for me to spread the love to those student journos finding new leads on campus fields across the country, just like I did a short time ago.
OUA
The Western Gazette (Western)
*My old stomping grounds!
The Cord (Laurier)
Imprint (Waterloo)
The Silhouette (McMaster)
The Varsity (Toronto)
Excalibur (York)
The Queen’s Journal (Queen’s)
The Fulcrum (Ottawa)
The Charlatan (Carleton)
Canada West
The Ubyssey (UBC)
The Gateway (Alberta)
The Gauntlet (Calgary)
The Sheaf (Saskatchewan)
The Manitoban (Manitoba)
RSEQ
Impact Campus (Laval)
*Covered Rouge et Or football in Vanier Cup
Quartier Libre (Montreal)
Concordia
The McGill Tribune (McGill)
Le Collectif (Sherbrooke)
AUS
The Xaverian Weekly (StFX)
The Campus (Bishop’s)
The Athenaeum (Acadia)
The SMU Journal (Saint Mary’s)
More Canadian college football coverage
U Sports football is covered by the media at a level not seen since theScore’s former television program “University Rush” covered Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS, the former name for U Sports) football up until the early 2010s.