2007-08 CFB Bowl Picks and News

[RJ Esq]

Noles Heading To Music City Bowl
Posted By Scott Carter at Dec 02, 2007 at 05:07 PM
Updated Dec 02, 2007 at 05:59 PM​

Florida State’s bowl destination is set. The Noles will play Kentucky in the Music City Bowl in Nashville on New Year’s Eve. Kentucky finished 7-5, same as FSU.
As of late Sunday afternoon, less than 500 tickets remained for the game.
“We are very proud to welcome Kentucky and Florida State to Nashville for this year’s tenth annual Gaylord Hotels Music City Bowl,” said Nashville Mayor Karl Dean in a statement. “We look forward to the thousands of visitors traveling to our great city to experience all that Music City has to offer. The Bowl is a great opportunity to showcase Nashville to our friends from Kentucky, Florida State and the rest of the nation.’’
FSU coach Bobby Bowden is holding a conference call at 6:30 p.m. to discuss FSU’s 26th consecutive bowl trip.

 

[RJ Esq]

[FONT=Verdana,Arial]Red Raiders Heading To Gator Bowl on New Year's Day[/FONT]
Posted: <script language="JavaScript">var wn_last_ed_date = getLEDate("Dec 2, 2007 5:10 PM EST"); document.write(wn_last_ed_date);</script>Dec 2, 2007 02:10 PM
The 26th ranked Texas Tech Red Raiders (8-4) are heading to the 63rd Annual Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, Florida to face #21 Virginia (9-3) out of the ACC. The game is New Year's Day, Tuesday, January 1, 2008 at Noon Central Time at Jacksonville Stadium.
This is the 8th straight bowl appearance for the Red Raiders all under the leadership of Head Coach Mike Leach. Tech has been bowl eligible for 15 straight seasons and will be making the school's 31st overall bowl appearance. Tech is 4-1 in their last 5 bowl games including last year's 44-41 overtime win over Minnesota in the Insight Bowl. After spotting Minnesota a 31-point lead, Texas Tech rallied for the biggest comeback in Division I-A bowl history.
Tech is 2-1 lifetime in the Gator Bowl with their last appearance in 1973 when the Red Raiders beat Tennessee 28-19 and QB Joe Barnes was the MVP. The Red Raiders other Gator appearances were January 1, 1954, a 35-13 win over Auburn and December 31, 1965, a 31-21 loss to Georgia Tech.
This is Virginia's 2nd Gator Bowl trip. They lost in the 1991 game 48-14 to Oklahoma.
Tech's high powered offense will be tested by the Cavaliers stingy defense that ranks 17th in the nation. Virginia won 5 games this season by 2 points or less. Virginia is coached by Al Groh who was an assistant at Texas Tech in 1980.
NewsChannel 11 Sports will have complete "Gator-Aid" coverage on the Red Raiders bowl game with reaction from the team tonight on NewsChannel 11 at 10.

 

[RJ Esq]

<table><tbody><tr><td colspan="3" class="storytitle"> BCS Analysis - FINAL, Dec. 3 </td> </tr> <tr> <td class="primaryimage" valign="top">

Virginia Tech QB Branden Ore
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</td> <td valign="top"> <table bgcolor="#f5f5f5" border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="1" width="60%"> <tbody><tr valign="top"> <td nowrap="nowrap" valign="middle">By Pete Fiutak
CollegeFootballNews.com
Posted Dec 2, 2007
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BCS Analysis and Breakdown for the final rankings, December 2nd
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By Pete Fiutak BCS Rankings | Computer Rankings[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-1]
[/SIZE][/FONT] The voters have spoken, and they've decided they like LSU.

Last week, the nation's No. 3 team was Ohio State and No. 4 was Georgia. Virginia Tech was sixth, LSU seventh and Oklahoma ninth, so naturally, Georgia fans were hoping for their team to slide into the top two if West Virginia was upset by Pitt and Missouri lost to Oklahoma. The Mountaineers and Tigers both lost, but instead of the Dawgs getting their day, the human voters decided to reward the conference champions with LSU, Virginia Tech, and Oklahoma all cruising into the top four and pushing Georgia to fifth. So now it's Ohio State vs. LSU for the national title, providing a battle of two big-name heavyweights that'll bring on the hype and excitement that, no offense, a West Virginia vs. Missouri game likely wouldn't have provided.

Call the final BCS rankings a showing of respect for the SEC, with LSU getting the benefit of the doubt over Virginia Tech and Oklahoma despite losing late in the year to Arkansas and hardly setting the world on fire over the second half of the season. The two losses in triple-overtime turned out to get more respect than Oklahoma's losses to Colorado and Texas Tech, while the humans said loud and clear that if you can't even win your own division, like Georgia failed to do, you can't play for the national title.

Virginia Tech got blasted by LSU earlier in the year, but finished No. 1 in three computer rankings, compared to LSU, who only got the top spot from one computer poll, and Ohio State, who was ranked No. 1 by the other two. Even so, the BCS, for the most part, got it right.

LSU was ranked higher than Virginia Tech, Missouri was ranked higher than Kansas, USC was ranked higher than Arizona State, and Boston College finished ranked higher than Clemson, so while there were a few inconsistencies, like South Florida being ranked one spot ahead of Cincinnati despite losing to the Bearcats, the overall rankings are generally in step with what happened on the field.

The conference champions get automatic bids, so Ohio State, LSU, Virginia Tech (to the Orange), Oklahoma (to the Fiesta), USC (to the Rose) and West Virginia get a BCS spot. Add Hawaii to the list after finishing tenth. All it had to do was finish in the top 12, and moved up two spots after the win over Washington.

With three spots open, the BCS bowls can choose from Georgia, Missouri, Kansas, Arizona State, Florida, Illinois and Boston College. The Rose Bowl, after losing Big Ten champion Ohio State to the BCS Championship, will get the first choice from the at-large pool. The Sugar Bowl, after losing SEC champion LSU to the BCS Championship, will get the second choice. The Orange Bowl will get the third pick and the Fiesta will get the fourth selection. Remember, only two teams from a conference can play in the BCS. [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-1]

The Big Winners: Ohio State (3rd to 1st), LSU (7th to 2nd), Hawaii (12th to 10th)
The Big Losers: Georgia (4th to 5th), Missouri (1st to 6th), West Virginia (2nd to 9th)

1. Ohio State Score: 0.[/SIZE][/FONT][SIZE=-1]9588 Last Week: 3[/SIZE][FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-1]
Everything played out perfectly for the Buckeyes. Being No. 1 in this race doesn't matter, but it's a nice ending of the regular season considering the team hadn't played in two weeks. The computers were lukewarm, with only two ranking OSU in the top two, but the humans overwhelmingly had OSU No. 1 making it a no-brainer after West Virginia and Missouri lost.
2. LSU Score: 0.[/SIZE][/FONT][SIZE=-1]9394 Last Week: 7[/SIZE][FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-1]Four computers had LSU in the top two and the humans followed suit. Call this a self-adjustment of the market as LSU, ranked seventh just last week, made the huge leap into the No. 2 spot by a wide margin. No. 3 Virginia Tech wasn't even close.
3. Virginia Tech[SIZE=-1][/SIZE] Score: 0.[/SIZE][/FONT][SIZE=-1]8703 Last Week: 6[/SIZE][FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-1]The No. 1 team in the nation according to the computers, Virginia Tech didn't get nearly enough love from the human polls, and that's all that matters. Third is the worst spot to be in when all is said and done, and now it appears obvious that if the Hokies had held on against Matt Ryan and Boston College in the 14-10 loss on October 25th, they'd have ended up playing for the national title.
4. Oklahoma Score: 0[/SIZE][/FONT].8572[SIZE=-1] Last Week: 9[/SIZE][FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-1]The Sooners might have had the most impressive conference championship showing, but it didn't mean a whole bunch in the Sooner-Hokie-Tiger debate. Bob Stoops and company do have a beef. They beat the No. 1 team in America, Missouri, on a neutral field, and wasn't even close to getting into the top two. None of the computers had OU in the top two, and the humans overwhelmingly put LSU in the two spot.

5. Georgia[SIZE=-1][/SIZE] Score: 0.[/SIZE][/FONT][SIZE=-1]8392 Last Week: 4[/SIZE]
The Georgia dream scenario happened, and it didn't matter. Not only didn't the Dawgs get into the BCS title game, they dropped a spot. As the top at-large team available, they can be comfortable in that they're the best of the rest, but not winning the division, the lack of big wins and getting no respect from the computers proved to be too much to overcome.
[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-1]
6. [SIZE=-1]Missouri [/SIZE] Score: 0.[/SIZE][/FONT][SIZE=-1]7763 Last Week: 1[/SIZE][FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-1]M[SIZE=-1]issouri went from having a shot at the national title to not controlling its fate for a BCS spot. Even after the loss to Oklahoma, the Anderson & Hester computer poll had the Tigers No. 2. That's the only love the Tigers got as they sunk like a stone in all the other polls.

7[/SIZE]. [SIZE=-1]USC [/SIZE] Score: 0.[/SIZE][/FONT][SIZE=-1]7637 Last Week: 8[/SIZE][FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-1][SIZE=-1]So much for the hottest team theory. The Trojans inspired a collective yawn from the computers, getting ranked 12th in two of the polls, while the humans didn't get them anywhere near the top two.[/SIZE] 8. [/SIZE][/FONT][SIZE=-1] Kansas[/SIZE][FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-1]Score: 0.[/SIZE][/FONT][SIZE=-1]7589[/SIZE][SIZE=-1] Last Week: 5[/SIZE][FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-1]Missouri getting blasted in the Big 12 title game gave Kansas BCS life. Despite beating no one of substance this season, the Jayhawks finished fifth among the computers.

[/SIZE][/FONT][SIZE=-1]9[/SIZE][FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-1][SIZE=-1]. [/SIZE] West Virginia[SIZE=-1] [/SIZE] Score: 0.[/SIZE][/FONT][SIZE=-1]6628 Last Week: 2[/SIZE][FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-1]
Ooops. The real debate would've been West Virginia or Ohio State or LSU had the Mountaineers pulled out a squeaker against Pitt. Now WVU sunk like a stone to a remote island at nine. It doesn't matter since it's in the BCS, but respect isn't there anymore.10. Hawaii Score: 0.[/SIZE][/FONT][SIZE=-1]6468 Last Week: 12[/SIZE][FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-1]T[SIZE=-1]he late interception to hold off Washington meant a No. 10 spot, a BCS payday that'll double the school's normal football budget, and a day in the sun for Colt Brennan and the amazing offense. Being the long unbeaten team made it a no-brainer for June Jones' club to finish in the money.

Eligible For At-Large Spot
11. [/SIZE] [/SIZE][/FONT][SIZE=-1] Arizona State (last week: 13th)
12. Florida (last week: 10th)
13. Illinois (last week: 15th)
14. Boston College (last week: 11th)

Just On The Outside
15. Clemson (last week: 16th)
16. Tennessee (last week: 14th)
17. BYU (last week: 19th)
18. Wisconsin (last week: 18th)
19. Texas (last week: 20th)
20. Virginia (last week: 22nd)[/SIZE] [SIZE=-1][/SIZE]
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[RJ Esq]

USC vs. Illinois - The Rose Bowl
By Paragon SC Section: Football
Posted on Sun Dec 02, 2007 at 08:21:01 PM EDT


With utter chaos ensuing within the BCS yesterday the big question this morning was who would SC play on January 1st.
The LAT has confirmed that it will be Illinois.

Ohio State and Louisiana State will play for the Bowl Championship Series national title on Jan. 7 in the Louisiana Superdome, while Hawaii qualified for an at-large spot in a BCS game. Ohio State finished No. 1 in the final BCS standings that will be released later today, according to a source, and LSU jumped all the way from No. 7 to No. 2 to seize the second spot.
Also, as expected, USC will face Illinois in the Rose Bowl.

Let me first state that SC was too far out of it to get to the title game, the loss to Stanford continues to haunt us. With LSU winning the SEC Championship game and Ohio State finishing their season weeks ago it looked like those two teams would be in the title game.
I for one plan on getting my teeth cleaned and while also having a colonoscopy that evening so that I won't have to watch that boring game. Ohio State has no business being in that game with the easy schedule they have played and while I am no fan of loudmouth Les they did win their conference championship game, it's a risk you take in the SEC and they beat the odds. For my money it should be Oklahoma against LSU.
As for the Rose Bowl, I now had a hard time believing that we would play Georgia. The Pac-10 will always look to grab a Big 10 opponent if available and Illinois was it. The Sugar Bowl, provided LSU goes to the title game, will take UGA as their natural bowl tie in. Once again the imperfect BCS system gives us an imperfect post-season that is sure to produce some very boring match-ups.
Illinois has played some great football this season and they should not be taken for granted. Their win over Ohio State was a great performance and because I take no opponent for granted SC needs to be careful of Juice Williams, as he is very mobile and SC has had issues with mobile QB's in the past.
So it's just how we thought it would be. As he game gets closer we will take a close look at Illinois.
FIGHT ON!

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[RJ Esq]

BCS Still Hates the Pac Ten

Posted Dec 2nd 2007 9:14PM by Scott Olin Schmidt
Filed under: USC Football, Pac 10, Bowl Games, NCAA FB History, Arizona State Football

Since joining the Bowl Championship Series system, the Pac Ten has been the perennial odd-man out, and history repeated itself again as the Kansas Jayhawks were selected to play in the Orange Bowl, leaving Arizona State as the off-man out.

Pac Ten Commissioner Tom Hansen is likely not amused--but nor should be be surprised. The BCS has a history of giving the conference the short end of the stick.

In 2001, the Oregon Ducks were jumped over by a Nebraska team that lost its final game and left out of the Rose Bowl. Two years later, USC was ranked #1 in both human polls, but left out of the Title Game. A year later, Mack Brown lobbied enough pollsters to jump Cal for the final automatic qualifying spot and a Rose Bowl berth, and in 2005, Oregon missed an automatic BCS berth by one slot.
To the Pac Ten, that means a loss of $4.5 million--for the third time in four years--or nearly $1.5 million per school, as revenues are divided evenly--not to mention the Bowl markeing revenue lost for the programs due to disparities in merchandising opportunities between, say, the Fiesta Bowl and the Holiday Bowl.

So with Arizona State facing Texas in San Diego and USC fighting the Illini in Pasadena, the rest of the Pac Ten Bowl season will be as follows: Oregon vs. South Florida in the Sun Bowl, UCLA-BYU in the Las Vegas Bowl, Oregon State-Maryland in the Emerald Bowl and California-Air Force in the Armed Forces Bowl.

 

[RJ Esq]

<table><tbody><tr><td colspan="3" class="storytitle"> BCS Bowl Pairings: Four Big Outrages </td> </tr> <tr> <td class="primaryimage" valign="top">
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</td> <td valign="top"> <table bgcolor="#f5f5f5" border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="1" width="60%"> <tbody><tr valign="top"> <td nowrap="nowrap" valign="middle">By Matt Zemek
Staff Columnist
Posted Dec 2, 2007
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LSU and Ohio State is the title-game matchup the BCS system was expected to create. But as soon as the other BCS bowls came into focus, a number of outrages littered the college football landscape.
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Everyone knows that the bowl season is about filling hotel rooms and satisfying television, but with that said, a lot of teams fight like mad to earn prestige, publicity and the other spoils this sport has to offer. If the bowl process is to retain some small shred of integrity, invitations need to be distributed with at least some attention to the merits of each team's portfolio. The people who perpetuate the BCS system--which is attached to the bowls as they currently exist--go out of their way to trumpet the tradition that is part of bowl games. It follows, then, that if these contests are to indeed remain traditional in the best sense of the term, they need to be worthy of their big-game pedigrees. Bowls need to be destination events for traveling fans, yes, but they also need to represent destination viewing for casual sports fans, especially on New Year's Day. The matchups provided this season--outside of the BCS title game--are not TV-friendly. If bowls are to continue to have any meaning or value in college football, they need to establish and maintain healthy reputations that grow over time. What this year's non-championship bowl games reflect is a continuous erosion of the stature of bowl games, the very thing that should undercut their relevance and speed up the day when a plus-one enters the landscape.

Here are the absurd and intellectually insulting realities that emerged from the 2007 bowl pairings:

Outrage No. 1: Illinois in a BCS bowl, Missouri outside the candy store looking in. Let me get this straight: Missouri goes 11-2, Illinois 9-3. The Tigers play in a tougher league, win their division, and oh, get this--they beat the Fighting Illini head-to-head on a neutral field. And Illinois gets the huge prize while Missouri has to wake up very early to play the Cotton Bowl on New Year's morning in Dallas. Gee, this really enhances the process.

Outrage No. 2: Missouri out of a BCS bowl, Kansas in a BCS bowl. Let me get this straight: Missouri whips Kansas head to head, wins its division, and loses its two games against mighty Oklahoma (whom Kansas didn't have to play in the Big XII; the Jayhawks also avoided Texas and Texas Tech in league play). Kansas gets rewarded for losing to Missouri. Missouri gets punished for beating Kansas, because the Tigers--as a result of that win--put themselves in position to lose to Oklahoma for a second time. Crazy.

Outrage No. 3: Three-loss Illinois in a BCS bowl, two-loss Arizona State locked outside the palace. Arizona State plays in a tougher league, lost to USC and Oregon (with Dennis Dixon before the injury), and beat legitimate non-conference opponents. Illinois coughed up a bad loss to Iowa. Had Ron Zook's men beaten Missouri, we wouldn't be having this conversation. But if "Ifs and Buts Were Candy and Nuts, We'd All Have a Very Merry Christmas." Three-loss teams have no business whatsoever in the BCS bowls, unless there's a five-alarm, red-alert emergency going on. Bonus question here: how can Arizona State, with two losses, watch as one-loss (but resume-thin) Kansas enters the BCS on one side, while three-loss Illinois gets in on the other side. Really fair, guys. Really fair. Nice going, Mike Slive.

Outrage No. 4: Only one of the four non-championship BCS bowls is attractive. The Fiesta Bowl, matching West Virginia and Oklahoma, is a truly sensational intersectional matchup, the kind of collision that is far too infrequent during the non-conference portion of each regular season. But other than that, the BCS bowls don't really sing. Virginia Tech and Kansas are solid teams, but there's a sense that that matchup is a battle of similar squads. There's no contrast to the matchup, and it's a sense of contrast that gives a game its flavor and excitement. The Sugar Bowl, with Georgia and Hawaii, offers that contrast, but with the game being in New Orleans and not Glendale or Pasadena, the Dawgs figure to have an overwhelming crowd advantage. That takes away from the intrigue of that game. Put this contest in the Western U.S., and it would have sizzled a lot more. USC versus Illinois is a mismatch that has to be leaving millions of college football fans in a state of deep disappointment. USC-Georgia would have been off-the-charts awesome; USC-West Virginia would have been fascinating. Even USC-Kansas would have provided a certain curiosity factor. But Illinois? Maybe next season (when the Illini might make a run at the Big Ten title), but not now.

BCS bowls are all about money, politics, tourism and TV--no one will ever deny as much. One would like to think, however, that people can make money, play politics, generate tourism, and create good TV in better, more sensible ways. This year's BCS process only insulted the intelligence of college football fans once again.</td></tr></tbody></table>

 

[JumpOnBoard]

I just really don't get Kansas at ALL..

2 wins vs winning teams and both teams are 6-5....I mean just garbage wins...

Mizzou makes them look like children, plays for a title, loses after being tied at half, and now Kansas gets the nod?


Nah....this shit was supposed to stop after the neb/colorado shit a few years back..

Eric Crouch style.

 

[RJ Esq]

Kansas over Mizzou is a joke. Kansas over ASU is a joke.

I'm much more intrigued by the non-BCS matchups. A lot more interesting.

 

[JumpOnBoard]

I just can't think of one valid argument for Kansas over Mizzou not one...1 loss vs 2...that it??....how many did Mizzou have after Kansas was done w/ their schedule...ONE...

ASU just doesn't have that marquee win...the two real good teams they played on their schedule, they got beat by..and pretty handily both times..

I like Mizzou over ASU.

 

[RJ Esq]

I like Mizzou over ASU too. But I like ASU over Kansas and Illinois.

 

[RJ Esq]

An Apology From Big Ten Country

Posted Dec 2nd 2007 10:03PM by Mark Hasty
Filed under: Ohio State Football, BCS, Bowl Games

We're sorry. We're really, dreadfully sorry. We didn't mean for our flea-bit, woebegone conference to send its champion to the BCS Title Game. Again.

This wasn't our plan, you know. We were supposed to go along with the theme of the season, as determined by ESPN back in July: "2007 USC Trojans: Greatest team of all time, or greatest team ever?" And we did our part. We made sure OSU didn't come through the conference schedule unblemished. It's just, well ... Stanford. Coached by a Michigan man, no less.

Yes, we know, we know. John David Booty was injured in that game. Again, not our fault, but we're really, dreadfully sorry. And while we're at it we'll go ahead and apologize to USC for their Rose Bowl opponent. You were supposed to get a squishy Michigan team that hadn't beaten anybody, but Wisconsin skeezixed that pretty well. Instead, you'll get the only team in the conference that actually did beat somebody. On the road, no less. We're quite apologetic.

We apologize for the Michigan coaching search as well. We really don't know what happened with the whole Les Miles thing. We're even less sure what happened with the whole Kirk Ferentz thing, either, except it happens every year about this time. (Secretly, we all wish we had his agent.) And while we're at it, we'll just apologize in advance for the pending "Stoops to Michigan" and "Kelly to Michigan" media circuses, along with the dreary "why doesn't anybody want to coach Michigan?" columns and talk-radio segments yet to come. And no, we're not done apologizing.
We apologize for not wholeheartedly embracing the spread offense as well. We actually have four teams that ran it. They finished 7-5, 7-5, 6-6, and 1-11. Ohio State won the conference running out of the power I. Iowa used an offensive playbook last seen in that old arcade game with the trackball and the Xs and Os. They finished ahead (in conference) of all the teams running the spread. Again, we can't explain this. We are sorry for being such bad citizens of the college football world.

Lastly we apologize to the rest of the college football world for sending such an unworthy challenger to the title game. By failing to provide a suitable challenge for LSU, we're going to leave lots of room for questioning whether some of the two-loss teams (or the one-loss Jayhawks, or the zero-loss Hawaii squad) weren't more deserving and might not have been able to beat the Tigers.

We regret the endless what-ifs this lamentable situation would engender. (We would apologize to the BCS for once again causing people to question its legitimacy, but why would anybody ever apologize to the BCS?) In fact, our entire attitude of contrition right now can probably be summed up in just three little words:

Neener-neener-neener.

 

[RJ Esq]

<table><tbody><tr><td colspan="3" class="storytitle"> 2008 BCS Game Breakdowns </td> </tr> <tr> <td class="primaryimage" valign="top">

Illinois RB Rashard Mendenhall
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</td> <td valign="top"> <table bgcolor="#f5f5f5" border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="1" width="60%"> <tbody><tr valign="top"> <td nowrap="nowrap" valign="middle">By Pete Fiutak
CollegeFootballNews.com
Posted Dec 2, 2007
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The previews of all the bowl games will be coming over the next few weeks. For now, with the BCS matchups just announced, with Rashard Mendenhall and Illinois taking on USC in the Rose Bowl, here are the quick lookaheads for each of the biggest games.
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[SIZE=-1]By [SIZE=-1] Pete Fiutak

- 2007-2008 Bowl Matchups[/SIZE][/SIZE]

[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif]Rose Bowl
Illinois vs. USC[/FONT][FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-1] [FONT=Arial,Helvetica, sans-serif]Pasadena, CA. Rose Bowl, [/FONT] January 1, 2008, ABC[SIZE=-1]

Illinois might have lost three games, there might be other teams more deserving of the BCS spotlight, but Ron Zook's team is heading to the coast for the program's first bowl game since the loss to LSU in the 2002 Sugar Bowl. The Illini haven't been to the Rose Bowl since 1984 in a 45-9 loss to UCLA, while USC might as well play its home games in Pasadena (which it might if it can't get its stadium situation straight). The juggernaut of juggernaut programs is playing in its sixth straight BCS game and could finish the season with the unofficial title as the best team to not play in the national championship.

Few teams will benefit more from the time off than the Trojans. Last year, they were beaten up at the end of the regular season, got healthy, and blew past Michigan 32-18. Hurt throughout this season, the team was finally starting to come together at the end while the rest of the Pac 10 was collapsing. A win would make this the sixth straight year the program has has finished with at least 11 wins. For Illinois, beating Ohio State put the Zook era on the map, but beating USC would take things to a whole other level.

Quick Breakdown: USC's defense has been special from the start, and finished second in the nation behind Ohio State. The defensive front could stonewall the Illinois spread offense and make this a snoozer by the end of the first quarter unless Illinois QB Juice Williams loosens things up early on with the passing game. The Illinois defense doesn't get much in the way of publicity, but it has one of the nastier front sevens in the country, led by tackling machine J Leman. The Illinois secondary hits like a ton of bricks, but it also covers like it from time to time.
Best Wins: USC 44-24 over Arizona State & 24-3 over Oregon State, Illinois 28-21 over Ohio State & 31-26 over Wisconsin
What to Expect: It's USC, it's the Rose Bowl. It's Pete Carroll vs. Ron Zook. You know what's coming. Unless the Trojans come in overconfident, which shouldn't be a problem after the way the season has gone, this could be an awful matchup from the first drive. Illinois has to come out and smack the Trojans in the mouth and generate consistent pressure on John David Booty. This will be a hard-hitting game with the Trojans pulling away in the second half.
Early Prediction USC 31 ... Illinois 16[/SIZE]

[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif]Sugar Bowl
[/FONT] Hawaii vs. Georgia[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-1] [FONT=Arial,Helvetica, sans-serif]New Orleans, LA, [/FONT] [FONT=Arial,Helvetica, sans-serif]Louisiana Superdome, [/FONT] January 1, 2008, Fox[SIZE=-1]

For the first time all season long, Hawaii gets to play a living, breathing team with a pulse. The program has already won just by getting here, with the appearance in the BCS almost doubling the school's football budget, and now the expectations will be sky-high after the way Boise State played last year against Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl. Georgia is going to say and do all the right things about being excited to be in the Sugar Bowl, but it went to bed on Saturday night, December 1st thinking it had a shot to play for the national title. It's a no-win situation for the Bulldogs; they're supposed to beat the Warriors in a blowout, but they could certainly lose this if Colt Brennan and the high-powered run 'n' shoot attack gets rolling.

Georgia was supposed to be a year away from being special, and win over Hawaii would set the tone for an even bigger 2008. Not to be overly dramatic, but this could actually be an important game for the direction of college football. The game is all about the latest trends and copying what works, and if the June Jones run 'n' shoot offense lights up Georgia and pulls off a second straight BCS win for the WAC, then there might be a slight shift away from the trendy spread to more of the four-wide passing game. A win would also mean the little guy is here to stay, making it 3-for-3 (2004 Utah and 2006 Boise State the other two) for the non-BCS teams in the big games.

Quick Breakdown: It's this simple: can Georgia stop the pass? The short answer ... sort of. It's not like the SEC is a bastion of bombers, even though it has a terrific collection of quarterback talent. The best pure-passing quarterbacks the Dawgs faced this season were Tennessee's Erik Ainge, who came up with an efficient 17-of-26, 165-yard day in the 35-14 blowout win, and Kentucky's Andre Woodson, who was decent, throwing for for 268 yards and a score and an interception in the 24-13 loss. The Dawg secondary will be tested like it hasn't been all season long. Georgia will come into the game thinking it can pound the ball, but this is a tough, aggressive Hawaii defense that's terrific at getting into the backfield. With a month to prepare, Warrior defensive coordinator Greg McMackin will design several different ways to get to Georgia QB Matthew Stafford.
Best Wins: Hawaii 39-27 over Boise State & 37-30 over Fresno State, Georgia 42-30 over Florida & 45-20 over Auburn
What to Expect: January 2nd, 2006. Georgia was an overwhelming favorite to win a home-game Sugar Bowl, played in Atlanta due to repairs to the Louisiana Superdome after Hurricane Katrina, over West Virginia. Overconfident, the Dawgs got their doors blown off in the first half and had to mount a furious rally in the second, only to fall short. Mark Richt isn't going to let his team make the same mistake again. Hawaii will represent itself and the WAC well, but the Georgia running game will control the tempo enough to come away with the win.
Early Prediction: Georgia 34 ... Hawaii 2[/SIZE][/SIZE][/FONT][SIZE=-1]7[/SIZE][FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-1]

[/SIZE][/FONT]Fiesta Bowl [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif]
Oklahoma vs. [/FONT] West Virginia[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-1] [FONT=Arial,Helvetica, sans-serif]Glendale, AZ, Glendale Stadium, [/FONT] January 2, 2008, Fox[SIZE=-1]
BCS vs. BCS (Big 12 Champion to play here if available)

Welcome to the best of the non-national title BCS games as Oklahoma certainly had a claim to be playing for the crystal ball, while West Virginia came within a colossal choke against Pitt of playing for the national title. This is the first BCS game for Rich Rodriguez's Mountaineers since the stunning 2006 Sugar Bowl win over Georgia changed the program around, and it could use a victory to cement the status as a college football superpower. West Virginia last played in the Fiesta Bowl in the 1988 national championship loss to Notre Dame, and this time around, a good win against OU might mean a possible No. 2 finish in the national rankings.

The last time Oklahoma made the trip to Glendale it got beat but a group from Boise that took its playbook straight off the sandlot. The Sooners blasted Missouri by 21 to win the Big 12 Championship game, but they weren't as close as they probably should've been to a top two spot. Will they come out with a chip on their shoulder, or will West Virginia be jacked up to erase the distaste from the clunker against the Panthers? This will certainly be entertaining.

Quick Breakdown: Curtis Lofton and the tremendous OU linebacking corps will have its hands full with a West Virginia backfield that should be far more productive with a month off to rest up and recuperate. The Sooners are used to handling high-octane offenses, swarming all over Chase Daniel and Missouri to get to Glendale, and with a run defense that's allowing fewer than 100 yards per game, West Virginia might provide the exact big game matchup they wanted. The Mountaineers are going to run the ball, and run the ball, and run it some more, but it's the nation's fourth ranked defense that could provide the biggest problems. This is a rock-solid team in all phases with the ability to hang with OU punch for punch.
Best Wins: West Virginia 28-23 over Cincinnati & 66-21 over Connecticut, Oklahoma 38-17 over Missouri (Big 12 Championship) & 28-21 over Texas
What to Expect: If all 119 teams play up to their capabilities, only LSU can beat Oklahoma. The Sooners are going to come out breathing fire after having to hear about last year's Fiesta Bowl for the last year. West Virginia doesn't have the deep passing game to exploit OU's one potential defensive issue. If the Sooner defensive front plays the way it did against Missouri in the Big 12 title game, this might not be pretty.
Early Prediction Oklahoma 38 ... West Virginia 14[/SIZE]

[/SIZE][/FONT]Orange Bowl
Virginia Tech vs. Kansas[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-1] [FONT=Arial,Helvetica, sans-serif]Miami, FL, Dolphins Stadium, [/FONT] January 3, 2008, Fox[SIZE=-1]

With Kansas coming from out of nowhere and Virginia Tech overcoming the horrific terror of last April to give its fans something positive to rally around, these two are arguably the feel-good stories of the bowl season. Kansas hasn't beaten anyone, but that didn't stop it from getting into the BCS ahead of Missouri and Arizona State. After losing to the Tigers in the battle for the Big 12 North title, the Jayhawks figured to be going to the Cotton Bowl, or if they were to make the BCS, would likely play Oklahoma in the Big 12 championship that didn't happen. With the new life, KU is looking to show the world that it wasn't simply a decent team with a cakewalk of a schedule.

Virginia Tech's job will be to get over the disappointment of being No. 3. In the right spot, considering it got blasted by LSU earlier in the year, the Hokies have to show that they really are worthy of being considered ahead of hot teams like Georgia, Oklahoma and USC. Frank Beamer has won 11 games three times, but the program has never won 12, which it would do with a win over KU.

Quick Breakdown: The ultra-efficient Kansas offense imploded early against Missouri and was unstoppable late, and now it'll have to deal with the Virginia Tech defense that's allowing a mere 293 yards and 15.5 points per game. Virginia Tech's late run to the ACC title wasn't necessarily because of its defense, it was thanks to an offense that found a groove to become more than just the group that didn't screw things up. Neither team makes mistakes and both are great at forcing turnovers, so it might be as easy as the team with the fewest errors getting the win.
Best Wins: Kansas 19-11 over Texas A&M and 43-28 over Oklahoma State, Boston College 30-16 (in the ACC Championship) & at Virginia 33-21
What to Expect: Kansas is playing with house money, while all the pressure will be on Virginia Tech. The Hokies are better, but Frank Beamer hasn't been great in bowl games. With the time to prepare, Mark Mangino will have his team playing at the same high level it was at throughout the season as it pulls off the upset.
Early Prediction Kansas 27 ... Virginia Tech 23[/SIZE][/SIZE][/FONT]​

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[/SIZE][/FONT][/FONT]BCS Championship Game
Ohio State vs. LSU
New Orleans, La., January 8th, 2008 FOX
BCS No. 1 vs. BCS No. 2 [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-1]
[SIZE=-1]For all the weeping and gnashing of teeth about wanting a playoff, this year more than any other, the voters have been heard, and they said they don't want a team like Georgia, who couldn't even win its own division, to play for the national title. Last year the humans had no interest in seeing a Michigan - Ohio State rematch and vaulted the Gators over the Wolverines. This year, despite a less-than-scintillating performance in the 21-14 SEC Championship win over Tennessee, LSU rocketed past Oklahoma and Georgia to go from seventh to second to play the Buckeyes for the national title.

Basically, the SEC has been given the benefit of the doubt, and the voters are saying they believe the Tigers, with time to rest and recuperate, will play up to their capabilities and talent level. For the Buckeyes, it's redemption time after last year's all-timer of a clunker against Florida. As important as this game will be for Ohio State to gain back a measure of respect, it's also vital for the much-maligned Big Ten that's supposedly too slow and not athletic against SEC teams. An OSU win would crush several stereotypes and finally get the SEC Mouse off the program's back. Even a good showing and a loss would go a long way for the Big Ten, and might give the league more respect from the pollsters over the next few years.

Quick Breakdown: It's Ohio State's No. 1 ranked defense vs. LSU's No. 3 ranked D, but don't be shocked if the two offenses are able to put points on the board. The big storyline will the layoff. LSU is loaded with more NFL talent than anyone in America, but injuries have been a major problem all season long. Getting a month off should do wonders as DT Glenn Dorsey's knee, QB Matt Flynn's shoulder, and various bumps and bruises for several other key Tigers will finally get time to heal up. The lag time between the Michigan game and the BCS Championship was a problem last year for Ohio State, as the team appeared to be slow and way off compared to the machine it was throughout the 2006 season. This year, there's once again a huge gap between games. LSU got to play two more games after the Buckeyes beat the Wolverines, so now all eyes will be on the Big Ten schedule, as much as OSU, to see if rust is a problem again.
Best Wins: Ohio State 14-3 over Michigan & 38-17 over Wisconsin, LSU 28-24 over Florida & 48-7 over Virginia Tech
What to Expect: Ohio State will be a far tighter, far better team than the one that showed up in Glendale 364 days earlier, but it won't matter. The time off to heal will bring out the LSU that was so breathtaking to start out the year, and while Ohio State might bring its A game, it won't be enough.
Early Prediction: LSU 27 ... Ohio State 17[/SIZE][/SIZE][/FONT]​

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica, sans-serif]. [/FONT]​

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[RJ Esq]

<table><tbody><tr><td colspan="3" class="storytitle"> Bowl Matchups: The Early Lines </td> </tr> <tr> <td class="primaryimage" valign="top">
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</td> <td valign="top"> <table bgcolor="#f5f5f5" border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="1" width="60%"> <tbody><tr valign="top"> <td nowrap="nowrap" valign="middle">By Matt Zemek
Staff Columnist
Posted Dec 2, 2007
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Arguments and debates about the merits of the BCS and the overall bowl system won't be found here. What follows is a nuts-and-bolts dissection of football, only football. Time to break down the better bowl matchups, now that they've been established.
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Best BCS bowl game (including the title game): Fiesta Bowl. West Virginia-Oklahoma leaps off the page as a five-star matchup. Pat White should be healthy, and once the numbing pain of the Pittsburgh debacle wears off, the Mountaineers will roll into Glendale with a big boatload of motivation. When West Virginia plays with maximum emotion and extreme energy (see "2006 Sugar Bowl" for proof), Rich Rodriguez's team is incredibly hard to beat. Oklahoma, though, is playing the best football in the country, alongside Georgia. If these teams max out, the 2008 Fiesta Bowl could be almost as good as the 2007 edition... and you remember how incredible that game was.

Best non-BCS bowl game played in January: Citrus Bowl (yeah, yeah, Capital One Bowl, mumble, grumble, mumble...)Michigan man Lloyd Carr says farewell to the sideline against Urban Meyer, a man with Ohio roots now coaching Florida. The Wolverines, with a month and a half to heal up, will become a formidable opponent for the Gators and Tim Tebow, who has his own injury to deal with. This game might not deliver the goods, especially when you consider that Michigan hasn't had a fully healthy offense all year and will confront rust-based issues in "Beautiful Downtown Orlando." With that said, this game has the potential to be a blow-your-doors-off classic, with the emotional Lloyd Carr centerpiece only adding to the drama. This is the big-hitter of all the non-BCS bowls played on New Year's Day.

Best non-BCS bowl game played in December (do you really have to ask this question each year?): Holiday Bowl. Well, duh. The Holiday Bowl? An attractive matchup? Now there's an entirely original concept, folks. Texas is a big-time program, and Arizona State is quickly becoming one under Dennis Erickson. Both teams--after physically punishing seasons--will relish improved health and will be in position to play their best. Adding to the excitement factor here is the fact that these two teams are both comeback artists. Texas and ASU are masters of the second-half surge. Gee, this is the prototypical Holiday Bowl. It has every chance of being just as memorable as BYU-Southern Methodist 1980, Iowa-San Diego State 1986, and Texas-Washington 2001, the three greatest comebacks in the history of this consistently entertaining bowl game.

Coffee? Who needs coffee? If you want to wake up early on New Year's Day and get the cobwebs out of your head, you don't need a cup of joe. You need to watch the Cottom Bowl (the bowl that deserves to become the fifth BCS game and join the other four big-ticket events) between Missouri and Arkansas. Man, this should be fun: Chase Daniel and the high-powered Tiger passing attack against Darren McFadden and the Hogs' hopping ground game. If that doesn't get the juices flowing at 11:30 Eastern time (8:30 on the West Coast), you might as well sleep in after the previous night of partying. The only reason this game isn't a bigger draw than Michigan-Florida is the fact that Houston Nutt's absence will detract from the larger atmosphere in Dallas. Missouri has a huge edge precisely because Arkansas is still in search of a new leader and, accordingly, a new identity.

The "win one for 2008 momentum" bowl: Peach Bowl (yeah, yeah, Chick-Fil-A Bowl, mumble, grumble, mumble...) Tommy Tuberville of Auburn and Tommy Bowden of Clemson would be well advised to win this fierce Southern showdown between the SEC and ACC.

BCS BOWL PREDICTIONS

Sugar Bowl Quick Take: Black skies in New Orleans.No, this isn't a cute reference to the big dome in the Big Easy. Georgia coach Mark Richt claimed that he'll bust out the black jerseys when his team tackles Hawaii on New Year's Day evening. In a West Coast setting, the Warriors--much like Boise State in Glendale in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl--would have a much better chance. In the Superdome, a massive pro-Georgia crowd will make it even harder for Hawaii to overcome the power and speed of the Bulldogs.

Rose Bowl Quick Take: Mismatch. It will be one of the very best days in the life of Ron Zook. The young men wearing Illinois colors, and the fans flying from the Chicagoland area to Los Angeles in the dead of winter, will remember January 1, 2008 for the remainder of their time on earth. But much as coach Mike White and quarterback Jack Trudeau gained little more than a nice memory from Illinois' last Rose Bowl appearance in 1984, the same scenario is likely to play out nearly a quarter of a century later. Yes, it was almost twenty-four years ago that UCLA and a fella named Rick Neuheisel bombed the Illini by a score of 45-9 in Pasadena. This time, Illinois should encounter a similar fate against another L.A. colossus. Juice Williams has the quickness and skill to dent the scoreboard a little bit, but the Illini defense will be toothless against an SC offense that should boast a healthy offensive line. That one simple fact should produce a Trojan offense similar to the one that dismantled Nebraska back on Sept. 15. Illinois might score 20 on a good day, but USC should score at least 40. The only thing Pete Carroll's team has to guard against is a lack of motivation. Georgia and Ohio State could have been possible opponents for SC; the presence of Illinois in the shadows of the San Gabriel Mountains could diminish the excitement on the sideline of the Pac-10 champions. But if the Trojans bring enthusiasm to the dance, it's very hard to see how they'll be vigorously tested.

Fiesta Bowl Quick Take: Sooner swagger holds sway. As Oklahoma returns to the scene of its loss to Boise State, Bob Stoops--who coached horribly against the Broncos on that night in Glendale--should have his team ready to perform. West Virginia will bring an inspired effort to the dance, keeping this game extremely close and competitive. However, the Sooners should have the resolve needed to take the Mountaineers' best punch. Put this game in a different BCS bowl, and OU might not have the same emotional edge. In suburban Phoenix, Stoops should finally find some Fiesta fulfillment.

Orange Bowl Quick Take: Two heads are better than one.Kansas is a quality team that is superbly coached. The Jayhawks will compete well and make the Hokies earn everything they get. The difference, though, is that while Kansas plays one style of football, Tech can play a two-faced game by rotating quarterbacks. Dropback passer Sean Glennon and scrambling signal caller Tyrod Taylor have provided a dangerous yet effective combination for Frank Beamer and offensive coordinator Bryan Stinespring. The ability to display multiple (and healthy) personalities on offense gives the Hokies a crucial edge in what should be a fairly close but not too scintillating affair.</td></tr></tbody></table>

 

[RJ Esq]

South Carolina Snubbed: Spurrier Misses Bowl for First Time in 19 Years

Posted Dec 3rd 2007 11:07AM by Ryan Ferguson
Filed under: SEC, South Carolina Football, NCAA FB Coaching

When you go into the postseason 6-6 and are one of 10 (!) bowl-eligible SEC teams, you know you're far from a lock to make a bowl game.

The PetroSun Independence Bowl strongly considered the Gamecocks, but ultimately chose the 6-6 Crimson Tide of Alabama instead, citing the university's geographical proximity to Indepence Stadium in Shreveport, Louisiana. The Tide will face Big 12 representative Colorado in that game.

For the Gamecocks, it's over. What a weird ride; Starting the season 6-1 and at their apex, holding a Top 10 ranking; then finishing with a 5-game slide, going 3-5 in the SEC and missing a bowl game altogether. Head coach Steve Spurrier's stated goal of winning the SEC in the preseason probably shouldn't have been on the board in 2007.

From GamecockCentral.com:

"We're a little disappointed we didn't get to a bowl game, but we understand we have no one to blame but ourselves," Spurrier said. "We had five games to win No. 7 and we didn't get it done. We had our chances. The guys played pretty well much of the time, and we coached fairly well a lot of the time. But we didn't play well or coach well a lot of times too."
​

Agreed, Steve. Agreed.

Say goodbye to seniors Blake Mitchell, Cory Boyd and Jasper Brinkley. Could Defensive Coordinator Tyrone Nix be far behind?

 

[RJ Esq]

Now Can We Please Have A Playoff?
By Mike Section: Football
Posted on Mon Dec 03, 2007 at 10:55:36 AM EDT


The wait is finally over. We finally know who will be matched up in the various Bowl Championship Series games. They even had a selection show and everything. After weeks of speculation the crowning moment of the college football season arrived and we were informed the all-powerful all-important BCS system will give us epic matchups like...Georgia and Hawaii? Southern Cal and Illinois? Oklahoma and West Virginia? Well at least Missouri and Virginia Tech looks like a good matchup. Wait...what? The Tigers didn't get in? Kansas will play the Hokies instead? Didn't Missouri beat them? And didn't they beat Illinois too? Weren't the Tigers ranked #1 in the country last week?

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</td></tr> <tr><td align="center">Chase Daniel deserved better than the Cotton Bowl.</td><td>
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</td></tr> </tbody></table> It's time to admit the BCS model is broken. Sure they get the championship game right three out of every four years, but too often there is doubt whether the right teams are matched up. Does Ohio State really deserve to be there? They didn't beat anyone ranked in the top 20. In that sense they're no more deserving than Hawaii, Arizona State, or Kansas.
But what bugs me more is the lesser BCS bowls. We're lead to believe making it to a BCS bowl is a crowning achievement for your team. But the fans are treated to matchups of teams not playing on the same levels. Georgia and USC are playing fantastic football right now. It seems like they deserve better opponents than Hawaii and Illinois. And we fans deserve better too.
It's time to institute a playoff system. Take the top 8 or 16 teams. I don't care, take the top four. Give me something better than the current system that gives me games I'll only watch if they don't conflict with Simpsons reruns. Make a game like Georgia and Hawaii some meaning.
I'm tired of all the talk about a playoff making the regular season meaningless. That's a fabricated lie. A playoff would do no such thing. In fact, a playoff would generate more excitement for the game throughout the country. The reason is that more teams would be involved in the national title hunt later into the season. Let me explain.
Look at the Oklahoma Sooners. Their hopes for a national championship took a major hit when they lost to Colorado. Whatever hopes they had left were destroyed when they lost to Texas Tech. But if we had a playoff system that gave the current BCS conference champions an automatic bid their hopes would still be alive.
If an eight team playoff were in place, the excitement this weekend wouldn't have been limited to Missouri, Columbus, Morgantown, Athens, and Baton Rouge. It would have included Norman, Knoxville, Boston, Blacksburg, and Pasedena. Beyond a playoff would have extended excitement further into the season in places like Ann Arbor, Champaign, Happy Valley, Austin, Gainesville, Madison, and Tempe as these schools would have still had a chance of qualifying for a tournament late in the season. Someone explain to me how spreading the excitement and making it last longer into the season is bad for the game?

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</td></tr> <tr><td align="center">They could be dreaming about more than fresh fruit in Blacksburg</td><td>
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</td></tr> </tbody></table> The argument against taking the kids out of school doesn't wash either. They manage to do it in Div-IAA, Div II, and Div III and we don't hear about those poor kids flunking out of school. You could wait until after finals and have an eight team tournament over the three week winter break. I fail to see how any playoff system would take the kids out of class any more than the NCAA basketball tournament which features two weeks of games played on Thursday and Friday afternoons not to mention the classes lost to traveling for week night regular season games.
It's time for the university presidents to sit down and make a commitment to organizing the first playoff system in Div I-A football. If I had my way I would take the six champions of the Big East, Big Ten, Big XII, SEC, ACC, and PAC-10 and two at large teams outside of those conferences to include the smaller conferences and independents. You went 11-1 and didn't win your conference? Too bad. Win that game next year. If you can't win your conference you don't deserve to play for the national title.
Every other college sport has a playoff. There's no excuse for not having one in Div I-A football as well.
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[RJ Esq]

The BCS Does Not Want Good BCS Bowls - Just a Good BCS Title Game

Stewart Mandel is a frequent target of this blog, because I think he writes conventional wisdom and often fails to analyze such critically (and because I think he has a limited understanding of the sport he covers). But this post is not to bash him (which I most certainly could, for a number of his writings over the last week or so), but rather to use one of this posts today as a jumping point.

Mandel, in a column at CNNsi, writes about one of the underreported problems with the BCS. The fact that the goal of having a 1 vs. 2 National Championship Game has led to less compelling matchups in the other BCS bowls.

But you can't blame the bowls for most of those choices. In nearly every case, they were simply following selection protocol -- Pac-10 champ to the Rose Bowl, Big 12 champ to the Fiesta Bowl, ACC champ to the Orange Bowl, etc., etc.​

He's right about this. #1 is playing #2 in the BCS National Chamionship Game, but then the next 4 teams in the final BCS rankings do not play each other. #3 Oklahoma plays #11 WVU. #4 Virginia Tech plays #8 Kansas. #5 Georgia plays #10 Hawaii. #6 USC plays #13 Illinois.

Mandel uses this problem to divert on a tangent regarding the tension of retaining traditional bowl matchups and how a "plus one" model might solve some things.

I take a different approach. See, I think you can necessarily blame the bowls for the weaker BCS bowl matchups because of the selection protocol. The BCS is a system in place to elevate 2 teams to a National Title Game. This is its primary goal and there really isn't a secondary goal. There are other concerns (such as maintaining traditional bowl matchups), but those are tensions against the goal - not a goal in and of itself. Whatever works against the prospect of elevating 2 teams to a National Title Game is necessarily against the interest of the BCS.

And because there is just one real goal to the BCS, the selection procedures are set up in a manner such as to prevent a compelling matchup in the other BCS bowl games. See, if the 3rd place team were to play the 4th place team in the Rose Bowl or some non BCSNCG game, then there's a significant opportunity for a split title, resulting from the AP Poll.

I can't stress this enough: a split title is the worst case scenario for the BCS. The worst case scenario isn't the current one, where a host of teams have reasonable arguments to play in a game but the process has selected one - in fact that's the precise raison d'etre for the BCS, to make a choice out of reasonably similar teams. No, the worst case scenario is if the selections take place, and the BCS gets it wrong.

Let's use a hypothetical. Assume Ohio State and LSU play in the BCS NCG and the two combine for 8 turnovers in a 13-10 joke of a game that neither team plays well in. A few days beforehand, say USC and Oklahoma played in the Rose Bowl and USC absolutely annihilated Oklahoma 57-7. Most reasonable people would think that the BCS certainly got it wrong - and there's an almost definite chance that USC would be awarded at least one poll's title. This was the case in 2003. If the system gets the choice wrong (and that's the only job the system has to do), it calls into question everything.

The BCS knows this. And that's why it is completely in their interest to dilute the other BCS bowls. If the 3rd best team is playing the 4th best team, it's too much of a showcase for those teams - and a great result by either of them calls into question whether the BCS got the right selection for the BCS NCG. But if the 3rd best team is playing the 11th best team, well, that's not as much of a showcase for the 3rd best team. Even a big victory might not be enough to raise the suggestion that the BCS NCG did not include the right teams.

The goal is not to have 5 good matchups. The goal is to have 1 good matchup - and the other 4 can very well be sacrificed in order to keep that 1 good matchup. That's why the BCS NCG keeps moving later and later into January. Separate this game from the others. Eliminate the suspicion that the BCS NCG is just a game like all the others. Set up a system that works in a way so that the remaining good teams do not play each other. Use the "promotion of traditional bowl matchups" as a method to prevent actually good games.

Don't think the weaker BCS bowl matchups are unintentional.

 

[RJ Esq]

BCS Match-Ups Bring Out A Gag Reflex

by corn blight Mon Dec 03, 2007 at 09:18:47 AM EDT

Thanks to the BCS, we get what I think are a fairly lousy set of match-ups for the (so-called) biggest games of the season. I'm normally a guy who believes that the BCS system works okay and don't favor a playoff. This season is one which could change my mind.
With no great deal of analysis, these are my initial impressions of what the BCS has delivered us this season.
BCS National Title Game- LSU versus Ohio State
LSU was the team that most people had anointed early in the season as the year's best. While having two losses, both were in triple overtime. Add to that LSU's 21st-ranked strength of schedule (SOS ranking from Sagarin).
Ohio State's SOS is 60th. Their non-conference schedule contained Youngstown State, Akron, Washington, and Kent. Not awe-inspiring by any means, which is why no one but people from Columbus, Ohio wanted to see them make this game. Still, Ohio State managed to beat nearly everyone on their schedule.
Bo Pelini is a factor in this game. If he coaches for LSU, then there's no mystery. If he doesn't, can someone else take over the defense well enough to win a title for the Tigers? I don't think it'll make much difference. I expect LSU to beat the pants off Ohio State, and then we can spend years pounding the Big 10 into the ground where they belong.
Rose Bowl - USC versus Illinois
The Rose Bowl had to have their traditional Big 10/Pac 10 match up and this is what we get. Illinois first trip to the Rose since 1983. I've never understood the Big 10's love for the Rose Bowl. Travel to California, and get destroyed by a California team on their home turf. The Big 10 sets itself up to go 0-2 in big games because they just can't let go of a lost tradition.
Fiesta Bowl - Oklahoma versus West Virginia
Oklahoma took care of Mizzou much easier than I expected in the Big 12 championship. Missouri didn't help matters, shooting themselves in the foot but that was largely due to to the Sooner's defensive line.
It's an interesting match-up, but you expect more of the same in this game. Oklahoma's defense smothers West Virginia's offense and then pounding them into submission. I'd consider Oklahoma one of the best two teams in the nation. It's too bad we don't get to see them against LSU. That's the game I'd love to see.
Orange Bowl - Virginia Tech versus Kansas
Kansas' SOS is 88th, Va Tech's is 36th. Most people knock Kansas due to their weak schedule and rightfully so. Kansas will be elated to be in this bowl game, so much so that they'll stammer around for the first quarter being in awe of how great a season they've had.
I can see Kansas' defense handling the Hokies offense, but not the other way around. I like this match up, but I doubt the rest of the nation does. Expect the Hokies to be a heavy favorite.
Sugar Bowl - Hawaii versus Georgia
Hawaii's SOS? 98. Very explosive, but Georgia is a darned good team. At first look, Georgia should wipe the field with Hawaii. We'll get to rehash Boise State's defeat of Oklahoma in last season's Orange Bowl about a thousand times before this game is played, but Hawaii may be too one dimensional to win this game.
Bowl games are all about emotion and it may be Hawaii's best asset. They'll play the underdog, the guys who have to prove themselves. If Georgia gets caught up thinking too much about how they should have been in the national title game, Hawaii can catch them. It's a no-win situation for Georgia. I'll be crying myself to sleep thinking about how horrible it is for them.
<hr> Notice how I'm trying to talk myself into believing that these will be good games.
Missouri's only losses came against Oklahoma, who makes it into a BCS game. Two of their wins come against Kansas and Illiniois, both of whom make it into the BCS. You could argue that Mizzou deserves a big game more than Kansas based on the Jayhawk's horrible schedule and that Mizzou beat them on the field. It's too bad that the BCS couldn't take three Big 12 teams instead of two Big 10 teams but I'm showing my bias, aren't I?
Arizona State gets screwed too because of the Rose Bowl committee. Instead, they'll go into the Holiday bowl against Texas and probably lose it, spending too much time feeling sorry for themselves instead of playing football. That's my hope - I have no interest in seeing coach whore Dennis Erickson succeed.
Bottom line? Choke and gag. Like I said earlier, a season like this makes me wish for a playoff. Unfortunately, that ain't ever going to happen. University presidents are too content with the present system. You don't think all those Big 10 presidents want to go to Pasadena every year and take the wife, kids, cousins, and friends and have the whole thing paid for by their university? It ain't about tradition. It's about a nice warm free vacation.

 

[RJ Esq]

CURIOUS INDEX, 12/3/07

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</td> <td width="528"> Bumper crops! On the heels of the extremely absurd setup of the extremely absurd final countdown to the extremely absurd conclusion of the college football season, what better time could you find to stop by the BCS’s website, an ode to propaganda with headlines like these:
• The BCS Works
• Ex-Ga. Tech QB sees folly of playoffs
• All the BCS needs is some adjustments
• Q&A: Chances are still stacked against playoff
It’s just what you’ll need to get into the key of bullshit this morning, especially if you’re a Georgia or Hawaii fan.
The long list of people Sir Sweatervest needs to thank includes Steve Spurrier: if you’ll recall from deep within the early Cretaceous period of this season, South Carolina beat Georgia 16-12, giving the Bulldogs an early loss and setting up the Buckeyes’ return to the title game. What’s still got us pouring shots at 9 in the morning is the fact that this entire controversy hinges on a certain eight minute span in the Illinois/Ohio State game and an upset of the Buckeyes engineered by [NAME REDACTED], along with contributions from Jim Harbaugh, the Kentucky defense, and Blake Mitchell.
With Miles staying at LSU, something it only took him an entire press conference and an interview with Tracy Wolfson to say, Michigan now has…Jim Grobe fever, motherfuckers! He’s just one possibility, of course, but he’s an amusing one especially when he’s got Tom Dienhart typing things like “it’ll be hard to get him out of Wake Forest.” Very much ungood yah things not happy good for Michigan right now yes yes.
Yarr. Mike Leach in UCLA would be the best thing imaginable: Leach, a large media presence, the Pac-10, and public faceoffs with apparent Breathatarian, Humanitarian, and all-around freak Pete Carroll. Life, open the chutes to the silos of crazy and let them pour forth, because Mike Leach needs to hang out with Viggo Mortensen and Charlie Kaufman to make the cycle complete. He just does.

Lloyd Carr will coach his final game in the Capitol One Bowl versus Florida. This game will not come down to a double reverse heave thrown by a backup cornerback. It will not. It will not. It will not.
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[RJ Esq]

Hawaii's Sugar Bowl Bid Is a Joke

Posted Dec 3rd 2007 8:00AM by Adam Rank
Filed under: WAC, BCS, Bowl Games, Hawaii Football

Hawaii is in the Sugar Bowl. The freaking Sugar Bowl. This has to be some sort of sick, perverse joke, right? Any astute observer of college football knows this can't be real. Like Ashton Kutcher is going to tell us today that we've all been Punk'd.

Hawaii should not be playing in the Sugar Bowl. They should be playing in a bowl where they belong.

The BCS Championship Game.

That's right, Hawaii deserves to be in the BCS Championship Game and it's a joke that they are not playing for the title.
Part of the charm of college football is that the regular season matters. Or at least the regular season used to matter. Now it has become more political than a Senate judiciary debate. Coaches are practicing filibusters as opposed to, you know, actually going out and winning games. Two-Loss Miles is better at deceiving the media than he is at drawing up an actual game plan to beat some of the mediocre teams in the SEC. There was a time when college football teams were judged by their wins, not how they could spin a conference loss. But Two-Loss Miles has become the master of that.

He opened the season by bracing the media for LSU's impending losses. Noting that his team was going to choke in the regular season because the Pac-10 was soft. Two-Loss Miles took shots at the Pac-10, building a straw-man defense to mask his inevitable losses to two of the dregs of the SEC.

But hey, it worked. The media seems intimidated by Two-Loss Miles, with nobody willing to stand up to him.

And don't think I'm overlooking you, Ohio State. Normally, your inclusion to any bowl would signal a blowout of epic proportions. Thankfully, LSU doesn't play much defense and Two-Loss Miles' nincompoopery – and the fact that he comes from Michigan – shows that he should be ready to choke this game away for you. Be honest, nobody is going to confuse Two-Loss Miles with Bill Walsh. For that reason, Ohio State, you have a chance but you have tripped over your own sweater vest, too.

LSU and Ohio State have both taken turns as the front-runner in the polls, and you failed. At home. Against mediocre teams.

All Hawaii has done is win all of their games. No campaigning. No begging. No press conferences. Hawaii has just gone out and won football games.

Weird, I know.

The knock against Hawaii is that they do not play anybody. Or at least that's the myth. The truth is that nobody wants to go over and play Hawaii. That's hard to fault the Warriors. Go play them if you have a problem with their schedule. But LSU probably can't get out of that commitment to play Bayou Banjo Tech. If you aren't willing to play the team, you can't complain about their schedule.

And while Hawaii was running the table, LSU was losing to mediocre teams like Arkansas who fired its coach after the season. LSU played most of its games at home. It played one tough road game this season, at Kentucky and they lost.

Does anybody else feel like they have taken crazy pills when they hear LSU's justification? Like Two-Loss Miles has balls of steel for even suggesting that his team deserved to play for the national title.

The truth is, the SEC doesn't play anybody of note. The conference has perpetuated this myth of invincibility by refusing to play anybody of note in the non-conference schedule, then living off the legend of being a tough conference. But the truth says otherwise when the SEC venture outside the South, because they get beaten badly. Kind of like the Confederacy.

Arkansas tried to stay with USC in recent years and were humiliated. The seventh place team in the Pac-10, Cal, spanked the SEC Eastern Conference Champs, Tennessee. Alabama lost to Louisiana-Monroe. Some superiority. But who did LSU beat? Oh that's right, LSU scheduled one of those nobodies from Hawaii's schedule, Louisiana Tech.

The Tigers did beat Virginia Tech, but as Lil' Hater on The Hater Nation noted, "Half of the Virginia Tech team was still under suspicion of mass murder." (What, too soon?)

And really, why should they have to play anybody? If the media is going to buy into that bull (expletive), there is no need to play anybody tough. Two-Loss Miles can just take the time to prepare the spin cycle when <strike>Nick Saban's</strike> his team loses.

The truth is, Hawaii deserves to play for the national championship and LSU really has no argument. Sure, you could reason that LSU is the better team, but this isn't about that. Underachieving teams don't deserve to be rewarded for losing. It's that simple.

Besides, if this was about putting the best teams into the title game, USC would take LSU's spot.

No, Hawaii was screwed. But instead of complaining and campaigning -- which is what Two-Loss Miles would have done -- Hawaii is going to be the bigger men here and just be happy for the opportunity to compete. Hopefully they can expose the SEC for what they really are. But it looks like they already have.

 

[RJ Esq]

<table><tbody><tr><td colspan="3" class="storytitle"> Ranking All 32 Bowl Games </td> </tr> <tr> <td class="primaryimage" valign="top">

Kansas QB Todd Reesing
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</td> <td valign="top"> <table bgcolor="#f5f5f5" border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="1" width="60%"> <tbody><tr valign="top"> <td nowrap="nowrap" valign="middle">By Pete Fiutak
CollegeFootballNews.com
Posted Dec 3, 2007
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From the must-see to the potential duds, Pete Fiutak ranks and does a quick analysis, rundown and prediction of all 32 bowl games including Todd Reesing's Kansas vs. Virginia Tech in the Orange Bowl.
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[SIZE=-1]By [SIZE=-1] Pete Fiutak[/SIZE][/SIZE]
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Which bowls are the ones to see and which ones can be missed? With so many to watch, here are all the bowls ranked from the must-see to the ones you might be able to skip if you need to do some holiday shopping. These rankings are based on potential fun as well as importance.

Serious Dog Potential ... hang with the family, but keep the TV on
You'll watch, but you won't go out of your way. These matchups just aren't compelling and/or could be blowouts. Worse yet, they could be boring.[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][/FONT][FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-1]32. New Mexico Bowl
New Mexico vs. Nevada Dec. 22
New Mexico is fine, but nothing special after limping down the stretch with two losses in its final four games. It can play a little bit of defense and was strong at home going 5-1, but this isn't the most exciting team around unless the passing game is efficient. Nevada's got a strong offense with a good up-and-coming quarterback in Colin Kaepernick, but it doesn't play defense. This could turn out to be entertaining for the die-hard fans, but there's no compelling storyline for the casual one.
[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2] Stars of the show: 1) Nevada QB Colin Kaepernick, 2) New Mexico WR Marcus Smith, 3) Nevada RB Luke Lippencott
The knee jerk, off-the-cuff, initial prediction: [/SIZE][/FONT] [/SIZE][/FONT][SIZE=-1]New Mexico 31 ... Nevada 23
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31.Meineke Car Care Bowl
Wake Forest vs. Connecticut Dec. 29
This is an even matchup between two teams that don't get any respect, but Connecticut isn't exactly a thrill-ride to watch. The defense can be stifling, but it it's not forcing turnovers, and if the running game isn't working, this might not be pretty. Wake Forest proved its 2006 ACC championship season wasn't a fluke with a nice 8-4 season, but it doesn't come up with much in the way of offense. It'll be a bit of a defensive battle with the team that wins the turnover battle getting the win.
[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2] Stars of the show: 1) Wake Forest PK Sam Swank, 2) Connecticut LB Danny Lansanah, 3) Wake Forest CB Alphonso Smith
The knee jerk, off-the-cuff, initial prediction: [/SIZE][/FONT] [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif] Wake Forest 23 ... Connecticut 14[/FONT]30. PapaJohn’s.com Bowl
Cincinnati vs. Southern Miss Dec. 22
Is Jeff Bower's final game going to get you to watch? If you're asking who he is, the answer is no. USM runs the ball, plays defense, and moves on, and while it's not always the most aesthetically pleasing brand of football, it's usually effective. No offense Golden Eagles, but Cincinnati deserves a bigger game than this. If the Bearcats don't come in overconfident, it should win in a walk.
[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2] Stars of the show: 1) Cincinnati QB Ben Mauk, 2) Southern Miss RB Damion Fletcher, 3) Cincinnati DE Anthony Hoke
The knee jerk, off-the-cuff, initial prediction: [/SIZE][/FONT] [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif] Cincinnati 34 ... Southern Miss 13[/FONT]

29. Pioneer Las Vegas Bowl
BYU vs. UCLA Dec. 22
Didn't we already do this? UCLA won the first meeting in L.A. 27-17, but the two teams went in separate directions soon after. BYU has won nine straight while the battered and banged up Bruins limped their way through the second half of the year getting skill player after skill player picked off. UCLA hasn't exactly overachieved in recent bowl games, while BYU should close out the year with a nice feather in the Mountain West's cap.
[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2] Stars of the show: 1) BYU RB Harvey Unga, 2) UCLA DE Bruce Davis, 3) BYU DE Jan Jorgensen
The knee jerk, off-the-cuff, initial prediction: [/SIZE][/FONT] [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif] BYU 23 ... UCLA 17[/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-1] 28. Brut Sun Bowl
South Florida vs. Oregon Dec. 31
Back in September, this could've been considered a possible BCS matchup. Oregon has lost four straight bowl games and is on a three-game losing streak since QB Dennis Dixon went down. A decent showing against Oregon State aside, the offense is one-dimensional and mediocre after rocking and rolling through the first nine games. South Florida's defense will be cranked up to close out its year on a high note, and if it's on, this could quickly turn into an ugly blowout.
[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2] Stars of the show: 1) South Florida DE George Selvie, 2) Oregon RB Jonathan Stewart, 3) Oregon DE Nick Reed
The knee jerk, off-the-cuff, initial prediction: [/SIZE][/FONT] [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif] South Florida 34 ... Oregon 17[/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT] [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-1] 27. International Bowl
Rutgers vs. Ball State Jan. 5
Oh sure, you're not all that fired up about a MAC team taking on Rutgers, but Ball State has a high-octane offense and a fun quarterback in Nate Davis. If Rutgers underachieves, like it did for most of the season, the MAC could have a stunner of a bowl win to get fired up about. Don't expect a whole bunch of defense from the Cardinals, but if the Rutgers pass defense plays up to its capabilities, this will be over by halftime.
[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2] Stars of the show: 1) Rutgers RB Ray Rice, 2) Ball State QB Nate Davis, 3) Rutgers DE Jamaal Westerman
The knee jerk, off-the-cuff, initial prediction: [/SIZE][/FONT] [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif] Rutgers 4[/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT][SIZE=-1]0 ... Ball State 17[/SIZE][FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-1]26. Humanitarian Bowl
Georgia Tech vs. Fresno StateDec. 31
Congratulations, your wish has finally come true. Yes, you've been waiting five years for the rematch of the 2002 Silicon Valley Bowl when Fresno State shocked the Yellow Jackets 30-21. Georgia Tech is headless with Chad Gailey having his key to the executive washroom taken away, but this is a good team with a great defense. There's enough talent here to have won the ACC title, but it didn't happen. Fresno State is always looking to prove itself against someone with a name, so it'll bring its A game. If Georgia Tech wants to show up, it'll win. If.
[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2] Stars of the show: 1) Georgia Tech LB Philip Wheeler, 2) Georgia Tech RB Tashard Choice, 3) Fresno State TE Bear Pascoe.
The knee jerk, off-the-cuff, initial prediction: [/SIZE][/FONT] [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif] Georgia Tech 20 ... Fresno State 10[/FONT]

25. Texas Bowl
Houston vs. TCUDec. 28
It might not have the sexy name value, but this is all Texas from the matchup to the bowl name, and it could be a nice war for the alumni to e-mail each other about. TCU has been a tremendous disappointment with a lousy 7-5 season, but it won three of it final four games and brings one of the nation's best defenses. Houston, if it gets rolling, is as much fun to watch as any team in the early bowl games. If you want to get ahead of the NFL scouting curve, here's your chance to scope out the lightning fast Cougar RB Anthony Alridge and TCU DE Chase Ortiz, who'll be two of the top 50 players taken in next year's draft.
[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2] Stars of the show: 1) Houston RB Anthony Alridge, 2) TCU DE Chase Ortiz, 3) Houston CB Donnie Avery
The knee jerk, off-the-cuff, initial prediction: [/SIZE][/FONT] [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif] TCU 27 ... Houston 23[/FONT] [/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif] [/FONT][FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-1]Bowl Games. Nothing more, nothing less. You're a college football fan. You'll watch, you'll eat, you'll move on.

24. GMAC Bowl
Tulsa vs. Bowling Green Jan. 6
You probably can't name any players on either of the teams, but you might not have more fun watching a January bowl game. It's not going to be good football, neither team can play defense, but there will be lots and lots of home runs in a certain shootout between two great quarterbacks. Bowling Green comes in on a four-game winning streak, while Tulsa lost the Conference USA title game to UCF. The Falcons don't have a Kevin Smith, but they should be able to move the ball without a problem to keep up with the nation's No. 1 offense.
[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2] Stars of the show: 1) Tulsa QB Paul Smith, 2) Bowling Green QB Tyler Sheehan, 3) Tulsa LB Chris Chamberlain
The knee jerk, off-the-cuff, initial prediction: [/SIZE][/FONT] [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif] TCU 27 ... Houston 23[/FONT]23.Sheraton Hawaii Bowl
East Carolina vs. Boise State Dec. 23
This might set the record for the fewest fans to ever be at a bowl game. Boise State has a strong enough defense to keep the inconsistent East Carolina offense in check, while the Pirate defense is lousy enough to get blasted if the Broncos aren't mentally on the beach playing in the waves. Losing to Georgia in the Sugar Bowl is one thing, but the WAC can't afford one of its bright lights to lose to a mediocre Conference USA team in a bowl.
[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2] Stars of the show: 1) Boise State RB Ian Johnson, 2) East Carolina RB Chris Johnson, 3) Boise State OT Ryan Clady
The knee jerk, off-the-cuff, initial prediction: [/SIZE][/FONT] [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif] Boise State 48 ... East Carolina 30[/FONT]22. San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl
Utah vs. Navy Dec. 20
The Navy offense is always worth the price of admission, and it always seems to show up and shine in bowl games. Utah closed out its season on fire, with only a heartbreaking last-second loss to BYU ruining a big second half run. Utah's defense is good enough to stuff the Midshipmen, but stopping the option when it's rolling at full speed is far different than it looks on film. Air Force beat Utah early in the year, so watch out for this to be a down-to-the-wire battle.
[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2] Stars of the show: 1) Utah QB Brian Johnson, 2) Navy RB Reggie Campbell, 3) Navy QB Kaipo-Noa Kaheaku-Enhada
The knee jerk, off-the-cuff, initial prediction: [/SIZE][/FONT] [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif] Navy 38 ... Utah 34[/FONT]

21. Emerald Bowl
Maryland vs. Oregon State Dec. 28
How did Oregon State end up in the Emerald Bowl? After winning six of their final seven games, the Beavers turned into the third best team in the Pac 10, and might have been better than Arizona State by the end of the year, and now they have to play an average Maryland team that got a 13th game by the skin of its teeth. If the Beaver defense shows up and plays like it's capable of, this won't be worth hanging around for. But if Maryland steps up and gets all its great athletes rolling on both sides of the ball, the ACC could have a nice win to brag about. This is a more intriguing game than it probably appears.
[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2] Stars of the show: 1) Oregon State RB Yvenson Bernard, 2) Maryland LB Erin Henderson, 3) Oregon State LB Derrick Doggett
The knee jerk, off-the-cuff, initial prediction: [/SIZE][/FONT] [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif] Oregon State 30 ... Maryland 13[/FONT]

20. Petro Sun Independence Bowl Colorado vs. Alabama Dec. 30
This will likely be a really strong matchup in about two years. The coaches are terrific, the teams are in rebuilding mode, and a win is desperately needed by each.considering the Buffs have lost three of their last four bowls and Alabama closed out the year with a four-game losing streak.These two are evenly average, so while it might not be scintallating, it should be close.
[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2] Stars of the show: 1) Colorado LB Jordon Dizon, 2) Alabama S Rashad Johnson, 3) Colorado CB Terrence Wheatley
The knee jerk, off-the-cuff, initial prediction: [/SIZE][/FONT] [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif] Alabama 20 ... Colorado 17[/FONT]19. Gaylord Hotels Music City Bowl
Florida State vs. Kentucky Dec. 31
For all of Florida State's problems in recent years, it usually plays well in bowl games. It doesn't always win, and has been in an overall deep funk since losing to Oklahoma in the 2000 national championship, but it battles well when it gets time to prepare. The question is whether or not Kentucky is fired up for its second straight Music City Bowl. This wasn't the same team over the second half of the year that it was early on, but it should put some points on the board.
[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2] Stars of the show: 1) Kentucky QB Andre Woodson, 2) Florida State LB Geno Hayes, 3) Kentucky LB Wesley Woodyard
The knee jerk, off-the-cuff, initial prediction: [/SIZE][/FONT] [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif] Florida State 34 ... Kentucky 30[/FONT]18. AutoZone Liberty Bowl
UCF vs. Mississippi State Dec. 29
Admit it. You wanted to finally get a chance to see UCF's Kevin Smith, but you missed the Conference USA championship game because you were out shopping with the family. With 2,448 rushing yards and 29 touchdowns, he's a superstar player who's flying under the radar. He ran well against Texas, was held in check by South Florida, and now gets a chance to make a big final statement with a chance to break the single season D-I record, held by Barry Sanders, if he gets 181 yards. Mississippi State will be pumped up to be playing in a bowl game and will be sure to bring it maximum effort. Two motivated teams equals a good bowl game.
[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2] Stars of the show: 1) UCF RB Kevin Smith, 2) Mississippi State CB Derek Pegues, 3) UCF DE Leger Douzable
The knee jerk, off-the-cuff, initial prediction: [/SIZE][/FONT] [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif] UCF 20 ... Mississippi State 17[/FONT]17. Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl
Air Force vs. California Dec. 31
Talk about your intrigue, Cal went from a possible No. 1 team in America to the freakin' Armed Forced Bowl after losing six of its final seven games including a shocker against Stanford. This could turn out to be the biggest clunker in the Jeff Tedford era if all the parts don't start clicking against an Air Force team that was as fun to watch as anyone. This Falcons are creative, can play a little defense, and run very, very well. This could be the start of something special for the Troy Calhoun era with a chance at the program's first ten-win season since 1998.
[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2] Stars of the show: 1) Air Force RB Chad Hall, 2) California RB Justin Forsett, 3) California WR DeSean Jackson
The knee jerk, off-the-cuff, initial prediction: [/SIZE][/FONT] [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif] California 38 ... Air Force 30[/FONT]16. R&L Carriers New Orleans Bowl
Florida Atlantic vs. Memphis Dec. 21 What?! Florida Atlantic vs. Memphis? The New Orleans Bowl? Yeah, like you're going to cancel your holiday party for this one. Actually, it's a nice bowl to ease you into the rest of the season thanks to two key elements: 1) Motivation. This is Florida Atlantic's first bowl game, and 2) offense. Memphis likes to bomb away with a passing attack that averages 308 yards per game, while Florida Atlantic bombs away for 286 yards per game. Neither team plays much defense so there will be plenty of points, solid efforts, and a surprising amount of fun.
[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2] Stars of the show: 1) Memphis QB Marin Hankins, 2) Florida Atlantic QB Rusty Smith, 3) Florida Atlantic CB Tavious Polo
The knee jerk, off-the-cuff, initial prediction: [/SIZE][/FONT] [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif] Memphis 45 ... Florida Atlantic 38[/FONT]15.Motor City Bowl
Purdue vs. Central Michigan Dec. 26 Keeping with the theme that offense makes for strong mid-level bowl games, the Central Michigan attack is worth the price of admission for QB Dan LeFevour alone. The defense is also worth watching if only to see just how many points Purdue can hang on the board. The Chippewas played great in the MAC title win over Miami, but gave up 583 yards in the first meeting between these two, a 45-22 Boilermaker win. Rematches might not be fun for a bowl game, but the two teams will combine for almost 1,000 yards.
[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2] Stars of the show: 1) Central Michigan QB Dan LeFevour, 2) Purdue WR Dorien Bryant, 3) Purdue QB Curtis Painter
The knee jerk, off-the-cuff, initial prediction: [/SIZE][/FONT] [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif] Purdue 52 ... Central Michigan 31[/FONT]14. Alamo Bowl
Penn State vs. Texas A&M Dec. 29 The names are big, but the matchup might not be as strong as you'd think. Texas A&M has lost its last game of the year, whether against Texas or in a bowl, in ten of the last 11 years, including a 1999 Alamo Bowl loss to the Nittany Lions and a 45-10 embarrassment to Cal in last year's Holiday Bowl. However, Aggie fans aren't going to have Dennis Franchione to kick around anymore, with Gary Darnell taking over until Mike Sherman can get his feet wet. This is the 500th game in the glorious coaching career of Joe Paterno, and considering the way the team collapsed in the regular-season ending loss to Michigan State, it's an important one.
[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2] Stars of the show: 1) Penn State LB Dan Connor, 2) Penn State LB Sean Lee, 3) Texas A&M QB Stephen McGee
The knee jerk, off-the-cuff, initial prediction: [/SIZE][/FONT] [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif] Penn State 27 .... Texas A&M 13[/FONT]Great matchups. Don't miss ... you'll be a better person for watching. These aren't guaranteed to be classics, but they should be worth your four hours.

13. Gator Bowl
Virginia vs. Texas Tech Jan. 1
It's Texas Tech in a bowl game. That's all you need. It pulled out a 44-41 win over Minnesota in a classic of an Insight Bowl last season, and has managed to win four of its last five bowl games with its high-powered offense. On the flip side is Virginia, who got through the ACC season by winning almost every close game by the skin of its teeth before losing to Virginia Tech late. It's the solid defense vs. the killer offense in what should be a close New Year's Day fight.
[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2] Stars of the show: 1) Texas Tech WR Michael Crabtree, 2) Virginia DE Chris Long, 3) Texas Tech QB Graham Harrell
The knee jerk, off-the-cuff, initial prediction: [/SIZE][/FONT] [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif] Texas Tech 31... Virginia 27[/FONT] 12. Champs Sports Bowl Boston College vs. Michigan State Dec. 28 Talk about getting hosed, Boston College always seems to get the rock in the ACC bag of treats even though it's won seven straight bowl games. Despite playing in the ACC title game, do the Eagles get a shot at a New Year's Day game? Nope. It gets a fired up Michigan State team that'll get off the bus running the ball and getting into the backfield. BC has the nation's No. 1 run defense, but it'll be put to the test from the start by Javon Ringer and the tough Spartan ground game. This could be the game that launches the Mark Dantonio era to another level in East Lansing, while it'll be the final game in the great career of BC's Matt Ryan.
[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2] Stars of the show: 1) Boston College QB Matt Ryan, 2) Michigan State RB Javon Ringer, 3) Michigan State DE Jonal Saint-Dic
The knee jerk, off-the-cuff, initial prediction: [/SIZE][/FONT] [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif] Boston College 24 ... Michigan State 20[/FONT]11. Insight Bowl
Indiana vs. Oklahoma State Dec. 31 Off to its first bowl game since losing the 1993 Independence Bowl, Indiana fulfills the promise made by the late Terry Hoeppner that is was possible to win in Bloomington. The offense is just explosive enough to hang a huge number on a porous Oklahoma State defense, but there will be plenty of big play from both sides. The two defenses are ultra-aggressive, but they also get burned. The Cowboys are ninth in the nation in total offense, while IU can put up points in bunches when it gets on a roll.
[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2] Stars of the show: 1) Indiana WR James Hardy, 2) Oklahoma State RB Dantrell Savage, 3) Indiana QB Kellen Lewis
The knee jerk, off-the-cuff, initial prediction: [/SIZE][/FONT] [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif] Indiana 38 ... Oklahoma State 27[/FONT]10. Pacific Life Holiday Bowl
Texas vs. Arizona State Dec. 27 Arizona State might be a bit down after getting shoved aside by the BCS, but it'll have its hands full against a Texas team looking to close out the mediocre season on a high note. A win for the Sun Devils would put a great bow on a fantastic first season for Dennis Erickson, and would do wonders going into 2008, while a loss for Texas would send up panic flares that the program is slipping. After losing to Texas A&M, Mack Brown could use something positive. The Longhorns have won five of their last six bowl games.
[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2] Stars of the show: 1) Texas RB Jamaal Charles, 2) Arizona State QB Rudy Carpenter, 3) Texas QB Colt McCoy
The knee jerk, off-the-cuff, initial prediction: [/SIZE][/FONT] [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif] Texas 24 ... Arizona State 17[/FONT]9. Rose Bowl presented by Citi
USC vs. Illinois Jan. 1 It's the Big Ten vs. the Pac 10 in the Rose Bowl. You know this is required viewing after a night out. Even if this is yet another confirmation of the greatness of USC under Pete Carroll, it'll still be interesting. Will USC be able to rise up and make a statement that it deserved to be more in the national title discussion at the end of the year, or will Ron Zook and his exciting young Illini pull off a shocker and bring the Big Ten its first Rose Bowl win since 2000? Illinois can be breathtaking if it gets its ground game going, but USC's defense is full of future NFL playmakers ready to stuff the run.
[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2] Stars of the show: 1) Illinois RB Rashard Mendenhall, 2) USC DT Sedrick Ellis, 3) Illinois LB J Leman
The knee jerk, off-the-cuff, initial prediction: [/SIZE][/FONT] [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif] USC 31 ... Illinois 10[/FONT]8. Chick-fil-A Bowl
Clemson vs. Auburn Dec. 31 [/SIZE][/FONT] [SIZE=-1]Always a battle of teams that just missed out on big things, the Chick-fil-A Bowl should have plenty of speed, athleticism and defense. Auburn hasn't exactly been a killer offensively, but the defense led the SEC in points allowed and was eighth in the nation overall. Clemson is sixth in the country in defense but has a balanced offense that can score from anywhere on the field. Tommy Bowden could use a big bowl win over a big-name team after losing to Kentucky last year, while Tommy Tuberville is shooting for his fifth bowl win in six years.[/SIZE][FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-1] [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2] Stars of the show: 1) Auburn DE Quentin Groves, 2) Clemson QB Cullen Harper, 3) Clemson RB James Davis
The knee jerk, off-the-cuff, initial prediction: [/SIZE][/FONT] [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif] Auburn 24 ... Clemson 20[/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT]
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[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-1] Can't miss no matter what. Cancel all other plans and send the family off to the mall.
These games promise to be fun

7. AT&T Cotton Bowl
Missouri vs. Arkansas Jan. 1 If Missouri's ticked off over being screwed by the BCS process, it can prove it deserved the Orange Bowl with a win over Darren McFadden and the Hog team that's always worth watching for its running game. The Tigers have a strong run defense, but everything goes through Chase Daniel and a thrilling offense that moves the ball at will on anyone not named Oklahoma. One of the closer bowl games over the last few years, this should be a shootout with plenty of home runs and lots of wow moments from the superstars.
[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2] Stars of the show: 1) Arkansas RB Darren McFadden, 2) Missouri QB Chase Daniel, 3) Missouri WR Jeremy Maclin
The knee jerk, off-the-cuff, initial prediction: [/SIZE][/FONT] [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif] Missouri 38 ... Arkansas 35[/FONT]6. Allstate Sugar Bowl
Hawaii vs. Georgia Jan. 1 [/SIZE][/FONT] [SIZE=-1]Chances are you haven't seen Hawaii and Colt Brennan, and if you have, you watched through half-open eyelids. It's the novelty act vs. the hottest team in the country, with the run 'n' shoot getting its shot at a Bulldog secondary that hasn't seen too many up-tempo, scary-good passing games. This could be the make-or-break moment for Brennan with the pro scouts. Everyone knows he's accurate and has a nice arm, but if he can throw on Georgia like it's Utah State, then No. 15 will make himself a lot of money. Next year is supposed to be Georgia's big season, and a dominant win would assure a preseason top five spot.[/SIZE][FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-1] [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2] Stars of the show: 1) Hawaii QB Colt Brennan, 2) Georgia RB Knowshon Moreno, 3) Hawaii WR Davone Bess
The knee jerk, off-the-cuff, initial prediction: [/SIZE][/FONT] [SIZE=-1]Georgia 34 ... Hawaii 2[/SIZE][/SIZE][/FONT][SIZE=-1]7[/SIZE][FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-1]5. FedEx Orange Bowl
Virginia Tech vs. Kansas Jan. 3 [/SIZE][/FONT] [SIZE=-1]Kansas got a gift from the BCS gods by getting the Orange Bowl nod over Missouri. Will the team show that it deserves to high honor and play like it did throughout the first 11 games of the year, and in the second half against the Tigers, or will it prove to be a fraud that fattened up on the nation's 109th toughest schedule? Virginia Tech has had a fabulous season after a rough start and a tragic offseason, and now it can close out with the first 12-win season in the Frank Beamer era. Tech has lost three of its last four bowl games, including a strange clunker to Clemson in last year's Chick-fil-A Bowl. There has to be an upset in the mix somewhere, and this might be it with Kansas coming up with an efficient offensive performance to stun the tremendous Hokie D.[/SIZE][FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-1] [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2] Stars of the show: 1) Kansas QB Todd Reesing, 2) Virginia Tech LB Vince Hall, 3) Virginia Tech LB Xavier Adibi
The knee jerk, off-the-cuff, initial prediction: [/SIZE][/FONT] [SIZE=-1]Kansas 27 ... Virginia Tech 23[/SIZE]4. Capital One Bowl
Michigan vs. Florida Jan. 1 Chad Henne, Mike Hart and Jake Long all came back for their senior seasons to change their legacy after going 0-3 in bowls and winless against Ohio State. Make it an 0-for-career against the Buckeyes, but a win over the Gators would be a tremendous send-off for Lloyd Carr, who was much-maligned for being unable to win the big game over the last several years. With the stars hurting down the stretch, this wasn't a Michigan team at it's full capacity. It will be on New Year's Day, but there aren't any better coaches with time to prepare than Urban Meyer. 2007 was a rebuilding season for Florida, and a dominant win would all but cement a preseason top three spot for 2008. [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2] Stars of the show: 1) Florida QB Tim Tebow, 2) Michigan RB Mike Hart, 3) Michigan QB Chad Henne
The knee jerk, off-the-cuff, initial prediction: [/SIZE][/FONT] [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif] Florida 28 ... Michigan 23[/FONT]3. Outback Bowl
Wisconsin vs. Tennessee Jan. 1 [/SIZE][/FONT] [SIZE=-1]Within every bowl season is one big non-BCS level matchup that serves as the litmus test for the fan bases of two power conferences. This is that game. Wisconsin beat Arkansas in last year's Capital One Bowl, while Tennessee lost to Penn State in the Outback Bowl, but the Big Ten triumphs were glossed over in the debating between the two leagues. This is either the third or fourth best SEC team vs. the third or fourth best Big Ten team in what should be a hard-hitting thriller. Wisconsin was crushed by injuries over the final few games of the year and should get several key parts back.[/SIZE][FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-1] [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2] Stars of the show: 1) Wisconsin RB P.J. Hill, 2) Tennessee QB Erik Ainge, 3) Tennessee LB Jerod Mayo
The knee jerk, off-the-cuff, initial prediction: [/SIZE][/FONT] [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif] Wisconsin 24 ... Tennessee 20[/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT]​

[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][/FONT][FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-1]2. Tostitos Fiesta Bowl
West Virginia vs. Oklahoma Jan. 2 [/SIZE][/FONT] [SIZE=-1]Call it the National Title Lite. Each team came within a choke against an inferior squad from playing for the big crystal ball, and each team will be looking to make a big statement in the likely battle for the final No. 2 spot in the polls. There's still a question mark about West Virginia after the loss to Pitt and with the lack of a really, really good win. The Sugar Bowl victory over Georgia two seasons ago is now well in the rear-view mirror, and it's time for another statement win to cement the program as one of the elite of the elite. Meanwhile, Oklahoma might just be the best team in the country, but it has to show some consistency away from home. If it's even half as good as last year's Fiesta Bowl, it'll be the showdown of the bowl season.[/SIZE][FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-1] [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2] Stars of the show: 1) West Virginia QB Pat White, 2) Oklahoma LB Curtis Lofton, 3) Oklahoma QB Sam Bradford
The knee jerk, off-the-cuff, initial prediction: [/SIZE][/FONT] [SIZE=-1]Oklahoma 38 ... West Virginia 14[/SIZE][/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][/FONT][FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-1]1. Allstate BCS National Championship
Ohio State vs. LSU Jan. 7 [/SIZE][/FONT] [SIZE=-1]You knew there was eventually going to be a clash of heavyweights for the national title once all the dust settled. Ohio State has a lot to prove after last year's debacle in the loss to Florida. With the 2003 win over Miami for the national title a distant memory, this is the game the Buckeyes need to show the world that the Big Ten isn't five steps slower than the SEC, and to show that the Big Ten deserves to have a team in the title game two years in a row. However, the Buckeyes could play their best game of the year and still get their doors blown off it everyone is healthy again for LSU. This is a phenomenally talented team that should finally be able to overcome injuries and the Les Miles-to-Michigan distraction to win the program's second national title in five years.[/SIZE][FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-1] [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2] Stars of the show: 1) LSU DT Glenn Dorsey, 2) Ohio State LB James Laurinaitis, 3) Ohio State RB Chris Wells
The knee jerk, off-the-cuff, initial prediction: [/SIZE][/FONT] [SIZE=-1]LSU 27 ... Ohio State 17[/SIZE][/SIZE][/FONT]
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[RJ Esq]

<table><tbody><tr><td colspan="3" class="storytitle"> 5 Thoughts - The Les Miles To Michigan Saga </td> </tr> <tr> <td class="primaryimage" valign="top">

LSU head coach Les Miles
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CollegeFootballNews.com
Posted Dec 3, 2007
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From the Les Miles soap opera on Saturday to Colt Brennan to the cream rising to the crop, and more, here are Five Thoughts from the past weekend.
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Five Thoughts: Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4
Week 5 | Week 6 | Week 7 | Week 8 | Week 9 | Week 10
Week 11 | Week 12 | Week 13
Where there's Maize and Blue smoke ...[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2]By Pete Fiutak [/SIZE][/FONT]
1. To clean up one of my favorite sayings, don’t whiz on my back and tell me it’s raining.

My man Richie Cirminiello got inside word on the Friday before the SEC Championship that the Tiger players knew that Les Miles was going to take the Michigan job and that Bo Pelini was off to Nebraska. This was a big-time inside tip, but doing our due diligence, we held off on the story (trust me when I say almost any other outlet would’ve gone with the info we had) until we could get absolute, 100% confirmation. By that time, other media outlets had heard the same thing, and from different sources. Then on Saturday morning, ESPN and Kirk Herbstreit went public with it causing LSU to react swiftly with great vengeance and furious anger.

Again, this wasn’t exactly exclusive insider knowledge to Herbstreit. So even after the cat was totally out of the bag that Miles was at least thinking about Michigan, what does Miles do? He has the temerity, the unmitigated gall, to hold a press conference just before the SEC Championship game and feign righteous indignation by basically suggesting that the story was made up. The LSU official web site had in the SEC Championship game story that Miles had “debunked an ESPN rumor,” like the story came from a Tennessee fan on a message board. Just because someone yells and acts all mad, that doesn’t mean what he’s saying is necessarily true.

What possible good would it do ESPN, or any reputable media outlet, to lie about something like this? It’s not like GameDay is at the forefront of investigative journalism, and it’s not like it’s known for being anything more than a very, very good Up With College Football show, so if Herbstreit is going to report on something that big, it’s going to be relatively rock-solid. Remember, ESPN could've gotten it right, and then the story changed because of it.

Again, we didn't have the story cold and didn't go with it, but all indications were that Miles was at least mentally in Ann Arbor and thinking about the opportunity, LSU stepped up to squash the situation before the biggest game of the year, and the marriage in Baton Rouge apparently remains intact … for now.

Now this gets really, really interesting because Miles is stuck. He can't go take his dream job and he has to be Mr. LSU, even though he's a worse actor than Keanu Reeves when it comes to talk about the Michigan gig. Now that his team actually won the SEC title and is playing for the national title, he can't go after the job, Michigan needs to move on, and LSU fans are left wondering if they really have an LSU guy coaching their beloved team.

Here's the deal. If Miles actually signs the long term contract with LSU, then the situation is squashed and life goes on. But if Miles ends up taking the Michigan job, he has to go to each and every LSU player and fan and personally apologize for yanking their chain. Let's wait until Michigan actually hires someone else before closing the book on this.




And at the end of the day, it's going to be LSU 1, USC 2 ...
By Richard Cirminiello

3. Nothing made sense throughout the 2007 regular season. It was wire-to-wire mayhem marked by unimaginable surprises and a complete upheaval of all things logical. It was a world gone mad. Or maybe not. Yes, there were signature upsets delivered by the likes of Appalachian State, Stanford, and Pittsburgh, and nobody anticipated a two-loss team in the title game, but were things really as whacky as you’ve been led to believe? Consider, for instance, the six winners of the major conferences. West Virginia will be representing the Big East. Most everyone had the ‘eers winning the league in the preseason. Virginia Tech in the ACC. No surprise. Ohio State in the Big Ten. Unexpected, sure, but it’s the Buckeyes, so it’s not as if Minnesota took the crown. Oklahoma won the Big 12 for the sixth time this decade. USC took the Pac-10 for the sixth year in-a-row. The SEC winner was LSU, the overwhelming favorite before the season began. Meeting for the national championship in New Orleans will be the Tigers and the Buckeyes, a pair of traditional powers that have been in this position before in the 21^st century.

An odd year? You bet. However, one good look at the power brokers heading into the bowl season reveals that things haven’t turned out nearly as bizarre as you might think.

If you actually stayed up past midnight, you would've liked him more[SIZE=-1]By [/SIZE] [SIZE=-1] John Harris[/SIZE]

3. Colt Brennan’s circuitous college career ended early this morning, well, at least from a regular season standpoint. It’s been a “Long, Strange Trip” – a trip that has taken the once cocky youngster from the brink of self-destruction to being the leader of the only undefeated team in the nation. Three years ago, all anyone knew about Brennan was that he was trying to resurrect (or salvage) his career at the University of Hawaii in relative anonymity. Today? Different story.
He missed two games this season and still threw for 4,174 yards and 38 touchdowns on the season. Over the last two seasons against five BCS conference teams and Boise State (twice), Brennan has averaged 438 yards passing and four touchdowns. Yes, that’s over two years, but it dispels the bogus lack of competition argument, or at least quells that argument. He actually played better against Boise State and Washington than he did all season long.
A good number of Heisman voters held on their votes over the weekend to see what Chase Daniel and/or Pat White were going to do with the stage to themselves. And, it’s a good thing they did because Brennan was able to make one last push. All he did in the biggest game in Hawaii history was complete 84% of his 50 passes for 442 yards and five touchdowns, leading the Warriors back from a 21-point deficit to a 35-28 win.
I’m not saying that he’s going to win it, but Heisman voters, just take a look. A long hard look before you pencil in another name.
Uh, what was that thing in Kansas City for? By Matthew Zemek
[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif]
4[/FONT]. If the BCS insists on limiting conferences to two BCS bowl appearances, why is it that the third-best teams in two conferences--and two weaker conferences at that--are in the BCS?

Kansas was the third-best team in the Big 12 (perhaps fourth-best if you ask the Texas Longhorns), and Illinois was clearly the No. 3 team in the mediocre Big Ten. Second-place Arizona State and second-place Missouri have to be fuming right now.

Good ol' college football. Teams bust their chops for an elusive shot at the big time, but politics denies the Sun Devils and Tigers at the expense of clearly inferior teams. Great. (It's time for a break before the bowl rush.)
The gods of college football are about to squish us like a bug[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2]By Pete Fiutak [/FONT][/SIZE]
5. If this wasn't the most fun college football season ever, it was at least number two, going down to the final last moments deep into the night when Hawaii picked off Washington to save it dream year. Every moment of this season from day one was a treat that got better and better as the year goes on, and now it's payback time.

I really, really hope I'm wrong, but don't we all know exactly what's going to happen when USC plays Illinois in the Rose Bowl? Oklahoma vs. West Virginia should be great, but if the Sooner defense plays like it did against Missouri in the Big 12 title game, that could be a dog with fleas. If Georgia shows up and brings its A game against Hawaii, the Sugar Bowl might be brutal. Virginia Tech is playing the wrong Big 12 team in the Orange Bowl, and it's not like there are a slew of must-see bowl matchups up and down the line. I'm college football boy and I love watching everyone, but I'm having a hard time doing my Dick Vitale-like sell job on the early bowls.

With 32 of them, the odds are good that we'll get at least a few classics to cancel out the duds. I'm just hoping the games don't kill the buzz of such a great year.


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[RJ Esq]

In need of revision

An unappealing BCS slate should prompt change

Posted: Monday December 3, 2007 12:49AM; Updated: Monday December 3, 2007 11:58AM

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Coordinator Mike Slive and the BCS are faced with a Nos. 1 and 2 matchup that in the eyes of many, may not determine who's the nation's best.
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</td><td class="cnnietitle" width="99%">RELATED</td></tr><tr><td class="cnniecontent" colspan="2">• REACT: Did the BCS get it right this time?
• Complete 2007-08 bowl schedule

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</td></tr></tbody></table>Just to be clear, the BCS was not responsible for the unprecedented rash of medioc ... er, parity, around the country this season.
The BCS did not choke away a national title berth against a four-touchdown underdog the last night of the season. The BCS did not lose to Oklahoma, rise all the way up to No. 1 -- then lose to the Sooners again.
The BCS did not lose on its own home field to Stanford. Or Arkansas. Or South Carolina. Or Illinois.
The BCS did not lose 48-7 in its showcase non-conference game.
The BCS did not win its first 11 games against a bunch of nobodies, rise to No. 2 in the country, then lose in its first and only marquee game.
The BCS did not soar to No. 2 in the standings, then implode upon losing its starting quarterback. The BCS did not give up 473 yards to Texas Tech -- then blame it on losing its starting quarterback.
It's not the BCS's fault that week after week this season, one highly ranked team after another "couldn't grab the brass ring," as SEC commissioner and BCS coordinator Mike Slive put it Sunday night.
But after all the excitement and intrigue caused by all those upsets the past 14 weeks, we've reached what should be the climactic point of the season, only to be treated to Ohio State-LSU and ... Virginia Tech-Kansas? USC-Illinois? Oklahoma-West Virginia?
For that, the BCS will and should be held responsible. And in fact, this year's utterly unappealing postseason may finally bring some much-needed change to the way the sport decides its champion.
I've never been a playoff guy. I've always bought into the notion that the sport's regular season -- the most gripping regular season in all of sports -- is a de facto playoff. But that notion was based on a long history of regular seasons in which at least two teams distinguished themselves as being truly great over 11 or 12 games.
That did not happen this season. Not in the slightest.
The two teams that will meet in New Orleans on Jan. 7 both lost their second-to-last regular season games. In any other year, that would be an absolute deal breaker. This year, 11-1 Ohio State and 11-2 LSU both endured those seemingly fatal wounds and still wound up the consensus Nos. 1 and 2 teams on Sunday.
Whether you agree or disagree, the reality is there was nothing egregious or indisputable about the voters' decisions. As Buckeyes coach Jim Tressel said Sunday night, "We tell our players, 'You better win all your games if you want a chance to play in the BCS championship game.'" As soon as you lose that first game -- nevertheless a second one -- you take your destiny out of your own hands. No detached party should be shedding a tear today for Oklahoma or Georgia or Virginia Tech or USC, because all wound up in the position they did by their own volition.
That being said, there's absolutely no way the voters can be certain they successfully selected the two best teams. How could they be, when there's so little to distinguish the No. 1 team (Ohio State) from the No. 7 team (USC)?
In light of such ambiguity, wouldn't it be great to see not only the Tigers and Buckeyes square off against each other, but also, say, Georgia and Oklahoma? Virginia Tech and USC?

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James Laurinaitis and the Buckeyes are back in the title game despite losing one of their last two games, typically a deal breaker in any national championship resume.
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For a detailed look at the history and politics that helped shape the BCS, order Stewart Mandel's Bowls, Polls and Tattered Souls: Tackling the Chaos and Controversy that Reign Over College Football.

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</td></tr></tbody></table>"We'd love to still be playing against the best teams in the country," said Trojans coach Pete Carroll, whose team will instead face the 13th-best team in the country. "We'd love to see a playoff system that would allow us to do that. I can't imagine very many coaches that wouldn't."
Carroll said this, however, on a teleconference to promote the Rose Bowl, where just moments before and moments after, he espoused, "I love the tradition of the bowls. We love the Rose Bowl. ... We love playing a team from the Big Ten."
Well which is it, Pete? Are you more concerned with upholding tradition or more accurately determining the national champion?
"They're two totally different discussions," he said.
Actually ... no they're not.
Carroll's seemingly contradictory stances pretty much sum up the entire state of college football in 2007: We want our cake, but we want to eat it, too. We want to know who the No. 1 team is, but we also want to have a Rose Bowl, a Fiesta Bowl, a Sugar Bowl and an Orange Bowl.
For the past nine years, the BCS has done as commendable a job as possible accommodating both goals. Sure, there have been hiccups -- Florida State getting in the title game ahead of a Miami team it lost to (2000); Nebraska (2001) and Oklahoma ('03) finishing in the top two despite lopsided season-ending losses; Auburn finishing 12-0 with nowhere to go ('04) -- but for the most part, the teams and the public got the results they wanted, while the bowls continued to prosper.
If by chance you don't believe that, the BCS folks have the TV ratings and the ticket numbers to prove it.
"What we've done is increased the popularity of college football in every nook and cranny," said Slive. "This system provides us with an ability to couple a national championship game and provide other very compelling games."
Not this year.
One could rightfully argue that the BCS, for the first time, accomplished neither goal this season. Whichever team, Ohio State or LSU, wins the Jan. 7 title game, there will be a significant faction of the public that questions its legitimacy. If the Buckeyes win, it will be because the voters handed them an opponent that peaked in September. If the Tigers win, it will be because they were playing a team many never believed was any good to begin with.
Meanwhile, you'd be hard-pressed to find too many fans who would describe this year's other BCS matchups as "compelling."
Virginia Tech, No. 3 in the final BCS standings, is playing Kansas, the No. 2 team in the Big 12 North. No. 4 Oklahoma's reward for beating the No. 1 team in the country Saturday night (Missouri) is to face a West Virginia team that lost to 4-7 Pittsburgh the same night. No. 5 Georgia went from an anticipated title date with Ohio State in New Orleans to the undercard a week earlier against Hawaii. And do you think USC's Carroll, whose teams have made mincemeat out of their previous Big Ten Rose Bowl foes, is losing much sleep over those Illinois game tapes?
But you can't blame the bowls for most of those choices. In nearly every case, they were simply following selection protocol -- Pac-10 champ to the Rose Bowl, Big 12 champ to the Fiesta Bowl, ACC champ to the Orange Bowl, etc., etc.
There's only one realistic way to make the non-championship bowl games more meaningful: the proposed "plus-one" game. Listening to Slive's comments lately, it's starting to sound more and more imminent.
In answering a question Sunday night about whether or not the system "worked" in resolving this year's unusually cluttered championship race, Slive -- unsolicited -- pontificated about the potential impact of this season on future postseasons.
"In this year, being such a different kind of year -- with so many [different] teams in the No. 1 or 2 slot, so many teams with one or two losses -- I don't think that it's so much the system as it is the year," he said.. "What I find interesting about this year, as I think about [the] question, is, is this year an anomaly, or is this year a precursor to what we might see in the future?
"Trying to analyze that question leads us to the discussion we have had on numerous occasions about whether this [BCS] format needs an adjustment. It's a segue into looking at [a plus-one]. When we talked the other day, I asked the question, 'Is one and two enough?' It may be that this season, and this result may give us a hint towards the answer to that question."
Proponents of a an all-out playoff (it's not going to happen, so let's not bother going there) would presumably point out, correctly, that a plus-one -- which is essentially a four-team playoff -- would not go far enough in resolving this year's controversy, one that involved as many as seven legitimate candidates
But as I said earlier, it's hard to have sympathy for the "snubbed" teams when those teams have two losses. At least a plus-one would add two more teams -- in this case, No. 3 Virginia Tech and No. 4 Oklahoma -- into the mix.
Imagine, if you will, the potential bowl lineup if such a format existed. Right now, rather than lamenting the colossal letdown of this upcoming postseason, we'd be salivating over, say, an Ohio State-Oklahoma Fiesta Bowl and an LSU-Virginia Tech rematch in the Sugar Bowl -- with the added excitement of knowing two of those teams would meet each other the following week.
"We'd be encouraged by [a plus-one]," Fiesta Bowl CEO John Junker told me during an interview last year for Bowls, Polls and Tattered Souls. "We believe there is merit and value to a plus-one after the bowls."
When even the bowls themselves are calling for a change, you know there's something wrong with the system.
But you didn't need Junker to tell you that. You need only look at this year's BCS pairings.

 

[RJ Esq]

Three Make UCLA Short List

Posted Dec 3rd 2007 12:30PM by Scott Olin Schmidt
Filed under: UNC Football, Pac 10, Boise State Football, NCAA FB Coaching, Los Angeles, Texas Tech Football

Spurning the advances of former Bruin Rick Neuheisel, UCLA athletic director Dan Guerrero has narrowed his list of candidates for the football head coaching job to three.

According to both local papers, the next football coach in Westwood will be Boise State's Chris Petersen, Texas Tech's Mike Leach or the NFL Network's Steve Mariucci. Petersen is said to be the favorite, but the notoriously stingy University may opt for Mariucci, as he has no contract that needs to be bought out.

There's only one little problem: Guerrero has yet to dump current head coach Karl Dorrell. In fact, Dorrell is quoted in the University's official press release regarding the Las Vegas Bowl, saying, "UCLA is extremely happy to be playing in the Pioneer Las Vegas Bowl." I guess he has a point, because the way this season went, Dorrell should be happy to be in a bowl at all!

Given his 5-1 record against Dorrell, it should come as little surprise that USC coach Pete Carroll is coming across as Karl's greatest fan, imploring fans and the University to, "Give him a friggin' break."

 

[RJ Esq]

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[RJ Esq]

Full CFB lines out at Bookmaker.

Let's see if they're up at Greek soon.

 

[RJ Esq]

Breaking News: Karl Canned!

Devon Pollard, TrojanWire

With a record of 6-6 this 2007 season and 35-27 after five seasons, UCLA has just fired football head-coach Karl Dorrell.

 

[RJ Esq]

Boiled Sports Season Wrap-up Round Table: Tim Speaks

We posed eachother some questions and are all going to weigh in on our opinion of Purdue's football season...Here's your first entry, Tim:



1. What was your biggest surprise of the season (positive)?
Notre Dame sucks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. With a big, big crunch and a big, big bite. (sang to the tune of Honeycomb's jingle)

2. What was your biggest disappointment of the season?
Finishing the season 7-5 after a 5-0 start. Pathetic.

3. What are you excited about for the '08 season?
Right now? Not very much to be honest.

4. What are you least looking forward to in the '08 season?
Another positive start against marshmallows and then a complete collapse once the "real" teams show up.

5. What effect, if any, will a bowl have on Purdue's football program?
A terrible bowl will not have any impact on the program. It's good to go to a bowl game, but the Dominos McDonalds Boeing Everyone Goes To A Bowl Game Bowl won't do anything for the program.

6. How and when will Joe Tiller's career end at Purdue?
Tiller will retire next year after taking over the all time wins lead.

7. Who frustrated you the most this season?
This is a close one. I'm going to vote for Joe Tiller though. The play calling was downright ridiculous at times. In a close second though are the Big Ten referees. They were as atrocious this year as the play calling.

8. What team and/or player opponent of Purdue this season was least impressive to you?
Iowa. They sucked! Specifically their quarterback Christensen. He was awful. Really really bad.

9. Despite all the grousing we do, is Purdue football on the right track (If not, what would get the program back on track)?
No. It's not on the right track. The spirit is gone. The fight is gone. If one bad thing happens in a game, the team gives up. That all starts with the coach. The coach needs to be replaced and someone with passion and fire needs to come in and take over. Thats the only hope.

10. Looking at next year's schedule, what's your early thought on critical games?
My early thoughts on critical games? Purdue will lose every one. I see them losing to Oregon, Notre Dame, Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan, and Iowa. Basically, any team that has a shot at being good, they will lose to.

11. Does it ever get old making fun of Fat Charlie the Manatee?
No. The slurping of him by the national media nearly makes it a requirement.

12. Will Purdue win a football national championship in our lifetime?
No. I think it's much more likely that they'll fade back to obscurity rather than rise to national prominence.

13. What is more likely for the Boilers and why: a football championship or a basketball championship?
A basketball championship is much more likely for Purdue. They don't need to be the best or second best team in the nation in order to get invited to the tournament, and once they're in, anything can happen.

14. After Tiller retires (or is fired), would you rather get a coach that is a better recruiter or is a better game day coach?
I'd rather get a coach that is a better recruiter. The game day coaching can always be done by the coordinators anyway.
Talent overcomes a lot of coaching problems and can make mediocre coaches look great.

15. If you had to choose another coach from the Big Ten to coach Purdue, who would you pick?
I'd take Ron Zook. If he can recruit and turn around Illinois from a doormat into a legitimately good team in a few years, I'd like to see what he could do for a mediocre Purdue team.

 

[RJ Esq]

Vegas Says USC-Oklahoma Are Better

Vegas still hates you. (AP)
Whew. As of last week, you might remember, Vegas (via Las Vegas Sports Consultants) wanted to see a West Virginia-Ohio State national championship game. WVU, obviously, is no longer in that position. But the thing I love about Vegas is, every piece of information will be fairly and intently examined to come up with the most accurate ratings possible, because that's Vegas's job. Ohio State is not owed an automatic move up the rankings, not if we've received additional information about the teams below the Buckeyes. And thus, your real national championship game is:
Southern Cal and Oklahoma. They're tied for first place in Vegas's final regular season rankings. Only percentage points ahead of No. 3 LSU and No. 4 Ohio State, but ahead they are. The BCS thus got it completely and totally wrong. This is the second year in a row the Vegas Top Two has differed from the BCS Top Two, although in fairness, last year Vegas wanted to exclude Florida in favor of Michigan. The BCS computers have Oklahoma and Southern Cal tied for sixth, and ninth, respectively. As for Hawaii, the Rainbow Whatevers failed to cover against a bad Washington team and remained mired at 19th.
Ah, whatever. I'm weary of BCS talk. Let's instead run a comparison of how Vegas and the AP voters saw the following 10 teams in the preseason, since all 10 of these teams finished in the Top 12 of Vegas, the AP and the BCS. I figure if I can just throw ungodly amounts of numbers and initials on the screen, it'll mean something eventually.
Team;AP Preseason/Vegas Preseason
Southern Cal 1/1
Oklahoma 8/5
LSU 2/2
Ohio State 11/12
Florida 6/6
West Virginia 3/8
Virginia Tech 9/13
Missouri 26/23
Georgia 13/27
Kansas NR/NR
Nope, still means nothing to me. The only dramatic thing here is that the AP did better on Georgia than Vegas did. Some of the preseason teams Vegas was highest on vis a vis the AP? How about Nebraska, Cal, UCLA, South Carolina, Georgia Tech, Miami, Arizona State and Oklahoma State. Not so great.
The BCS rankings Vegas believes to be most out of line: Tennessee (13 spots too high), South Florida (10 spots too low), Hawaii (nine spots too high), Michigan (at least eight spots too low), Florida (seven spots too low), BYU (seven spots too low).
Vegas's final rankings, with BCS ranking, after the jump.
1t. Southern Cal (7)
1t. Oklahoma (4)
3. LSU (2)
4. Ohio State (1)
5. Florida (12)
6. West Virginia (9)
7. Virginia Tech (3)
8. Missouri (6)
9. Georgia (5)
10. Brigham Young (17)
11t. Kansas (8)
11t. South Florida (21)
13t. Clemson (15)
13t. Boston College (14)
15. Arizona State (11)
16. Texas (19)
17. Illinois (13)
18. Michigan (NR)
19. Hawaii (10)
20t. Boise State (24)
20t. Texas Tech (NR)
22. Wisconsin (18)
23t. Arkansas (NR)
23t. California (NR)
23t. Arizona (NR)
26. Cincinnati (22)
27. Auburn (23)
28. Oregon State (NR)
29. Tennessee (16)
30. Kentucky (NR)
Not ranked by Vegas: Virginia (20th BCS), Connecticut (25th).

 

[RJ Esq]

UCLA Dumps Dorrell

Posted Dec 3rd 2007 3:35PM by Scott Olin Schmidt
Filed under: UCLA Football, Pac 10, NCAA FB Coaching

Score one for the internets and the folks at DumpDorrell!

Brian Dohn, UCLA beat reporter for the Los Angeles Daily News reported this morning that UCLA athletic director Dan Guerrero has fired Karl Dorrell.

A press conference is scheduled for later this afternoon, but the release is already in the public domain. Guerrero remarks that, "at the end of the day, the focus has to be on results and I felt that a change was in the best interest for the future of our program."

In his official reaction, Dorrell politely thanked Guerrero for the opportunity and adds, "I am proud of what the program accomplished during my five years, especially in the areas of academics, citizenship and recruiting."

Of course, of the BCS gave points for academics, citizenship and recruiting, we'd be seeing Notre Dame versus Stanford in New Orleans.

Although it is not officially decided, Dohn also reports that Dorrell will be allowed to coach one more game as UCLA faces BYU in the Las Vegas Bowl.

After losing to USC in football and Texas in basketball over the weekend, Bruins Nation finally has something to be happy about.

 

[RJ Esq]

Big Ten Bowl Teams: Like Lambs to the Slaughter December 3, 2007

Posted by lloydbraun in SEC Football.
trackback Out of the eight Big Ten teams to accept bowl bids this weekend, three of them have absolutely no chance of winning at all, two of them have a 50-50 chance, and the rest of them are playing in games that nobody will care enough to watch.
Ohio State, Michigan, and Illionois are done for. These are absolutely horrible matchups for each team. All three teams are slower (by far) than their opponents. All three teams are less athletic (by far) than their opponents. Each one of these teams will get demolished with 100% certainty. If you are a fan of one of these three schools, make the trip down to watch your team if you must, but plan some activities other than the game because it is not going to be pretty. LSU will eat THE Ohio State University alive. The Gators will probably make Tennessee’s thrashing of Michigan in the 2001 Citrus Bowl look like a nailbiter. And Illinois should just focus on having a nice Christmas.
Tennessee SHOULD beat Wisconsin, but it is far less certain. The Vols are terrible in the post season so this one is a tossup. Texas A&M and Penn State? I’d be lying if I tried to pretend like I know anything about either team.
Point is that this bowl season is going to be another black eye for the Big Ten.

 

[RJ Esq]

BCS TITLE GAME TO FEATURE LOCAL MAN, EIGHT LIVE DINGOS

This year’s BCS game will feature local man Ted Warburton versus eight live dingoes, according to SEC commisioner Mike Slive in a press conference last night announcing the participants for this year’s BCS title game.

“At no point in the history of the BCS have we had more interest in the BCS, and I can safely and confidently say that at no point in the history of the game have we put together a more compelling matchup than Mr. Warburton versus this fine team of mad, crazed dingoes.”
Warburton, a copywriter for a large local utility company, seemed as surprised as the rest of the country that the college football season would come down to this. That it would involve him at all was doubly surprising for the the 34 year-old University of North Carolina graduate.
“I mean, it should have come down to a one-loss Kansas team, or even a two-loss Georgia team. There’s no rule that you have to win your conference championship, right? Mark Richt said as much in his press conference yesterday. Or even, if you’re so fascinated with the difference between no, one, and two losses, well…you could have had Hawaii in there, man.”
“Plus, I don’t know how putting me on a field with eight dingoes proves anything. I don’t have a wife and kids, but I do have a cat, and she’ll need to be fed if anything happens to me. The money’s nice, but it’s a lot of risk to take. Plus, it’s not really a football game, is it?”
Big East commish and BCS tycoon Mike Tranghese downplayed the clamor of complaints and criticisms surrounding the choice of Warburton versus dingo for the game.
“What we put on is a heckuva show, people, and that’s what we’re going to give the viewing public who tune in to this game. It’s been a topsy-turvy year in college football, and what better way to end it than with a good, old-fashioned classic: a two-loss Ted Warburton versus an undefeated pack of eight highly athletic dingoes.”
The matchup, per ESPN writer Ivan Maisel, does have its upside.
“Dingoes are opportunistic carnivores, and unafraid of most of what you’ll throw at them, defensively speaking. They try to limit their mistakes and work the numbers, most of the time, and that’s precisely what they’ll do against Ted here. He’ll have his hands full…of dingo fur, mostly.”
Warburton’s two losses this year were widely regarded by AP voters as “quality losses:” one, losing a girlfriend to his “lack of commitment,” and breaking his leg in a cycling accident. While there were others in the pack with fewer losses, Warburton’s strong performance throughout the year tilted the scales in his favor.
“Really, he was hampered by injury and a tough foe, a girlfriend wanting to settle down,” said Sporting News writer Matt Hayes. “Those two have taken down plenty of great teams in season. But when you look at his resume this year, there’s a lot of strengths: scoring not twice, but three times with that hot divorcee in the Bahamas, mowing his yard four weeks in a row, and flossing regularly throughout the year, including the hectic holidays.”
“In a year of almost-rans, he’s the closest we’ve got to a championship contender.”
The dingoes, for their part, are excited.
“rrrttggghhhRROOOAOAAAHHHHRRRR snrragggrrlglh ROOAOOOROOOOAAARRRGH YOUUUWWWL Ssnrarrgglhhhf, GrrrgghhhgHghhhgllll groarrggar gnsicnorhf grrrrswgghhHHHhh,” they said following the press conference, a noise widely interpreted to mean somehing between “we’re honored to be facing such a great opponent in a great venue,” or “BLOOD! BLOOD! BLOOD BLOOD BLOOD BLOOD!!!”

 

[RJ Esq]

Brown to team: All starting jobs are open

By Suzanne Halliburton | Monday, December 3, 2007, 11:57 AM
Texas coach Mack Brown has told his team that every starting job is on the line as the Longhorns prepare this month for the Holiday Bowl.
“I told the kids today, ‘All jobs are open,’ ” Brown said during a Monday teleconference. “We’re going to grade them every day.”
Brown is taking this stance after the Longhorns’ performance in a 38-30 upset at the hands of Texas A&M, Nov. 23. As a team, Texas did not play well until the Aggies had built a 21-point, second-half lead. The Longhorns had similar inconsistent games against Nebraska and Oklahoma State, but won those.
Brown said he and the coaches have gone back and reviewed every single mistake Texas committed in the A&M loss. They’ll have about three weeks to correct the problems before taking on Arizona State in the Holiday Bowl.

 

[RJ Esq]

Petersen Takes Pass on UCLA Job

Posted Dec 3rd 2007 5:27PM by Scott Olin Schmidt
Filed under: UCLA Football, Pac 10, Boise State Football, NCAA FB Coaching, Los Angeles

Just minutes after UCLA announced that it would have a head coaching vacancy in its football program, its leading candidate turned down the job.

Boise State head coach Chris Petersen, identified this morning by the Los Angeles Times as the Bruins' top pick, told the Idaho Statesman that he is not interested in Karl Dorrell's old job.

Peterson told the paper that he has been contacted by one school--but was not interested--and would not say whether that was in addition to the interest from Westwood.

The difference in cost of living should be enough to make someone like Petersen want to stay in Boise, where a $850,000 salary would be the equivalent of more than $1.5 million in Los Angeles.


Next down Bruin AD Dan Guerrero's list? Texas Tech's Mike Leach or former Oregon coach Steve Mariucci.

Meanwhile, if Karl Dorrell choses not to coach the Las Vegas Bowl, Guerrero says that defensive coordinator--and possible head coach candidate DeWayne Walker--will be at the helm.

 

[RJ Esq]

Adding:

BYU -5'

Gotta get this one before it gets to 6 or 7. UCLA has thrown in the towel and BYU will play well again as MWC champs in front of a largely BYU filled Sam Boyd stadium in Vegas.

I've been to the last 2 games and BYU has covered in both cases for me. Unfortunately, I won't be there this year, but will back the Mormons again in this one against lame duck Dorrell and the Bruins.

 

[RJ Esq]

These Are The Days Of Our Lives

Updates, updates, updates! This is a grand time of year for coach-related rumor mongering and, yes, even the occasional real bit of news.
Clemson Keeps Bowden
Fan 1: How do you know the 2007 season was fucked up?
Fan 2: Appy State over Michigan!
Fan 1: No, jackass.
Fan 2: Stanford over USC?
Fan 1: Bah - no, not that. Dude, there were multiple teams competing with one another for Tommy Bowden’s services.
Charlie Weis Wants You To Judge Him
Next year, that is.
Asked how quickly he can get things righted, Weis responded: “Not fast enough. That’s probably as fair an answer as I can say,” Weis said Monday at a news conference. “I think that the arrow is definitely pointing up. You already know what my goal is every time we play, and every time we play my expectation is to win that game. But we can’t get good enough fast enough as far as I’m concerned.”
I have to agree here: things are looking up. I honestly thought they’d lose to Duke and Stanford.
UCLA Needs To Hire Coach With Swagger
So says a crusty looking old dude at the LA Times, anyway: “Those who lead the teams that get the attention in Los Angeles have a common thread. They are people who conduct their business with a style and a swagger. They either came with name recognition or quickly acquired it here. The style and swagger aren’t always the same, but all have some form of it… So, for at least a couple of weeks, Guerrero has our spotlight. We don’t ask much, just a coach with style, swagger and success.”
If you’re having trouble imagining Pete Carroll reading the LA Times this morning, allow me to assist you…

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<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/lZHMJ3W2jco&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" height="355" width="425"></object></p> Les Miles Still In Play At Michigan
Or wait, no, maybe it’s Ferentz. Wasn’t I talking about Brady Hoke this morning? Am I a candidate for this job?
If you’re having trouble imagining Ohio State fans reading Michigan blogs this morning, allow me to assist you…

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[RJ Esq]

Michigan's Newest Target: Gary Pinkel

Posted Dec 4th 2007 1:37PM by Tom Fornelli
Filed under: Michigan Football, NCAA FB Gossip, Missouri Football, NCAA FB Coaching

I have to tell you, I'm offended. It seems as though the University of Michigan is interested in everybody (Brady Hoke? Really?) as Lloyd Carr's replacement, and I want to know why nobody's called me. You should see me on my Playstation. I've won back to back national titles with Baylor, people. Baylor.

Still, apparently that's not good enough for the head honchos up in Ann Arbor, because my phone sits here silent. Instead they're trying to figure out a way to get Missouri's Gary Pinkel.

MU coach Gary Pinkel now could be coveted by many other schools seeking coaches, including Michigan, the winningest program in college football history.​

So now we can add Pinkel's name to the list of candidates that once included Les Miles, and has had Greg Schiano's name floating around lately as well. Though just because Michigan's interested in Pinkel, it doesn't mean Pinkel is interested in Michigan, yet anyway. When asked about the job, Gary made that much clear.

"I'm not commenting on fiction," Pinkel told the Post-Dispatch, adding, "Nobody's contacted me."​

Notice he never said that if Michigan did contact him, that he wouldn't listen. He'd be stupid not to, and Michigan would be stupid not to call Pinkel.

Over the last few years Pinkel has built a top program at Missouri, and has the team going to it's first New Year's Day bowl since 1970. Still, Pinkel is a loyal guy, so who knows if he'd really leave Missouri. Of course, loyalty is nice, but if Michigan drives a truck load of money up to his front door, Gary could survive without it.

 

[RJ Esq]

Longshore Injured Long Before Cal Collapse

Posted Dec 4th 2007 1:12PM by Scott Olin Schmidt
Filed under: California Football, Pac 10, NCAA FB Injuries

Were it not for all the other wackiness in College Football this season, the collapses of California and Oregon Football would be among this year's major story lines. As both teams were poised to take over the number-one ranking in the country, their quarterbacks suffered injuries which sent their seasons on a downward spiral.

Oregon infamously refused to disclose the status of Dennis Dixon's knee during the bye week between games against Arizona State and Arizona, only to have their national championship hopes dislocated against the Wildcats.

But hiding a quarterback injury wasn't exclusive to the Ducks. California quarterback Nate Longshore played the nearly the whole season with a chipped bone in his ankle--hobbling him ever since the Bears beat the Ducks. Bears coach Jeff Tedford admitted yesterday, "There's a little chip in the back part of it there. I didn't get that it was a broken ankle. But Nate had talked to me about a little chip that was in the back there."

Since Longshore's injury, Cal won only one game out of seven.

But quarterback injuries have defined the Pac Ten season in 2007. Karl Dorrell most likely lost his job because his two quarterbacks--Ben Olson and Pat Cowan--were injured for most of the season, and John David Booty's broken middle finger led him to throw four interceptions in the second half against Stanford, costing the Trojans a bid in the BCS title game.

Perhaps the secret to Arizona State's miraculous turnaround in 2007 was that Rudy Carpenter stayed healthy all year.

 

[RJ Esq]

June Jones is Smokin' the Loco Weed

Posted Dec 4th 2007 12:15PM by Ryan Ferguson
Filed under: Florida Football, MAC, SEC, NCAA FB Gossip, Heisman, NCAA FB Coaching, Hawaii Football
Yeah, Tim Tebow's not all that great... says Hawaii's June Jones:

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Year 2 seems to agree with Jesse Palmer and Jim Donnan:

In the end what we have here is someone seeking to promote his player by denigrating another. We also have an NFL supremacist taking a shot at the spread offense, despite the fact that his own "pro-style" offense hasn't been run in the NFL for over a decade. We also have someone asking for 70+ points to be scored on him come August 30, 2008. Perhaps when Tebow levels his linebackers, June Jones will understand why Tebow is such a special player as a runner. And maybe, just maybe, as he watches Tebow connect with Percy Harvin on a 70 yard touchdown pass he'll realize a year behind the rest of the country that hey, this kid can throw after all.
​

FanHouse reaction: Speechless... simply speechless. And JJ, please, share the wealth. Whatever you're smoking has got to be da bomb.

 

[RJ Esq]

Want a Playoff? Flush the Bowls

Posted Dec 4th 2007 11:21AM by Mark Hasty
Filed under: BCS, Bowl Games, General CFB Insanity

Okay, so nobody's happy with how the BCS bids were handed out. In other breaking news, sun disappears behind western horizon; experts predict it may reappear in the east in 10 to 14 hours.

Far and wide we're all crying out for playoffs. We, the fans, want to take the computers, the tradition, and the politics out of the process. We don't want sportswriters and coaches voting on who's the best. We want to settle it all on the field. Even if the only concession we can get is a "plus-one" game, we want it, and we want it five years ago.

That the BCS has ruined and is ruining college football is beyond dispute. The old, jumbled-up system we had before would have given us better games this season. But we've only been living with the BCS for nine seasons. (I know. It seems like a lot longer than that to me, too.) Even the predecessors of the BCS, the Bowl Alliance and the Bowl Coalition, only date back fifteen years. The BCS was supposed to be the ultimate solution, the plan that would end any and all talk of playoffs in big-time college football.

Yeah. That's not working out so very well.

So why don't we have a playoff? Why isn't there even any serious, credible talk of a playoff? Because college athletic departments are addicted to bowl money, and the BCS brings a lot of cash to the table. Why can't the NCAA do something about this? Because the NCAA is made up of, uh, college athletic departments and that BCS money is like crack to just about all of them.

But where, exactly, does the BCS (and all the other bowl games) find all that cash?

In your pockets. Where did you think it came from?

Sure, it's filtered through a couple layers. TV networks pay huge bucks for the rights to the games because they anticipate huge ratings which translate into being able to sell lots of really expensive advertising. But ultimately it all comes down to us, the fans. In nine seasons the BCS has never put together a slate of games which is so bad that we won't watch it. And that's to say nothing of the other, non-BCS bowls.

So we fans continue our quixotic quest for a playoff, oblivious to the reality that we won't get playoffs until playoffs are more attractive, financially, than the status quo. How do we make it happen? It's pretty easy.

Stop watching bowl games. And for crying out loud, don't go to them. If fans protest the system by refusing to participate in it, then (and only then) will we get the playoffs we want. But it won't happen.

It won't happen because as much as we hate the BCS and the whole gravy-train bowl system, we love our teams more. Give us the prospect of one more game, one more chance to see our heroes take the field and fight, and we'll take it every time. We say we want playoffs, but there will be plenty of Alabama fans in Shreveport, and the Humanitarian Bowl will put up good ratings in Atlanta. (Just two examples chosen at random. Please put down the broadsword with Bear Bryant's hat engraved on the blade. Thank you.)

If only the NCAA would do the right thing ... if only the powers that be would listen to the voice of the fans ... if only somebody could pass a law or something ...

If only we loved the game of college football as much as we loved our teams.

 

[RJ Esq]

CURIOUS INDEX, 12/4/07

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</td> <td width="528"> Show me your scruples… If you weren’t quite convinced that this whole BCS system is a giant, steaming pile of elephant dung, you will be once you get through the coaches ballots. Among my favorties:
**Lllloyd Carr - the 4 L version - voted his Wolverines 21st, a full ten spots ahead of their actual ranking. Oregon, the team Lloyd could not stay within 30 points of at home, is not on his ballot at all.
**Dennis Franchione, apparently not content to fuck one football program in the ass, sent a parting shot to Hawaii, ranking them 22nd. Hal Mumme, seeing the team he wished he had, voted the Rainbow Warriors #1.
**Tommy Bowden threw darts at his ballot. Oklahoma landed in the 10 spot, four behind… Missouri. Mkay.
**The lone moralist in college football? Mack Brown, of course. Every coach except the Longhorns’ voted their team higher than their actual finish. As noted at DC Sports Blog: “The most stark moral offenders are: Lloyd Carr (10 spots difference), Mike Bellotti (8), Chris Petersen (6), Mike Riley (5), Randy Edsall (5), Tommy Bowden (5), Mike Leach (4), Ron Zook (4) and Phillip Fulmer (4). Frank Beamer (3) didn’t quite make this cut, but he was the only coach to vote Virginia Tech No. 2, meaning he tried to put his own team in the title game and no one else did.”
**Howard Schnellenberger? Marching to his own beat. USC is ranked behind… Boise State?
Crazy Requires Charisma Hawaii coach June Jones says Tim Tebow is a “system quarterback” and his own gunslinger Colt Brennan is college football’s best player. (HT: Wiz) Lord knows this blog couldn’t survive without all the feet coaches lodge in their mouths, but I’m a firm believer that if you’re gonna take the plunge into the abyss of absurd quotes, you gotta do so with charisma. Think pirates.
June Jones?

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HU-man. RO-bot.</p> Brian Cook suicide watch: day 13 <strike>Page 6 gossip columnist</strike> Michigan blogger Brian Cook has battled through games of footsy with both Kirk Ferentz and Les Miles. Now… Ball State’s Brady Hoke? MGoBlog suggests this is Hoke putting his own name into the Big Program Job Search channels, but Occam’s Razor suggests a far simpler, more logical explanation: Tressel!
Your uniforms match my penalty flag. Oregon State may have gotten the last laugh, but not without a valiant fight from the officials, who tried oh so hard to keep the Ducks in Saturday’s Civil War. And as Oregon State blogger Building The Dam points out, that may not have been much of a coincidence. Eugene officiating conspiracies: not going away any time soon! You gotta love it.
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[RJ Esq]

This needs its' own post:

Show me your scruples… If you weren’t quite convinced that this whole BCS system is a giant, steaming pile of elephant dung, you will be once you get through the coaches ballots. Among my favorties:
**Lllloyd Carr - the 4 L version - voted his Wolverines 21st, a full ten spots ahead of their actual ranking. Oregon, the team Lloyd could not stay within 30 points of at home, is not on his ballot at all.
**Dennis Franchione, apparently not content to fuck one football program in the ass, sent a parting shot to Hawaii, ranking them 22nd. Hal Mumme, seeing the team he wished he had, voted the Rainbow Warriors #1.
**Tommy Bowden threw darts at his ballot. Oklahoma landed in the 10 spot, four behind… Missouri. Mkay.
**The lone moralist in college football? Mack Brown, of course. Every coach except the Longhorns’ voted their team higher than their actual finish. As noted at DC Sports Blog: “The most stark moral offenders are: Lloyd Carr (10 spots difference), Mike Bellotti (8), Chris Petersen (6), Mike Riley (5), Randy Edsall (5), Tommy Bowden (5), Mike Leach (4), Ron Zook (4) and Phillip Fulmer (4). Frank Beamer (3) didn’t quite make this cut, but he was the only coach to vote Virginia Tech No. 2, meaning he tried to put his own team in the title game and no one else did.”
**Howard Schnellenberger? Marching to his own beat. USC is ranked behind… Boise State?

Seriously! Play with this link to see how coaches actually vote. My god they are dumb and petty.

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/graphics/coaches_fb_poll_2007/flash.htm

 

[RJ Esq]

<table><tbody><tr><td colspan="3" class="storytitle"> Tuesday Question - Did The BCS Get It Right? </td> </tr> <tr> <td class="primaryimage" valign="top">

Ohio State WR Brian Hartline
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</td> <td valign="top"> <table bgcolor="#f5f5f5" border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="1" width="60%"> <tbody><tr valign="top"> <td nowrap="nowrap" valign="middle">By Staff
CollegeFootballNews.com
Posted Dec 4, 2007
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At the end of the day, did the BCS get it right? Four CFNers weigh in.
</td></tr> <tr> <td colspan="3">
<table id="table2" align="right" border="0" cellspacing="4" width="200"> <tbody><tr> <td bgcolor="#ffffcc"> Past TQs
- Who deserves a spot more, OSU or WVU? - What BCS matchups do you want? - LSU, Oregon or Kansas - The leading 5 for the Heisman - Early Pick It: LSU vs. Ohio State - Three BCS sleepers - Midseason Bests - 3 Big Calls for the Second Half - The biggest disappointment - 5 most overrated teams - I was dead/on right/wrong about ... - USC, LSU or Oklahoma?l - Was the App St win good or bad for college football?
- 3 Sleeper Teams
- Predicting the Season - 3 things we're sure of - What to look for on Signing Day
- Bears or Colts? - Early bowl surprises and trends - 3 things to look for from the bowls - Do you want the Alabama job? - What are the 3 best non-BCS bowls? - Who's 2nd in the Heisman race? - Michigan-OSU rematch? - Michigan or Ohio State? - Should Louisville be No. 3? - The nat'l title game will be ... - The best one-loss team - Rule changes to help the flow - The Midseason Stuff - The real top five ranking - The early coach of the year is ...? - These three teams are for real, these three aren't
- After 2 weeks, who's better, who's worse?
- 10 Greatest Quarterbacks of All-Time
- 10 Greatest Defensive Players of All-Time
- 10 Greatest Regular Season Games of All-Time
- 10 Greatest Playmakers of All-Time
- 10 Worst Heisman Winners
- 10 Greatest Bowl Games
- All-Time Offensive Team
- All-Time Defensive Team </td> </tr> </tbody></table> [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2] Pete Fiutak [/SIZE][/FONT]<o>[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2][/FONT]</o> Q: At the end of the day, did the BCS get it right?[/SIZE]
A: Yes for the championship game, not necessarily for the rest.

My sister could pick the two teams for the BCS Championship if there are two unbeaten teams from BCS conferences at the end of the year, but in lieu of a playoff, the BCS is better than the old poll 'n' bowl system. The idea is to compare apples to oranges, and this year, sure, Ohio State vs. LSU is more than fine considering the Buckeyes were No. 1 throughout most of the year and LSU was basically the best team throughout the season and it won the SEC title. If you're the SEC champ, you get the benefit of the doubt.

Oklahoma is just barely the number three team in the mix and has a beef, but it was too inconsistent on the road. If it's a choice between the Big 12 champion or the SEC champ, the nod, right now, has to go to the SEC winner. USC lost to Stanford, next.

As far as the other BCS games, Illinois should be in the Capital One and Missouri should be in instead of Kansas. Since there's still a silly rule in tact when it comes to only two teams from a league being able to get in, KU was the one who should've been out and Arizona State probably deserved to be in.
Richard Cirminiello [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2][/FONT] <o> </o><o> </o> [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2][/SIZE][/FONT] <o> </o><o>[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2][/SIZE][/FONT]</o>Q: At the end of the day, did the BCS get it right?
A: Absolutely no one wants to admit this, but, yeah, based on the rules it’s governed by, the BCS did get the title game right.

To answer this question honestly, you’ve got to be able to divorce yourself from your passionate dislike for the system. Although the system still rots, when the dust settled Sunday morning, Ohio State and LSU were the two most deserving schools to earn a trip to the National Championship game in New Orleans. The task for the BCS was simple, find the best one-loss team, and pit it against the best two-loss team. Nominating the Buckeyes over Kansas was child’s play. The Tigers over the other half-dozen schools with two losses? Not so much. While not clear-cut or easy, LSU was the right choice. Yeah, the loss to Arkansas was hard to digest, but this was a season in which everyone had major flaws. USC lost to Stanford. Georgia got butchered by Tennessee, and didn’t even win its division. Oklahoma had a rotten out of conference schedule. Virginia Tech lost in Baton Rouge by 41 points. LSU, on the other hand, went 6-1 against teams that were ranked when they played, winning the toughest conference in the country. And in a season marked by parity and mediocrity, that should be more than enough to fill the other half of the dance card alongside Ohio State.

John Harris<o>[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2][/SIZE][/FONT]</o> Q: At the end of the day, did the BCS get it right?[/SIZE]
A: This year? The year when Cal went from number two team in the country to the Armed Forces Bowl? When Oregon went from contender to 8-4? When USF and Boston College were once at number two? When national championship contenders LSU and Ohio State have a shorter winning streak than 3-9 Notre Dame (thanks Brad Edwards!). Honestly, what’s been ‘right’ this season? Nada. Zip. Nil. Zilch. No-thing. So, is it possible in a year when anything was, and is, plausible, that the BCS could actually get it right? Absolutely. Every contending team is flawed, some in a major way, so in some sense any two teams could be in this game and it’d make some sort of sense. I’ll put it this way, I don’t have a big argument with anything that resulted from the BCS, other than the fact that the voters saw fit ‘to go vigilante’ on the process and keep a non-championship team out of the final two (Georgia and Kansas). That’s the one beef I have (and a small one at that) - if the voters didn’t want or didn’t think that Georgia was worthy of playing in the national championship game, then don’t put them at four going into the final weekend. Other than that, I’m not losing any sleep over what happened, sans Missouri getting screwed for a bid to the Orange Bowl. But, then again, that has nothing to do with the BCS.<o>
</o>
Matthew Zemek [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2][/SIZE][/FONT] <o> </o><o> </o> <o><o>[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2][/FONT]</o>[/SIZE] Q: At the end of the day, did the BCS get it right?<o></o></o>
A: No, it didn't.

The BCS has "gotten it right" three times in its 10-year existence.

Wanna guess when those three occasions were?

1999? Good answer. Va Tech-Florida State--two and only two unbeaten teams.

2002? Nice going. Ohio State and Miami. Two and only two unbeaten teams.

2005? Great! Texas and USC--two and only two untouched titans.

The other seven times, including this year, have been disastrous. And as I said in other pieces over the past 72 hours, it's worth noting that the three years with "classic" 1 vs. 2 title games have been really good. The six previous BCS title games with at least one dubious participant (if not two) have all stunk.

It's more than a coincidence.

If Ohio State and LSU play a classic, I'll eat crow... for this year (not the past nine years of the hauntingly awful BCS era).

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[RJ Esq]

<table><tbody><tr><td colspan="3" class="storytitle"> Cavalcade of Whimsy - 10 Bowl Storylines </td> </tr> <tr> <td class="primaryimage" valign="top">

UCF RB Kevin Smith
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</td> <td valign="top"> <table bgcolor="#f5f5f5" border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="1" width="60%"> <tbody><tr valign="top"> <td nowrap="nowrap" valign="middle">By Pete Fiutak
CollegeFootballNews.com
Posted Dec 4, 2007
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From the SEC - Big Ten challenge, to the potential upsets to UCF's Kevin Smith shooting for the all-time single season rushing record, there are several big storylines going into the bowl season. These and more from the wild final weekend of the regular season in the latest Cavalcade of Whimsy.
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[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif]Fiu's Cavalcade of Whimsy[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif]
a.k.a. Frank Costanza's Festivus Airing of the Grievances [/FONT] [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2]

By Pete Fiutak
What's your beef? ... E-mail with your thoughts
Past Whimsies [/SIZE][/FONT] 2006 Season | Preseason Part One, Part Two | Week 1
Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6 | Week 7 | Week 8
Week 9 | Week 10 | Week 11, Part 1 | Week 11, Part 2 | Week 12
Week 13
If this column sucks, it’s not my fault … I recently had the number one column in the country. I beat Kansas, beat Illinois, lost to one other column, admittedly one of the best in the country, twice, and had the sixth-highest rated column after last week, but now Kansas and Illinois are in the VIP lounge while I’m sitting out here figuring out why I just tipped the bartender $2 for opening a bottle of beer.

Usually they like to be kissed first … Who feels more victimized after this weekend, Missouri or Pitt WR Oderick Turner. Did Turner once hook up with the wives of the officials doing the Pitt – West Virginia game? He got hit with two phantom holding calls that cost the Panthers big plays that would’ve made the 13-9 final much, much worse. Meanwhile, all Missouri did was finish sixth in the final BCS rankings with wins over Illinois and Kansas only to be left out of the fun.

With that said, it’s not like Missouri missed out on the playoffs. It’s not like it’s being denied a shot at the national title, and it’s not losing a dime since it’ll get the same share of the pot with Kansas making the BCS. The program doesn’t necessarily need the extra exposure after being in the spotlight on two straight everyone’s-watching primetime games. If it’s so ticked off at being left out of the show, then it needs to go out and blast Arkansas by 20 in the Cotton Bowl.
"Two orders of split plea soup to go, please." … Let’s nip this one in the bud right here, right now, so we can dismiss the topic and go on to more useful, important banter. Oklahoma can beat West Virginia 85-3 and USC can trounce Illinois 184-14, but there will still only be one national champion. I don’t care what the AP, CFN or the Opelika-Auburn News says, the winner of the LSU – Ohio State is your national champion for 2007. The only team that could have any beef whatsoever is Hawaii if it beats Georgia in the Sugar. Everyone else, go unbeaten and then you can talk.

Those who don’t learn from the Irish are doomed to end up like them … Is Michigan not going after Les Miles harder because it’s trying to save money? Miles is now an elite, national title-level head college football coach who commands, and deserves, $3+ million a year, but Michigan athletic director Bill Martin might want a coach to take an I-get-to-coach-at-Michigan-yippee discount. Ask Notre Dame how that worked out when it low-balled Urban Meyer.

But he's absolutely, positively not going to take the Miami Dolphins' job ... Les Miles emphatically stated he was going to be the LSU head coach next year. Well, yeah, the national championship is in 2008.

Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto… I’ve been the lead lobbyist in the Computers, Yes! campaign when it comes to the BCS. Not only should the computers count for far more than 1/3rd of the final vote, but they should have more say than the humans … if there’s a correct formula in place. Well, no more. I’ve tried. I’ve tried in vain to complain about how the humans are the kink in the chain because they simply aren’t informed enough to put together an educated ballot, but after the final computer rankings came out, the system is due for another oil change.

The six computers combined had Virginia Tech ranked No. 1 (which is actually not that bad a call based on who the Hokies beat and where), LSU No. 2, Ohio State No. 3. No real problems there. Arizona State is eighth and USC ninth despite the Trojans beating the Sun Devils in Tempe. USC lost to Stanford, so at the end of the day, that’s probably kosher. The real problem is with the Big 12 with Kansas ahead of Missouri who’s ahead of Oklahoma.

If the computer formulas dictate that Missouri deserves to be ranked ahead of Oklahoma, considering the Sooners lost to mediocre Colorado and Texas Tech teams that the Tigers beat, I’m fine with that. However, you lose me when it comes to Kansas.

The Jayhawks played the nation’s 109^th best schedule while Missouri played the 26^th toughest slate. The two losses to OU ended up counting more than the one Kansas head-to-head loss than Missouri, and that’s hard to argue away. There isn’t one single reasonable reason to have KU ahead of Mizzou, but the Billingsley and Sagarin formulas spat it out that way. Now I’m asking; why should these two computer formulas be trusted from here on after such a colossal gaffe?

“’Tis but a scratch” … One of the key things to watch for this bowl season will be the injured teams getting time to heal up. Last year, John David Booty was banged up and was a sitting duck in the loss to UCLA, and then he got healthy and danced around the pocket like Baryshnikov in the win over Michigan. Michigan will get Mike Hart and Chad Henne back at almost full strength. Wisconsin was decimated on both sides of the ball at the end of the year, and now it’ll be healthy again, led by the return of P.J. Hill. UCLA will finally have time to get its skill players together. And, of course, there’s LSU, who should finally be the team that ripped through the first part of the year before all the injuries struck.
And take an extra shot for every time Dan Fouts’ voice had a little lilt whenever Oregon did something decent. … Looking to spice up your holiday season? Forget that key party idea you were originally going to work with and find a tape of the Oregon State – Oregon game to play The Civil War drinking game. Every time Dan Fouts or Tim Brant say the words civil or war, drink. It was one of the few times when the call of a great game became a distraction.

“Pork bellies, which is used to make bacon, which you might find in a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich.” … From Mike Patrick in the Pitt – West Virginia game when the Panthers were going for a field goal: “This would put the Panthers up by six. This would mean West Virginia needs a touchdown.”

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[/SIZE][/FONT]“I'm not being defensive! You're the one who's being defensive! Why is always the other person who's being defensive? Have you ever asked yourself that? Why don't you ask yourself that?” … As Les Miles so openly displayed with his little pre-SEC Championship performance, coaches are awful, awful at PR and even worse when it comes to lobbying (even though his move actually worked).

It’s now become one of my favorite holiday traditions. After the regular season, I put a log on the fire, curl up on the coach with a warm blanket and hot cup of tea, and watch the coaches try to sell the world on why their undeserving teams belong in the national title game. Of course, their position depends on what’s actually happening to them this year.

My favorite performance this season was from Georgia head coach Mark Richt, who knew he didn’t have a leg to stand on since his team couldn’t even win a tie-breaker to play for its own conference title, but he had to appease the fan base by trying to fight the good fight. He had a smirky look on his face that basically said, “I know you’re not buying this, but I’ll throw it at the wall and see if it sticks.”

Suddenly, it’s the equivalent of being the hottest chick on The View … That USC-is-hot theory doesn’t fly now that the conference has turned into a quivering bowl of mush. First of all, kudos to the poll voters for not forgetting that USC lost to Stanford. In his lobbying efforts, Pete Carroll should’ve just come out and said, “We lost at home to the Cardinal, we’re better now, and now we’re going to throttle Illinois in the Rose Bowl.”

Second, to Pac 10 fans who bashed us for some perceived bias that isn’t there, you have to allow the possibility that we actually were watching this year and saw through the smokescreen. At least Oregon has an excuse. What’s Cal’s?

The C.O.W. airing of the grievances followed by the feats of strength
Ten huge storylines to make the bowl season more interesting and to improve the quality of your life.

10. Show up time for the Big East
Big East fans liked to chirp about how their conference went 5-0 in the bowls last year. Well, the Big East was supposed to do that after being heavily favored in all the lousy bowl matchups. West Virginia played a reeling Georgia Tech without its starting quarterback, and Louisville getting Wake Forest in the Orange. The games are better this year, and now it's put-up time for the conference. While Cincinnati is stuck playing Southern Miss in the Papajohns.com Bowl and Rutgers is going to Toronto to deal with Ball State in the International, the rest of the league has a shot at making a big statement with West Virginia playing Oklahoma in the Fiesta, Connecticut facing Wake Forest in the Meieke Car Care, and South Florida facing Oregon in the Sun.

9. Did the BCS get the right teams in the right places?
Illinois vs. USC sounds nice because of the Big Ten – Pac 10 ring, but a Georgia – USC Rose Bowl would’ve gotten everyone’s juices flowing. Almost no one really seems to care about Kansas playing in the Orange Bowl after it didn’t even win its own division, while a Missouri vs. Virginia Tech battle would’ve had a big-time feel. When the non-BCS New Year’s Day games look far, far more appealing than the BCS games, something is wrong, and now the selection process will come under fire if the big games are yawners.
8. Pac 10 pride
After stinking it up over the second half of the year, the Pac 10 has a chance to make amends with a good showing in the bowls. Forgetting about the impending USC coronation over Illinois, Oregon needs to flip the switch back on against South Florida in the Sun, Cal needs to come remotely close to playing up to its offensive talent level against Air Force in the Armed Forces, Oregon State needs to show that it really is as good as it looked at the end of the year by wiping up Maryland in the Emerald, Arizona State needs to prove it belonged in the BCS by beating Texas in the Holiday, and UCLA has to beat BYU for a second time when they play in the Las Vegas. Anything less than a 4-1 bowl record would be bad for the league, 3-2 would raise a few eyebrows, and 2-3 or worse would be disastrous.

7. The eyes of Texas are upon Mack Brown
After a second straight disappointing season without a Big 12 title, and with losses to Texas A&M, Texas could use a boost. The defense was gouged over the last month, it took historic performances from Jamaal Charles to beat Nebraska and Oklahoma State, and Texas turned out to be fourth in the overall Big 12 pecking order. Considering Arizona State was in the mix for a BCS game, a big win in the Holiday Bowl would do wonders for Brown and Texas, while a loss would mean the first four-loss season since 1999.

6. New blood
What teams are going to show up and play like the bowl is the biggest game of their lives? Going to the Gaylord Hotels Music City Bowl isn’t that big a deal to Florida State compared to Indiana going to the Insight. Florida Atlantic is a first timer going to the New Orleans Bowl, Michigan State will be jacked up to be back in the bowls against BC in the Champs Sports, Mississippi State is going to play hard against UCF in the Liberty, and Ball State will certainly be pumped to face Rutgers in the International. Of course, Kansas, Hawaii and Illinois in the BCS will add some interesting storylines to the mix.

5. Where are the wacky upsets going to come from?
Boise State beating Oklahoma was obviously the signature shocker from the last bowl season, since everyone has forgotten that Ohio State was an 8-point favorite over Florida, but that wasn’t the only stunner coming from out of left field. Kentucky, a 10-point dog, beating Clemson in the Music City was technically the biggest upset of the bowl season. On a much, much smaller sale, Troy blasted Rice, a 7-point favorite. The bowl upset usually comes when the favorite doesn’t really care, while the underdog plays its guts out, so with that in mind, watch out for Southern Miss, in head coach Jeff Bower’s final game, as an 11-point underdog against Cincinnati, Indiana as a 5.5-point underdog against Oklahoma State, and Michigan, in Lloyd Carr’s last game, a 10.5-point underdog against Florida.

4. Prove it time
In this craziest of seasons, the new kids on the block have to actually show they belong among the top players in the game. Kansas has to prove against Virginia Tech that it wasn’t just a very good team with an easy schedule. Connecticut has to show against Wake Forest that has the potential to be among the better teams in the Big East. Missouri has to prove against Arkansas that it belonged in the BCS all along. Most of all, LSU and Ohio State have to prove they were the two best teams in America over Oklahoma, Georgia, Virginia Tech, Missouri, and everyone else.

3. Kevin Smith
The UCF junior is 181 yards away from setting the record for the most yards gained in a single season. So how good is Mississippi State’s run defense? It held Darren McFadden to 88 yards, but gave up 206 rushing yards in the loss to Arkansas. It’s allowing 159 yards per game, but Smith will be given the ball 40 times in an attempt to carry the Golden Knights to its first bowl win.

2. The Big Ten – SEC challenge
Big Ten bashing has gone from being fashionable to the norm, but the world conveniently forgets how Wisconsin beat Arkansas in the last Capital One Bowl on the same day Penn State beat Tennessee in the Outback. For those of you who keep clamoring for a type of inter-conference matchup like the ACC and Big Ten have in basketball, this bowl season gives you your chance as Michigan and Florida face off in the Capital One, Wisconsin and Tennessee play in the Outback, and, of course, Ohio State plays LSU. The Big Ten doesn’t have to necessarily win the series, but it needs to be more than just competitive.

1. Is Ohio State going to suck again? A weary, skeptical nation is going to assume that poor, slow Ohio State is going to stink it up in a second straight national championship. Don’t count on it. Last year was an aberration, there’s no way the team will come in unprepared again, but it might not matter. The Buckeyes can play their best game, but if LSU plays up to its full capability, it’ll win in a blowout. That’s not going to be an indictment of OSU; it’ll be just a healthy LSU finally showing up like it’s supposed to.

Nuggets and tidbits, now made with white meat, at participating restaurants …
- One of the key pro-LSU arguments was that it didn’t lose in regulation. Like losing two games in three overtimes is better than losing late in the fourth quarter. It sounds like a nice theory, but it doesn’t hold water. If there weren’t overtime, the games would’ve been coached differently, especially by Les Miles. You think he would’ve played it safe and gone for a tie?
- Is Verne Lundquist the new Keith Jackson? He’s old school enough to make a game feel important while still sounding fresh and relevant, unlike Jackson at the end of his run. He might be the best in the game.
- That holiday popcorn tin sitting on the desk of Dave Wannstedt comes from Cal as a thank you for taking all the focus off a clunker of a regular-season ending loss to Stanford.
- After the way the Big 12 season finished up, does Chase Daniel really deserve the first-team nod over Sam Bradford?
- With Mike Sherman getting hired immediately at Texas A&M and without much of a process, and with Turner Gill the only minority candidate within earshot of one of the head coaching openings, until Bo Pelini got the Nebraska job, the Black Coaches Association will have a busy offseason.
Nuggets and tidbits, now made with white meat, at participating restaurants …
- One of the key pro-LSU arguments was that it didn’t lose in regulation. Like losing two games in three overtimes is better than losing late in the fourth quarter. It sounds like a nice theory, but it doesn’t hold water. If there wasn't a college football overtime, the games would’ve been coached differently, especially by Les Miles. You think he would’ve ever played it safe and gone for a tie?
- Verne Lundquist the new and improved Keith Jackson. He’s old school enough to make a game feel important while still sounding fresh and relevant, unlike Jackson at the end of his run. He might be the best in the game.
- That holiday popcorn tin sitting on the desk of Dave Wannstedt comes from Cal as a thank you for taking all the focus off a clunker of a regular-season ending loss to Stanford.
- After the way the Big 12 season finished up, does Chase Daniel really deserve the first-team nod over Sam Bradford?
- With Mike Sherman getting hired immediately at Texas A&M and without much of a process, and with Turner Gill the only minority candidate within earshot of one of the head coaching openings, until Bo Pelini got the Nebraska job, the Black Coaches Association will have a busy offseason.

C.O.W. shameless gimmick item … The weekly five Overrated/Underrated aspects of the world
1) Overrated: Dave Wannstedt getting a three-year extension ... Underrated: Karl Dorrell
2) Overrated: Getting left out of the BCS … Underrated: Bobby Bowden taking Florida State to its 26th straight bowl
3) Overrated: Evel Knievel ... Underrated: Playing with house money
4) Overrated: Hawaii’s 13-game winning streak ... Underrated: Mount Union’s 36-game winning streak
5) Overrated: The BCS games... Underrated: The non-BCS January 1 games.

To the best of my knowledge, he conforms to the rules governing this vote … at least from the one time I saw him play … I’ve always been an anti-voter registration guy. If you’re not smart enough to figure out how to register to vote, you’re probably not smart enough to make an informed decision on a candidate. For every two people who don’t vote, my vote counts triple. I’m now asking for the Heisman people make it harder for the pathetically uninformed to be able to vote.

If you turned in your vote before last Saturday, you’re out. You can’t possibly make a call on the Heisman race before everyone has had their say (this also goes for those publications and conferences that jump the gun with their all-star teams before their seasons are over).

If you voted for Colt Brennan just because of the numbers, you’re out. Texas Tech’s Graham Harrell threw for 1,124 more yards, seven more touchdowns, and had a higher completion percentage against better competition.

If you take career statistics or past season performances into account, you’re out. As the soccer guy in the shaver ad says, "I never fink about yesterday." Or as Roger Federer put it, "Yesterday is history. Just a nice mammary." Last year doesn’t matter and next year isn’t a promise to anyone. You’re supposed to vote for the ‘most outstanding college football player in the United States in 2007.”

If you never saw Kevin Smith play, or have to look up who he is, you’re out.

If the LSU game was the only time you saw Darren McFadden play, and you voted for him just because of that performance, you're out.

With that in mind, I struggled way too much before hitting Process when I filed my Heisman ballot. Before last Saturday, I was waiting to see what Chase Daniel and Pat White were going to do. I put a lot of stock in the MVP aspect of the award and give credit to the guys who lead their teams to a title. If Daniel had done to Oklahoma what he did to Kansas and got Mizzou to the national championship, he’d have been my one. After the Pitt loss, White was out.

To me, Tim Tebow’s all-timer of a year deserved the number one vote. I spent the last week hearing from the Tebow bashers, but the last time I checked, a five-yard touchdown run counted as much as a 45-yard dash. Tebow was the one who got the team in a position to score from close range in the first place. If what he did was so easy, how come no one else in the history of the game could do it? Florida didn't run up the scores nearly as bad as it's being made out, and it's not like past Heisman winners didn't have stats laced with garbage. Remember, Herschel Walker, Shaun Alexander, Emmitt Smith, Bo Jackson, Jamal Lewis, George Rogers, and every other all-time great SEC running back didn't get the touchdown runs in a season that Tebow did, and they didn't have to throw.

My second choice was Colt Brennan. There’s pressure, and then there’s coming through to pull off a win that’ll double the school’s football budget. With all that happened throughout the season and throughout last Saturday, completing 82 of 103 passes (80%) for 937 yards and ten touchdowns against Boise State and Washington to lead Hawaii to a 12-0 season sealed it for me.

The third slot went to Kevin Smith, and yeah, the numbers had something to do with it averaging 5.9 yards per carry (Darren McFadden averaged 5.67) with 2,448 yards and 29 touchdowns. He cranked out 217 against NC State, 149 against Texas, and he carried his team to a title with a breathtaking 284-yard, four touchdown day against Tulsa.

I wish there were four choices on the ballot, but there were only three so I had to leave out Darren McFadden. If you want to argue that he deserved to be a finalist, I won’t put up a fight.

“You know I'm born to lose, and gambling's for fools/But that's the way I like it baby, I don't wanna live forever” … The three lines this week that appear to be a tad off. (2-1. I’m on fire. I close out the regular season 13-23-1 overall, so to make it up to you, here are ten picks for the bowl season to get to .500.) … 1) Michigan +10.5 over Florida. 2) Hawaii +10 over Georgia, 3) Wisconsin +3.5 over Tennessee, 4) Missouri -3.5 over Arkansas, 4) Navy +9.5 over Utah, 5) New Mexico -3 over Nevada, 6) East Carolina +11.5 over Boise State, 7) Texas -1 over Arizona State, 8) Boston College -3 over Michigan State, 9) TCU -4 over Houston, 10) Oregon State -4.5 over Maryland

Sorry this column sucked, but it wasn’t my fault … I was trying to concentrate on the column, but I lost all focus and had to call a press conference after Kirk Herbstreit reported that I accepted the Michigan job..
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[RJ Esq]

Jackets Don't Fit For UConn's Edsall

Posted Dec 3rd 2007 8:55PM by Ian Cohen
Filed under: Georgia Tech Football, ACC, Big East, BCS, NCAA FB Rumors, NCAA FB Coaching, Connecticut Football

Whether you admit it or not, every time the coaching carousel takes an offseason turn, you place teams in a certain hierarchy. You know, find the guy who made a non-BCS team worth caring about and peg him to lead the BCS team that finished 5-7 and is no longer worth caring about. Or, find the awesome coordinator from the team playing on New Year's Day and see if he won't start his career by trying to make some non-BCS team worth caring about again. And the cycle continues.

Things get a little dicier though when it comes to evaluating the merits of teams in differing BCS conferences. For example, Mike Leach has established himself in a way where he can possibly compete for a Big XII title without having a raving fanbase looking to run him out on a rail in the event the Red Raiders finish 8-4. And yet, UCLA, renowned for being a frugal program with a pain-in-the-ass commute to an off-campus stadium and second citizens in their own city is considered a step up. A similar position befell UConn's Randy Edsall; though he basically created UConn as a DI-A contender and, aside from BC, has New England to himself, there were whispers that he could "do better." As in, Georgia Tech, a school with great history and a fertile recruiting ground, but an arguably apathetic fanbase, rigorous academics and a general sense of malaise.

Well, he decided that if Meineke Car Care Bowls are considered reasonable goals any given year, it's probably not best to upend everything unless the job's a dream. Despite overtures from Atlanta, Edsall is staying in Storrs to continue his stewardship of the Huskies program.

Edsall's salary isn't chicken feed: $920k through 2010, which is about half of what the likes of Tommy Bowden and Al Groh make. But considering that, like his Meineke Car Care Bowl counterpart Jim Grobe, is something of a conquering hero on campus, bringing success to where there was none before (even more pronounced at UConn). And he's certainly leaving the door open by saying he's remaining in Storrs for "the good of his family and his team" (so selfless!). Who knows if he'll the UConn Frank Beamer or what have you, but you can expect that this won't be the last open position he's associated with.

 

[RJ Esq]

Time to leave Jacksonville:

View attachment 13848

 

[RJ Esq]

Bowl rankings

The best and worst of the postseason, from 1 to 32

Posted: Tuesday December 4, 2007 1:26PM; Updated: Tuesday December 4, 2007 4:12PM

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Glenn Dorsey and the Tigers are actually favored against No. 1 Ohio State.
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</td></tr></tbody></table>As I wrote on Sunday night, this year's BCS bowl matchups were particularly disappointing. Not coincidentally, however, there are a whole bunch of compelling games further down the ladder this bowl season.
This is my fifth year ranking the viewing interest of all 32 bowl games. The past couple of years, I must confess, my eyes started glazing over (and my jokes started getting more sarcastic) earlier and earlier on the list. This year, however, you'll notice the drop-off doesn't come for a quite a bit. While unprecedented parity left us with a relatively weak set of teams at the top of the polls, the upside is the overall number of quality teams runs deeper.
And that makes for some good non-BCS bowl games.
Take, for instance, the Cotton Bowl. For years, this once-prestigious New Year's game had seen its profile sink lower and lower. It's been a long time since the Cotton Bowl truly made for must-see TV. This year, however, thanks in part to the Orange Bowl's puzzling selection of Big 12 North runner-up Kansas, the Dallas game gets a highly intriguing matchup between a pair of exciting teams -- Arkansas and Missouri -- led by likely Heisman finalists.
The Cotton Bowl checks in higher this year than it ever has on this list -- higher, in fact, than several BCS games.
1. BCS National Championship Game (Jan. 7): Ohio State (11-1) vs. LSU (11-2). Different year, same storyline: Big Ten brawn vs. SEC speed. It's a safe bet Jim Tressel will have the Buckeyes better prepared this time. The question is, will that be enough?
2. Sugar (Jan. 1): Hawaii (12-0) vs. Georgia (10-2). In his last game against Washington, Hawaii QB Colt Brennan went 42-of-50 for 442 yards, five touchdowns. Can he do it against an SEC defense, away from the islands? Can't wait to find out.
3. Cotton (Jan. 1): Missouri (11-2) vs. Arkansas (8-4). In this corner we have Chase Daniel, 4,000-yard passer. In the other corner, we've got Darren McFadden, in what will likely be his last college game. Sit back and enjoy -- there's going to be some offense.
4. Fiesta (Jan. 2): Oklahoma (11-2) vs. West Virginia (10-2). Two years ago, West Virginia's Pat White and Steve Slaton burst onto the national scene with their Sugar Bowl win over Georgia. This time they need a win over the Sooners just to regain their mojo.
5. Rose: (Jan. 1): USC (10-2) vs. Illinois (9-3). He took the recruiting world by storm. He's righted Illinois' program in a major way. But can Ron Zook really beat both Jim Tressel and Pete Carroll in the same season? This could really be the apocalypse.
6. Orange (Jan. 3): Kansas (11-1) vs. Virginia Tech (11-2). Kansas QB Todd Reesing likes to scramble around and sling it. Virginia Tech's defense likes to sit back and pick it. Either way, someone's going to get burned.
7. Gator (Jan. 1): Virginia (9-3) vs. Texas Tech (8-4).Graham Harrell, meet Chris Long. He wears No. 91 for Virginia, but you won't have trouble recognizing him. He'll be the guy coming after you every time you attempt a pass -- and you attempt a lot of them.
8. Holiday (Dec. 27): Arizona State (10-2) vs. Texas (9-3). It's been four long years since the Longhorns last visited San Diego -- the longest Holiday Bowl drought of the Mack Brown era. He should still remember it well enough to give ASU coach Dennis Erickson a tour.
9. Capital One (Jan. 1): Florida (9-3) vs. Michigan (8-4). Is this a cruel joke? Seriously? It's Lloyd Carr's last game as Michigan's coach. His biggest headache the past 13 seasons has been mobile quarterbacks. So who does he get as a going-away present? Tim Tebow.
10. Chick-fil-A (Dec. 31): Clemson (9-3) vs. Auburn (8-4). My, oh my -- that's going to be a lot of orange. It's also going to be a clash between one of the nation's most dynamic offenses (Clemson) and one of its stingiest defenses (Auburn). But mostly a lot of orange.

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UCF's Kevin Smith has rushed for 1,000 yards and 11 TDs over his last four games.
AP


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</td></tr></tbody></table>11. Outback (Jan. 1): Wisconsin (9-3) vs. Tennessee (9-4). Look what we have here. It's another one of those lightning-rod Big Ten-SEC bowl matchups ... which SEC fans will conveniently ignore if the result doesn't go their way.
12. Sun (Dec. 31): USF (9-3) vs. Oregon (8-4). In their last game against Oregon State, the Ducks finally found themselves a healthy, functioning quarterback (redshirt freshman Justin Roper). But is his mohawk as cool as Bulls QB Matt Grothe's?
13. Liberty (Dec. 29): UCF (10-3) vs. Mississippi State (7-5). World, say hello to Kevin Smith. At 2,448 yards, the Golden Knights running back needs 181 more to break Barry Sanders' single-season record. But he's going to have to do it against a top 30 defense.
14. Las Vegas (Dec. 22): BYU (10-2) vs. UCLA (6-6). Despite winning their second straight Mountain West title, the Cougars have struggled to gain respect -- in large part because they lost to the Karl Dorrell-coached Bruins. They get a chance to avenge that.
15. Champs Sports (Dec. 28): Boston College (10-3) vs. Michigan State (7-5). Poor Eagles. Every year, without fail, the big-name bowls avoid them like they've got a disease. To BC's credit, it hasn't shown any disappointment in its seven-game bowl winning streak.
16. Insight (Dec. 31): Indiana (7-5) vs. Oklahoma State (6-6). Is this the world's greatest matchup? No. But it's a heck of a story. The late Terry Hoeppner's wife, Jane, is expected to be in attendance to watch the Hoosiers fulfill their beloved coach's goal of "playing 13."
17. Alamo (Dec. 29): Penn State (8-4) vs. Texas A&M (7-5). Recent Hall of Fame inductee Joe Paterno will coach his 500th career game in San Antonio. Too bad Dennis Franchione didn't bother sticking around for it -- anything to help Joe get a "W" on his special day.
18. Meineke (Dec. 29): UConn (9-3) vs. Wake Forest (8-4). These two upstarts met last season in East Hartford, with Wake prevailing 24-13. That game, played before either team's rise to prominence, went untelevised. This one's on national TV and for a trophy.
19. Emerald (Dec. 28): Oregon State (8-4) vs. Maryland (6-6). The stakes are high for Mike Riley and Ralph Friedgen. Why? The past two coaches to lose an Emerald Bowl, Georgia Tech's Chan Gailey (2005) and UCLA's Karl Dorrell (2006), were recently fired.
20. Music City (Dec. 31): Kentucky (7-5) vs. Florida State (7-5). It's been a fine two-year run for Andre Woodson and the Wildcats. Presumably, next year, Kentucky will return to irrelevance. Of course, we also assumed FSU would have become relevant again by now.

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Nate Longshore and the Golden Bears have suffered an amazing collapse after rising to No. 2 in the AP Poll.
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</td></tr></tbody></table>21. Hawaii (Dec. 23): Boise State (10-2) vs. East Carolina (7-5). This trip will undoubtedly take on special meaning for newlyweds Ian Johnson and the former Chrissy Popadics, who first met in Hawaii two years ago. The fact that I know that is slightly disturbing.
22. New Orleans (Dec. 21): Florida Atlantic (7-5) vs. Memphis (7-5). This is the under-the-radar game of the year. Howard Schnellenberger's Owls are a team on the rise, while Memphis has two of the best receivers (Duke Calhoun and Carlos Singleton) you've never seen.
23. Armed Forces (Dec. 31): Air Force (9-3) vs. Cal (6-6). I'm not one to choose sides, however -- wouldn't it be kind of wrong for Air Force not to win the Armed Forces Bowl? And to lose to a bunch of hippies from Berkeley at that? I'm sorry ... this simply cannot happen.
24. Independence (Dec. 30): Alabama (6-6) vs. Colorado (6-6). If I could have just one wish this Holiday season -- it would be for ESPN to let Eric Cartman introduce the Buffs' lineups again for this game. Because let's be honest: There's not a lot of other incentive to watch.
25. PapaJohns.com (Dec. 22): Cincinnati (9-3) vs. Southern Miss (7-5). Yes, the Bearcats play in the Big East now. No, this is not a regular-season Conference USA game. And yes, Southern Miss really did force out longtime-coach Jeff Bower. No, I cannot explain why.
26. Poinsettia (Dec. 20): Utah (8-4) vs. Navy (8-4). The best thing we can say about the very first game of this bowl season is ... there are at least six others less compelling. Get used to seeing Navy in this game, by the way: The Midshipmen have their own contract with the bowl.
27. Humanitarian (Dec. 31): Fresno State (8-4) vs. Georgia Tech (7-5). Fresno State coach Pat Hill says often his team will play "anyone, anytime, anywhere." He must really mean it -- because even Boise State itself begged to get out of this game.
28. Texas (Dec. 28): Houston (8-4) vs. TCU (7-5). Well I'll be danged -- them boys know how to put the "Texas" in Texas Bowl, don't they? A little Houston, a little Fort Worth -- throw a giant cowboy hat atop the Reliant roof and you've got yourselves a real, live Texas hoedown.
29. Motor City (Dec. 26): Central Michigan (8-5) vs. Purdue (7-5). Generally, bowl games try to avoid regular-season rematches -- particularly when the score of the first meeting was 45-22, Purdue. Ah -- but the Chippewas were just lulling them to sleep for this one!
30. International (Jan. 5): Rutgers (7-5) vs. Ball State (7-5). I'm sorry, but I must be hallucinating. The calendar says it's January 5, not September 5. Yet for some reason Rutgers is playing another MAC team. In Canada. Nurse -- more Demerol, please.
31. GMAC: (Jan. 6): Tulsa (9-4) vs. Bowling Green (8-4). A day before LSU and Ohio State tee it up in New Orleans, a nation of hungry football fans will gather around their televisions and watch ... well, the NFL playoffs. But this will be on, too.
32. New Mexico (Dec. 22): New Mexico (8-4) vs. Nevada (6-6). We've got a lot of problems to solve in this country -- education, unemployment, a mortgage crisis, rising gas prices. But at least we can all go to bed tonight knowing New Mexico will never be left out of a bowl game again.
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[RJ Esq]

Texas Tech v. Virginia: A Statistical Primer
By Seth C Section: Football
Posted on Tue Dec 04, 2007 at 09:54:10 PM EDT



While I'm gearing up on previews on the upcoming bowl game, I thought I'd do a quick statistical analysis of both Texas Tech and Virginia.
Things that jump out at me and in no particular order:

• Texas Tech is 119th in the nation in rushing
• Texas Tech is 17th in the nation in sacks allowed
• Virginia is 6th in the nation in sacks
• Virginia is 100th in the nation in total offense

Discuss and enjoy.
<center> <table cellpadding="4"> <tbody><tr bgcolor="black"> <td>Big 12 Rank (National)</td> <td>Texas Tech</td> <td>Statistic</td> <td>Virginia</td> <td>ACC Rank (National)</td> </tr> <tr style="background: rgb(211, 211, 211) none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;"> <td>12 (119)</td> <td>61.42</td> <td>Rushing Offense</td> <td>126.17</td> <td>7 (93)</td> </tr> <tr style="background: rgb(211, 211, 211) none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;"> <td>1 (1)</td> <td>475.58</td> <td>Passing Offense</td> <td>203.00</td> <td>8 (80)</td> </tr> <tr style="background: rgb(211, 211, 211) none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;"> <td>1 (2)</td> <td>537.00</td> <td>Total Offense</td> <td>329.17</td> <td>9 (100)</td> </tr> <tr style="background: rgb(211, 211, 211) none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;"> <td>3 (6)</td> <td>41.75</td> <td>Scoring Offense</td> <td>24.08</td> <td>7 (86)</td> </tr> <tr style="background: rgb(211, 211, 211) none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;"> <td>10 (78)</td> <td>171.00</td> <td>Rushing Defense</td> <td>113.00</td> <td>6 (21)</td> </tr> <tr style="background: rgb(211, 211, 211) none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;"> <td>1 (17)</td> <td>196.08</td> <td>Pass Defense</td> <td>210.42</td> <td>6 (33)</td> </tr> <tr style="background: rgb(211, 211, 211) none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;"> <td>2 (4)</td> <td>159.58</td> <td>Passing Efficiency Defense</td> <td>114.36</td> <td>10 (91)</td> </tr> <tr style="background: rgb(211, 211, 211) none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;"> <td>3 (50)</td> <td>367.08</td> <td>Total Defense</td> <td>323.42</td> <td>4 (17)</td> </tr> <tr style="background: rgb(211, 211, 211) none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;"> <td>5 (51)</td> <td>25.75</td> <td>Scoring Defense</td> <td>18.75</td> <td>3 (13)</td> </tr> <tr style="background: rgb(211, 211, 211) none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;"> <td>4 (37)</td> <td>36.46</td> <td>Net Punting</td> <td>35.15</td> <td>9 (60)</td> </tr> <tr style="background: rgb(211, 211, 211) none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;"> <td>3 (26)</td> <td>12.16</td> <td>Punt Returns</td> <td>9.00</td> <td>8 (58)</td> </tr> <tr style="background: rgb(211, 211, 211) none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;"> <td>8 (54)</td> <td>21.62</td> <td>Kickoff Returns</td> <td>20.70</td> <td>6 (79)</td> </tr> <tr style="background: rgb(211, 211, 211) none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;"> <td>5 (65)</td> <td>1.92</td> <td>Sacks</td> <td>3.33</td> <td>2 (6)</td> </tr> <tr style="background: rgb(211, 211, 211) none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;"> <td>5 (65)</td> <td>6.17</td> <td>Tackles for Loss</td> <td>5.92</td> <td>11 (74)</td> </tr> <tr style="background: rgb(211, 211, 211) none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;"> <td>3 (17)</td> <td>1.25</td> <td>Sacks Allowed</td> <td>2.42</td> <td>7 (83)</td> </tr> </tbody></table></center> <!-- poll box -->

 

[RJ Esq]

Pelini to coach LSU in BCS title game

Posted: Tuesday December 4, 2007 8:18PM; Updated: Tuesday December 4, 2007 8:18PM

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) -- Bo Pelini has Tom Osborne's "full support" to coach second-ranked LSU in the BCS championship game.
Nebraska's interim athletic director said Tuesday that his new football coach will be on the sidelines as LSU takes on top-ranked Ohio State on Jan. 7 at New Orleans.
"Bo has been at LSU for three years, and its players and coaches have worked very hard for a chance to win the national championship," Osborne said. "The two-week dead period in recruiting gives him a chance to take care of some unfinished business at LSU without really putting us in any kind of bind."
Meanwhile, Pelini was recruiting and hiring coaches, including former longtime Nebraska assistant Ron Brown, who said Monday he was hired as tight ends coach.
Nebraska spokesman Keith Mann said Pelini wants to hire all nine assistants before making the list public.

 

[RJ Esq]

Dorrell won't coach UCLA in bowl

Coordinator DeWayne Walker named interim coach

Posted: Tuesday December 4, 2007 5:44PM; Updated: Tuesday December 4, 2007 5:46PM

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Ousted UCLA football coach Karl Dorrell has decided not to coach the Bruins when they play BYU in the Las Vegas Bowl.
Defensive coordinator DeWayne Walker will serve as interim coach for the Dec. 22 game.
When UCLA athletic director Dan Guerrero fired Dorrell on Monday, Guerrero told Dorrell he could coach the team in the Dec. 22 game if he wished.
"I appreciate the opportunity to coach in the bowl game, but I have decided it is in the best interests of the program for me to decline that opportunity," Dorrell said Tuesday. "The game should be about the players, especially the seniors.
"While I would love to take the field with these young men one last time, I felt that my situation would take the focus away from our players and their efforts and that's the last thing I would want to do."
Dorrell, UCLA's coach for five years, was fired after the Bruins finished the regular season 6-6, with the final loss a 24-7 defeat by rival Southern California last weekend. He finished with a 35-27 record during his five years in the job, his first as a head coach.
The game against BYU (10-2) will be a rematch. UCLA beat the Cougars 27-17 on Sept. 8 at the Rose Bowl.

 

[STEED]

gl w/ your picks RJ