It’s kind of sad that the 2006 college football season is already a third complete. College football is kind of like Christmas. You wait months for it to come, then you wake up one morning and the day has arrived. The presents are downstairs under the tree. You open the first one, which is awesome simply because it’s the first. Some great ones get thrown into the middle, then your parents surprise you with the big one at the end.

Thank goodness the other two thirds of the season are left to go, because the last two weeks of college football remind me of the part of Christmas where you have to take the family photograph. It takes ten minutes for my family to show up at the designated location, another five for the distribution of faces to satisfy my parents and oldest sister, and another fifteen for the ten-plus takes to be shot. All thirty minutes are, honestly, a drag.

For the most part, the matchups that ended September were as painful as those photographic sessions. This past weekend, Texas and LSU rolled over Sam Houston State (no surprise) and Mississippi State (ditto). Ohio State basically proved that they are the team to beat in Division I-A by a 38-17 whomping of Iowa. Florida struggled to put away Alabama (Alabama’s defense) at home, and Georgia continued to look awful by beating Ole Miss by five points. I’m sticking by my prediction that the Dawgs will lose at least four games by the end of the season.

Thursday night, Auburn went to South Carolina and pulled out a nailbiter in Columbia. Tommy Tuberville got back to his old crazy ways, calling for an onside kick in the third quarter which prevented USC’s offense from touching the ball for those fifteen minutes. Auburn converted two fourth downs, one from six yards away and one at the goal line for a touchdown. Tre’ Smith made a crucial play during the onside kick when he helped the football bounce towards another Auburn player. Congrats, Tre’. I’m not going to say anything negative about you…this week.

Now that I’ve discussed USC-EC (East Coast), I’d like to note that the one in California squeaked by Washington State 28-22. Wait a minute, isn’t that the same Washington State squad that Auburn soundly defeated 40-14 in their season opener? ESPN played off USC’s poor performance on the absence of star receiver Dwayne Jarrett. However, the game summary’s headline shockingly read “No. 3 USC survives”. I’m ashamed that they would say that USC has ever done anything other than “thrive”. The word “survives” is simply not in the vocabulary of the best college football program of all time.

Next weekend’s lineup is looking pretty good. Georgia plays (loses to) Tennessee on primetime ESPN. Oregon and California fight over who gets to look like the team with the best chance to beat USC, a post Notre Dame quickly relinquished. Texas and Oklahoma play for the Big 12 Championship and the chance to have one state’s governor present a side of beef to the other state’s governor (read this Wikipedia article if you don’t believe me). Florida and LSU duke it out for the title of “Best Team to Lose to Auburn in 2006”.

Auburn plays Arkansas at 11 AM Central Time. Thanks, CBS. This means I’ll be arriving at the student gates of Jordan-Hare Stadium around 8 AM. I’ll be grumpy, sleepy, sweaty, and probably a few more of the Seven Dwarves, but War Eagle anyhow! Come back next Monday for more uninformed analysis and confusing analogies!