Down with the red and black…

Auburn lost.

Here we go.

Noon:

• Arkansas @ Auburn, CBS – As much as I admire Arkansas for somehow beating Alabama, they’re probably heading for a beating here.
• UNC @ Miami, LF ACC Game – Amato has saved his job, so these are the two hottest seats in the ACC right now. The funniest message board post I’ve seen in the past two weeks involved a UNC fan going on the Miami board to make sure that UM was pysched about beating UNC. The UM fans responded in kind, asking UNC to lay the wood on UM. I kid you not. These people are depressed.
• Purdue @ Iowa, ESPNU – Once again, fellow engineering school bias. Go Biolermakers!
• Clemson @ Wake, ESPN – A surprisingly heated ACC rivalry – Wake has won the last two meetings. Wake is also the sole remaining undefeated team in the ACC. Can the Deacons pull it off?

2:30- Stanford @ Notre Dame, ABC – ND rolls. Why can’t they just play USC already?

3:30:

• Oklahoma @ Texas, ABC – I think Texas rolls here. Adrian Peterson has a chance to make some noise, and I wish I could see it, but nonetheless, the horns hook ’em again.
• LSU @ Florida, CBS – I wish I could also see this game. A lot of people like LSU, but I think Florida has a good chance. It helps Auburn a lot if LSU wins, though.
• Maryland @ Georgia Tech, ESPNU – Can Tech keep it up? Will the Fridge outsmart us? If for some reason you happen to have ESPNU, tune it in. I’ll be there (hence my two previous statements) along with a guest appearance by my brother.
• Washington @ USC, FSN – USC rolls. (It’s almost 6am, I’m tired.)

4:30: Michigan St. @ UMich, ESPN – How, MSU looked so good 3 weeks ago. Amazing what one horrendous loss can do to a team. And John L. Smith is insane.

7:00:

• Missouri @ Texas Tech, TBS – TTU burned me last week, but I refuse to believe that Mizzou is actually any good. General good rule right now for the Big 12 is that the Big 12 South is a lot better than the North, so I’m going with the Raiders on this one.
• Central Mich @ Toledo, ESPNU – Uh, go Rockets?
• South Carolina @ Kentucky, ESPN2 – Kentucky is in the bottom 3 worst programs in the SEC right now, along with the Mississippi schools. The Visored One rolls.

7:45: Tennessee @ Georgia, ESPN – Big SEC East game. Go Vols! (Seriously, UGA, where is your offense? Not that I’m complaining.)

8:00: Oregon @ Cal, ABC – Cal continues to try to recover from their opening loss to UT, and karma hopefully will work against Oregon. Cal, I imagine, also has a better post-3rd quarter song. So Go Bears!

It’s that time of year again, and for the first time in a long time, I won’t be obessively tracking it.

If my old website was still up, I could show you my old tracking of the baseball playoffs, originally born out of a desire to have a readable schedule. I used to check MLB’s websites extensively for any hint of when the games would be, stuff like that.

But due to a combination of the Braves sucking, readable website designs, and trying to graduate this semester (hint: do not take more than 2 real classes your graduating semester) I simply do not have the time or desire to do it. So, yeah.

That said, I will still be doing bowl predictions. With this new commetary site thinger, the three of us could have a sort of competition to see who’s picks turn out the best. Or I could continue what I did last year, which is get a bunch of my friends together early Sunday morning after the games were over to decide the best bets for who goes where and trying to decide what the BCS would look like. In the end, I’ll probably compromise – use the comittee to predict who goes where, and then have a competition picking the actual games.

Anyway, I don’t do the predictions until the weekend the first BCS standings come out, which I believe is next weekend (which is also my fall break). So keep it here for two weeks for no to get my opinion on who will be in such illustrious new games like the Birmingham Bowl and the International Bowl.

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!