For those who haven’t noticed, this evening we were met with the first sign of the holiday season. No, not snowfall on the ground, or holiday cups at Starbucks! The American Institution that is the ESPN COLLEGE FOOTBALL BOWL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES COUNTDOWN SELECTION SHOW PRESENTED BY ALLSTATE INSURANCE! For those who were too busy to watch, here’s a recap:

I’m not sure if you remember, but this off-season the big talk in the world of college athletics was conference expansion. Among many things deemed essential by the NCAA (increased revenue), the big hoopla was that it would find out who truly was the “champion” of each conference and allow better match-ups in the BCS. Well, it turns out that out of all the conference championship games played this past weekend, none of them affected the national title game!

In fact, by virtue of sitting on their bottoms and playing video games this past week, the Alabama Crimson Tide will be getting their much deserved rematch against LSU in the BCS title game! But that’s not all folks! Look at the other match-ups we are being treated to this bowl season:

Gildan New Mexico Bowl
Wyoming vs. Temple

A bowl game so boring, even New Mexico didn’t feel motivated enough to win 5 more games and make it.

Famous Idaho Potato Bowl
Ohio vs. Utah State

For being such a famous bowl game, you’d think they could get better teams than the runner-up in the MAC and a team that couldn’t even win the WAC.

R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl
San Diego State vs. Louisiana-Lafayette

ULL’s QB tied Jake Delhomme’s school record for TDs in a season (20). Interpret that as you will.

Beef ‘O’ Brady’s St. Petersburg Bowl
Florida International vs. Marshall

The Golden Panthers tied pre-season contender Florida State for most wins by a team from Florida this year. If only this bowl could have gotten the other match-up. Florida State plays against the Fighting Irish while FIU plays in a bowl sponsored by an Irish themed restaurant that serves tacos.

San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl
TCU vs. Louisiana Tech

With the loss of Andy Dalton to the NFL, TCU was able to tackle such opposition as Portland State and New Mexico on it’s way to a bowl game against WAC champion Louisiana Tech. Can the Horned Frogs sustain the momentum?

MAACO Las Vegas Bowl
Arizona State vs. Boise State

The Broncos look to increase their case for national relevance by beating a 6-6 ASU team that fired it’s coach and was unable to best 6-7 UCLA for the Pac-12 South Division title.

Sheraton Hawaii Bowl
Nevada vs. Southern Miss

Am I the only one who wonders why they don’t put a period at the end of “Miss”? I don’t know, I just get an image of a southern debutante whenever I hear their name.

AdvoCare V100 Independence Bowl
Missouri vs. North Carolina

Missouri is headed to the SEC this season and given their record this year, this bowl might be their last shot at winning a game in a very, very long time. North Carolina won the bowl bid for this game after Miami graciously turned down the bowl game this year out of the kindness of their heart. The lack of bowl revenue should put a large enough dent in Miami’s abortions and strippers budget to prompt the NCAA to lessen the punishment at their hearing.

Little Caesars Bowl
Western Michigan vs. Purdue Boilermakers

The Western Michigan Broncos earned one win this season against an opponent from an Automatic-Qualifying conference in their victory over UConn which prompted many around the country to take note and wonder, “Why does the Big East get an automatic BCS bid?”

Belk Bowl
Louisville vs. NC State

NC State was able to make a bowl game despite losing quarterback Russell Wilson to Wisconsin this summer. Because if you don’t like Raleigh, NC, the only logical place to move to is Madison Wisconsin.

Military Bowl Presented by Northrop Grumman
Toledo vs. Air Force

You can talk all you want about the military wasting money on fighter jets and other items, but how much longer are we going to tolerate funding football teams from Army, Air Force, and Navy? When will the madness end?

Bridgepoint Education Holiday Bowl
Cal vs. Texas

With the Niners, Raiders, and Stanford all playing well this year, the Cal Bears have found themselves as the worst football team in the San Francisco Bay Area, a feat that is much more difficult than you think it would be.

Champs Sports Bowl
Florida State vs. Notre Dame

Lou Holtz has already declared the winner of this game to be the national champion.

Valero Alamo Bowl
Washington vs. Baylor

Heisman hopeful Robert Griffin III looks to lead the upstart Bears into a match-up against a team that declares a 7-5 season after a 6-6 season to be progress.

Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl
BYU vs. Tulsa

Not to be confused with the Military Bowl, a team coached by a man named Bronco will try to defeat a team from the middle of Oklahoma nicknamed the Hurricanes.

New Era Pinstripe Bowl
Rutgers vs Iowa St.

Rutgers couldn’t even beat UConn to clinch the Big East title, Iowa State edged out Northern Iowa by 1 point to start the season. You’re telling me an organization that seemingly paid CC Sabathia 1 million dollars per pinstripe chose these two teams? Actually, that sounds about right.

Franklin American Mortgage Music CIty Bowl
Mississippi State vs. Wake Forest

“Yes MSU might be a 6-6 team, but they went 6-6 in the SEC! That’s worth at least 23-0 in the Big Ten!”
-Mark May

Insight Bowl
Iowa vs. Oklahoma

The University of Oklahoma prefers to go by OU and still employs Bob Stoops. If you were in charge at Oklahoma which problem would you solve first.

Meineke Car Care Bowl of Texas
Texas A&M vs. Northwestern

Not to be confused with that OTHER Meineke Car Care Bowl. That one might be worth watching…

Hyundai Sun Bowl
Georgia Tech vs Utah

Utah ranks 110th in the country in the offense and is no way touching the Pacific Ocean making many wonder why they heck they were added to the Pac-12.

AutoZone Liberty Bowl
Cincinnati vs Vanderbilt

Cincinnati started 7-1 and ended 9-3. Ladies and Gentlemen, your Big East Co-Champions!

Chick-fil-A Bowl
Virginia vs. Auburn

One year after a perfect season, the Auburn Tigers attempt to win a game named after a sandwich consisting of fried chicken and a pickle.

Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl
Illinois vs UCLA

Illinois started 6-0 and finished 6-6. UCLA is heading to a bowl game with a losing record, yet won their division in the Pac-12. I’ve got a feeling we’ll be fighting boredom.

TicketCity Bowl
Houston vs. Penn State

This match-up of a near BCS-buster and the proud Penn State alums will do wonders for the economy of TicketCity. Wait, TicketCity isn’t a real place? Why do they get a bowl game?

Outback Bowl
Michigan St vs Georgia

Last year Michigan St rode a 10 win season into a 49-7 beat down at the hands of Alabama. Following another 10-win season, Michigan St is in prime position to get blown out again.

Capital One Bowl
Nebraska vs. South Carolina

The consensus pre-season favorite to win the Big 10 and end world hunger finds itself in the highlight game of Capital One Bowl week against a team whose nickname is consistently chosen as the favorite of 10 year old boys everywhere.

Taxslayer.com Gator Bowl
The Ohio State vs. Florida

Ohio State plays Florida in a game that most commentators on ESPN will fail to realize will be coached by Luke Fickell, not Urban Meyer. But hey, in a 24 hour news cycle, you have to find something to talk about. Also, Taxslayer.com? How nerdy can accountants get?

Rose Bowl Game Presented by Vizio
Wisconsin vs. Oregon

In his last game of his long and storied tenure at Wisconsin, Russell Wilson leads the Badgers into a match-up against a school that continues to forget their own school colors.

Tositos Fiesta Bowl
Stanford vs Oklahoma St

Oklahoma St will look to avoid a let down after winning their conference title and being looked over for a team that didn’t even play in their conference championship game. Stanford is led by a quarterback most pick to be number 1 overall come the NFL draft due to dominance over local rivals Cal and San Jose State. This one’s for all the Tostitos.

Allstate Sugar Bowl
Michigan vs. Virginia Tech

It might surprise many people to see Michigan in a BCS game instead of the Michigan State team that beat them earlier in the season, and played in the Big 10 championship game. But then again, if Michigan wins this game against Virginia Tech (a team that is coming off a blowout loss in the ACC Championship Game) and Michigan St loses their match-up against Georgia, the BCS will look like geniuses for setting up this match-up. Meanwhile, Kansas St and their number 8 ranking are left out.

Discover Orange Bowl
West Virginia vs Clemson

I can already see the commercial for the ESPN 30 for 30 about this game:

“One of them won the Big East, one of the teams won the ACC. What if I told you that the number 15 team and number 23 teams played each other in a BCS game? The Toilet Bowl, Directed by Joe Smith, Presented by ESPN Films 30 for 30.”

AT&T Cotton Bowl
Kansas St vs. Arkansas

This actually should be a great game. It’s only a shame we couldn’t find somewhere to put the number 6 and 8 teams in the country in the BCS line-up. Oh well…

BBVA Compass Bowl
SMU vs Pittsburgh

This will be the second year in a row for Pitt in the BBVA Compass bowl, possibly leading to Pitt fans to find out what BBVA Compass actually is.

GoDaddy.com Bowl
Arkansas St. vs. Northern Illinois

I know on paper this may seem like a boring match-up but I hear that they have unrated material from the game online that’s supposed to be cuh-razy.

Allstate BCS National Championship Game
Alabama vs. LSU

If Alabama was to hypothetically beat LSU 9-6, who would you crown the national champion? Fun fact: Alabama will have 45 days between it’s last game (an Iron Bowl win against Auburn) and the BCS title game. Or as it’s more commonly known, one Kardashian marriage.

Seems like we’re in for a treat. Stay tuned for my completely biased and baseless picks to be posted later this week.

I consider myself a fairly knowledgeable fan of all sports, but for some some sports above others, I may have been a late bloomer. Lacking a football team in Los Angeles doesn’t really help get behind the sport, and digging one layer deeper to college football is even tougher. Also take into account that I went to Cal State University Northridge at a time when their football program was defunct (although it did once exist once upon a time and was coached by John Elway‘s pops).

Slowly but surely, I am warming up to those sports I have neglected in the past. Pro football is a necessity if one is to have any chance of a good supplemental income via fantasy league winnings. College football has become more fun as well with the prevalence of my USC alum of a significant other. In retrospect though, all I ever really needed was to read Dixieland Delight by Clay Travis.

For those unfamiliar with Clay, he is a lifelong University of Tennessee fan who has his own fancy popular blog on FanHouse. Once upon a time, he decided to travel through his lands, attending games at each school within the Southeastern Conference (SEC). This leads one to assume that each SEC school takes their football seriously, and boy was he right.

Travis (yes I’m now using his last name, which is a first name, thus confusing and all the more reason to never trust people with two first names) chronicled the games, the rivalries, the tailgating scenes, and the people as a whole. He went far and wide to prove that LSU Tigers fans smell like corn dogs, Florida Gators fans all wore jean shorts, running into ‘Bama Bangs around every turn. Throughout the book, you got an amazing feel for the land, the people, and their traditions. While it may be a testament to actual good writing, it may well have also been the intense atmosphere that he was describing. Every stadium was full, always in bedlam after big plays, and always having a good time. The fans were intensely proud, yet still inviting and kind. The SEC was depicted as a brotherhood, complete with its sibling rivalries but also its familial love. The reader gets the sense that this is what America is all about.

Football aside, Clay (yes, switching back again) explains the universal truths of sports fandom. On the topic of referring to the team as we, he writes:

I asked my dad why everyone was using the word we, which heretofore I’d only heard applied when the speaker himself was actually involved in a pursuit. After all, I was not a team member and neither were any of the other men sitting in the lower-bowl end zone of Neyland Stadium. ‘Because,’ said my dad, ‘this means so much to most people here, they want to make themselves a part of it.’

Clay also talks about his grandfather, a former UT player, whose fandom literally affects his health:

My grandfather watched the games with such ferocious intensity that his doctor was afraid he might have a heart attack.

Blurbs like these strike emotional chords and give you a taste of what being a fan is all about.

In addition, after each chapter, there are mini-chapters that essentially read like blog posts. They range anywhere from mini history lessons to rankings of the hottest women of the SEC. This even further helps the book be more accessible than it already is to fans of any team or sport.

If you’re like me and still fail to see what all the fuss is about with college football, pick up a copy and dive in. It will actually get you interested in the broader scope of college football for a change and make you want to go out and be a part of it, especially down South.

The college football season is close, and what better way to get in the mood than by picking up a copy of NCAA Football 09 to play.

One of the biggest new additions to the game has been the ability to transfer your online dynasty offline, or vice versa. It seems that playing in an online dynasty with friends is the cool things to do, so I decided to organize a league with whoever I knew that had to game to do the damn thang.

We limited our school selections the Big Ten Conference, based on the fact that one player actually goes to one of the schools. Plus there are quality teams, so it works.

Here’s who’s who and what’s what in the league:

Jack – Wisconsin Badgers – Dude actually goes to the school (or did – I stopped trying to keep track of people), so this is warranted. Thanks for making the quasi-executive decision and at least having a team preference to narrow down who we would play with.

Jason – Ohio State Buckeyes – He claims to have some sort of kin who attended the school, so we’ll let him have dibs on the best team in the conference. I dominated him online this past weekend, so I guess he deserves a bit of a handicap.

George – Illinois Fighting Illini – This one’s for Ryne. Plus, it’s gonna be amazing typing names like Juice Williams and Arrelious Benn over and over again as I recap games.

Tyler – Michigan Wolverines – I stuck him with whatever decent team was left. Clearly just in it for the love of the game. Welcome aboard.

I’m sure you will all be thrilled to read recaps of video game college football, so this is precisely what I will provide for you. Stay tuned!

Oh wait – if you have an Xbox 360 and wanna get in on the action with another Big Ten team, leave a comment with your gamertag and I’ll reach out to you on Xbox Live. Sigh – I’m a nerd.

Or is it the other way around, Kevin Love being Linas Kleiza.

Kleiza preceded Love, but it is fair to say Love has more notoriety.

My buddy Mark brought this up recently, and I figured now would be the time to mention it, seeing as how the Los Angeles Lakers have manhandled the Denver Nuggets to the point where Denver may as well be eliminated in 3 games. The time to bring attention to this is now, while at least one of the aforementioned basketballers is still playing this year.

One wears #42 while the other is #43. Both wear powder blue jerseys on the road. Both can step out to hit the three. They have identical white boy looks.

In summation, they are identical, save for notoriety, country of origin, one jersey number, and body composition (due to K. Love being a fatty)

As most college basketball standouts were declaring for the NBA Draft, UNC’s Tyler Hansbrough decided to go the opposite direction. Rare.

Granted, Hansbrough had expressed interest in returning to win an NCAA Championship. The fact that he went out in the Final Four this year only adds to this, as it has to leave a bitter taste in your mouth.

He’s won at the high school level, being crowned Missouri state champ a few times. Now he wants to stay at UNC for his senior season to chase college glory. Wow, think he would make a good, driven pro? Winning is this dude’s M.O.

You would think someone like Kevin Love would have stayed in school as well for similar reasons. He burned out in the Final Four as well and couldn’t even touch the ball. Plus he comes from freaking Lake Oswego, Oregon – an affluent Portland suburb. It’s not like he’s cash strapped and from the hood, needing to feed his children and baby mommas.

David Stern has been trying to encourage such Hansbrough-esque behavior by instituting a new age limit, essentially forcing kids to at least go through their freshman year. Most recruits will still be one and out and onto the NBA, but perhaps some will be drawn in and want to shoot for a collegiate crown.

But for now, were still waiting on that sea change to occur. In the interim, we lost Love, but we still have the retard-strong Hansbrough. One out of two Great White Hopes ain’t bad.

I take this time to salute college athletics. Fitting, I suppose, as I am still a college student.

Over the weekend, the Cal State Northridge Matadors men’s basketball team defeated Cal Poly to give them the Big West Conference crown this year. It is a crown shared three ways with UC Santa Barbara and Cal State Fullerton, but it is a crown nonetheless – CSUN’s first since joining the Big West.

CSUN now earns byes up till the semi-finals of the conference tournament, meaning they are just two wins away from March Madness. They’ve been to the dance just once in school history and suddenly have a legit shot of doing it again.

I’m not entirely sure what has taken me so long to actually start paying attention to college sports. Perhaps its the senioritis kicking in. Perhaps I was just waiting for CSUN to be relevant. Perhaps… oh fuck it, I’m sorry – it was probably my own damn fault.

Following our basketball team this season has been a good bit of fun. Whether or not the season culminates in a tourney berth or not, it has been excellent. Finally, in my 5th (and hopefully last) year in college, I have gotten a taste of what UCLA and USC students feel when their teams play. Perhaps my enthusiasm will continue and I will be the token alumn attending future games. Laker tickets are sure to skyrocket back to threepeat-era prices and the Kings still suck, so I’ll need something to attend.

Anyways, congratulations once again, Matadors. Keep giving us no other choice than to have some school spirit for a change. We’re proud of you, dammit!