On November 17th, I made a post where I put Cal and West Virginia on the Mad Cal Blacklist. This past weekend, Cal looked pathetic in losing to Stanford for the first time in the Tedford era, and now has to pretend to be excited about going to the Armed Forces Bowl. West Virginia choked away the biggest game in the history of the Mountaineers program and gave away their spot in the national championship game.

Lesson: If I'm paying the juice, your football team better cover the points or face the wrath of the Mad Cal Blacklist.


A college football playoff system and the all the bowl games cannot exist together. That's why the NCAA has the ridiculously named bowl-subdivision and the championship-subdivision levels (I still prefer 1A and 1AA). There's too much sponsor, fan, and tv money involved with the bowl games to ever get rid of them. A playoff system could make big bucks, but it would take even more luster off the non-playoff bowls, which would make their sponsors unhappy. I don't think the NCAA wants 'student-athletes' playing 14 or 15 football games a year. Even with a playoff, there will be problems to determine who should get the 7th and 8th spots to join the 6 BCS conference champs.

The BCS has set up a bunch of crappy big money games this year. USC, Oklahoma, and Georgia, in no particular order, are the 3 best team in the nation and none of them are playing each other. Here's my early BCS bowl thoughts:

Fiesta Bowl: Oklahoma vs blacklisted West Virginia. This is by far the best game to watch, provided both QB's are ready to play. OU loss came with their QB Bradford out, and WVU's losses came when their QB White got injured in the game. I would much rather see OU play USC, LSU, or Georgia, but I'll take what I can get.

Rose Bowl: USC vs Illinois. USC will blow out Illinois. No chance this game will be close. I'm willing to lay as much as 21 points on this one.

Sugar Bowl: Georgia vs Hawaii. Hawaii is the biggest fraud in all of college football. When you need overtime to beat the likes of San Jose State and Louisiana Tech, you are not a good team.

Orange Bowl: Virginia Tech vs Kansas. Kansas is a borderline fraud team as well. In the ACC Championship game, VT pulled off my favorite play in college football: the blocked PAT return for 2 points. VTech may win this one by 30 if they choose not to call off the dogs. (Yes, that was a lame Michael Vick reference.)

Championship game: LSU vs Ohio State. Ohio State is the second biggest fraud in the land and can be summed up with 2 words: Youngstown State. I hate this for several reasons. If teams can play against cupcakes, have a less than impressive conference schedule and can still be deemed championship material just by sitting around and watching others lose, what's stopping good teams from boosting their own win totals and resumes by playing what amounts to a live scrimmage against the likes of Kent State? (By the way, this is how teams like San Diego State get into the nat'l champ game in my NCAA video game seasons.) That's bad for college football and its fans. Secondly, a LSU win will allow the SEC fans to mouth off more about their perceived conference superiority. I wish there was a way both teams could lost this game.