First off I wanted to wish everyone a Happy New Years. New Year’s day and New Year Eve serves up a total of 12 bowl games, many of which are worth checking out.
Jockeying for 08 position
In particular a lot of highly ranked teams who will be returning a lot of talent next year, will be auditioning for pre season rankings next year.
USC, Illinois, Georgia, Florida, and Missouri all play tomorrow and will be looking to carry some momentum into 2007. I am absolutely amazed at many how great programs will be returning a talented and expereinced quarterback for possible 2008 National Championship runs. Below is a list of top 07 teams who will have their signal caller back next year.
– Georgia (Matt Strafford)
– Missouri (Chase Daniels)
– Ohio State (Todd Boeckman)
– Florida (Tim Tebow)
– Kansas (Todd Reesing)
– Illinois ( Juice Williams)
– West Virginia (Pat White)
– Texas ( Colt Mccoy)
Teams like USF, Indiana, Oklahoma State, Texas Tech, and Cal also bring some talent back at QB but are darkhorses to make some noise on the national scene in 2008
Big 12 in 2008
The Big 12 has long been a two team conference with Oklahoma and Texas dominating the conference since Nebraska’s demise. This year, people expected more of the same but were surprised with the emergence of Missouri and Kansas. These four programs will be strong again next year in addition to programs like Kansas State, Texas Tech, Oklahoma State, and Colorado making progress as well. Despite the media’s infatuation with the SEC, look for the Big 12 to be the stronger conference next year.
Oklahoma sends home shoplifting DT
The list of bonehead incidents involving college football players grew again today as Sooner starting DT DeMarcus Granger was sent home from bowl game preparation for stealing a jacket for Burlington Coat Factory. I sympathize with the Sooner fan base and the young man as this is a very emberassing incident that will draw ire of fans for years to come, espicially in the wake of the Rhett Bomar scandal. I am curious what the jacket looked like.
“Mr. Granger removed an anti-theft device from a jacket and then concealed the jacket in a bag. He exited the store walking past the cash registers without paying for the jacket,” Mike Horn, a spokesman for the Tempe Police Department, said in a statement.
Granger admitted committing the offense and was booked into the Tempe City Jail on one count of shoplifting, Horn said. He later bonded out of jail.”
Ten Plays that Got The Buckeyes to New Orleans Article
For the second year in a row the Buckeyes made the BCS Championship game. Below is a link to my article highlighting the ten plays that were most instrumental in allowing them to get back to the championship game.
http://www.bucknuts.com/news/story.php?article=2601
FOX and BCS sucks for viewers
This is the second year that FOX has the rights for the BCS bowls (minus the Rose Bowl). I am growing very weary of Fox lately. They acquired the MLB post season rights from NBC about a decade ago and butchered coverage of that event. The dropoff from Bob Costas to Joe Buck is huge.
Fox, who doesn’t broadcast one regular season college game, plug the upcoming bowl games through out their NFL coverage. Unfortunately millions of NFL viewers are subjected to half ass NFL announcers and analysts converse about the upcoming bowl games when it’s absolutely clear they have no knowledge of the games. No mention of players, coaches, thing to watch for, but rather recycled garbage that misses the mark completely.
The most disappointing element of this is that ABC/ESPN have a full fledged team of guys specializing in college. While some of them are entertaining imbeciles (Mark May and Lou Holtz), others like Chris Fowler, Brent Mustberger, Mike Tirico, Rece Davis, Lee Corso, etc are highly knowledgable and articulate about the college football landscape. Its a shame for fans that such an inferior entity cover these great games.
