The Most Wonderful Time of the Year....

Or at least that's what ESPN's Capital One Bowl Week ads would have us believe. However, due to several circumstances (like getting our ass kicked more often than not), we find our Huskers home for the holidays. It's a sad realization that the only thing I can really root the next couple of weeks is LSU's defensive unit. Of course, I'll support every Big 12 team, but the reality is that until spring ball, the only things we have to talk about are defecting recruits and Bo Pelini's background and upbringing (He's from Ohio! Did you know he scored 1000 points in high school basketball?! He's fiery!!). While there may be a shortage of interesting Husker story lines, the same can't be said for the rest of college football. A brief look around the national landscape the past couple of weeks:

The first thing I want to look at is the academic fraud scandal at Florida State. For whatever reason, this is not the national story many thought it would be. The reason for that? Nobody cares about teams hovering just above .500. Ten years ago, this would have been huge. Look at the uproar programs face when they are prominent (Nebraska with LP, USC with Reggie Bush even though he's never been reprimanded), then look at schools with legal troubles that suck. Terrible teams tend to totally be ignored (how's that for alliteration?) when it comes to academic or legal issues, and that's the way it's always going to be. If you have a team in the top 10, you're going to hear about the smallest of transgressions, even if it's stuff like merely being in a picture with a keg of beer, as Georgia's Matt Stafford can attest to. Anyways, apparently a tutor gave a large number of players the answers to an online exam for a MUSIC APPRECIATION COURSE, which has resulted in roughly two dozen players being ruled ineligible for the illustrious Music City bowl (although I guess I can't disparage them for being in it, at least they made it to a bowl game...). If they were playing in the Orange Bowl, this might be getting more publicity. My concern is that these players even needed the answers for a music appreciation course. I mean, obviously the advisers steered a great deal of the football players into this class to um, facilitate their eligibility. So why do they need the answers? The name of this class alone screams "easy A or B", so the fact they needed answers (to an online exam no less) is pathetic yet somehow borderline amusing. Music Appreciation......I can't wait till we hear that as some FSU alum's major in a Monday Night Football broadcast sometime soon.

Michigan's hiring of Rich Rodriguez is in my opinion better for the Wolverines than Les Miles would have been. Now that he can recruit essentially anyone he wants, Rodriguez will be able to run roughshod over the rest of the Big 2, er, 10. He'll be able to mold Ryan Mallet into an effective spread (think Purdue) QB, then recruit the type of athletes needed to run the spread-option like he did at West Virginia. If I'm the rest of that dilapidated conference, I'm legitimately terrified of what is going to be coming out of Ann Arbor the next couple of years.

Is there anything more irritating than the USC-deserves-a-shot talk? They lost to Oregon and Stanford, the latter being a deal-breaker in my opinion. Any time you lose to what is considered one of the worst teams in the country, I think you can pretty much resign yourself to something else than the national title game. I don't care if your entire roster is made up of high school all americans, I don't care if you receive roughly 6,000 pre-season blowjobs from the media, and I don't give a damn about what you did two or three years ago. When it comes to national championship aspirations, Jim Tressel said it best in an interview after the BCS selection show: if you want to be in the national title game, you better win all your games, because that's really the only way to guarantee a spot. I'm still holding out hope that USC will suffer an FSU-type meltdown and return to where they were in the 90's, winning 7 games a year. Oh, and one more thing: REGGIE F'IN CHEATED!!

While I understand this is a college football blog, I had to say something about the New England Patriots. I might be in the minority, but I find myself rooting for these guys. Sure, the whole spying thing definitely hurts their rep, but from what I understand, the videotaping of signals is a fairly common practice throughout the league, and even if you are caught by the opposing team, it's usually dealt with inbetween the coaching staffs. You aren't supposed to run off and snitch like a 7 year-old like Mangini did. That aside, what's wrong with rooting for greatness? Don't get me wrong, parity is an incredible thing. Look at what it's done for college football this season. But as great as the any-given-Saturday/Sunday thing is, isn't it even more special when you can sit back and merely appreciate the fact that you are witnessing the game being played to it's highest level? When I watch old game film of the '95 Huskers, I find myself not rooting for them as much as I am merely enjoying watching the game being played at such a high level. And that's what I find myself doing watching Tom Brady & Co. What they are doing is simply incredible. My only dislike about them? Use a damn tight end at the goal line, not a linebacker. If you're their tight end, aren't you more than a little pissed off right now? I can just see Kyle Brady dumping some Ex-Lax into Mike Vrabel's Gatorade and laughing ominously.

Anyways, the Holiday Bowl is on ESPN tonight, Longhorns vs. Arizona State. If you're not up to anything, you should tune in, this is usually one of the better games of the bowl season. Hope everyone had a fantastic Christmas.