betterREDthandead

It probably has everything to do with the change of coaches. Schools always lose a couple of commits when they fire the coach that recruited them. It's happening to Miami too.

This.

So next year, Division I will no longer be divided into I-A and I-AA, but the "bowl subdivision" and the "championship subdivision". Uh, what's the point?

Ahhh, no. "Reality" shows = bad. Pretty much all of them. I've seen the occasional Wife Swap, or Real World, or whatever, and I usually end up hating most everyone in it. The only "reality show" I can stand is Last Comic Standing, and obviously only the parts where they're doing standup.

Motor City Bowl would be in my dream 15, because I'm very biased to Detroit. I'm thinkin': Rose - Sugar - Orange - Fiesta - Cotton - Holiday - Citrus - Peach - Gator - Liberty - Independence - Aloha - Sun - Motor City - Hall of Fame. Hall of Fame Bowl is now known as the Outback Bowl. I could be persuaded to add the Copper Bowl (currently the Insight Bowl), Las Vegas Bowl, Alamo Bowl, and Music City Bowl. That's still only 19, much better than the ridiculous 31 we have now. 32 with the title game. Papajohns.com Bowl??????

"Too late" is just a symptom of "too many". Cut the games to 15 plus a championship game, require 7 wins instead of 6 to qualify (or win your conference) and finally, require that bowl games not be named after the sponsor (i.e., I want the Peach Bowl, Citrus Bowl, Copper Bowl, and Hall of Fame Bowl back). The NCAA is a giant money-grubbing blob, I'm sure they, the conferences, and the schools can find creative ways to make up the lost cash from cutting down on the bowls.

The whole bowl system took a huge nosedive this year. You know what the last bowl being played before the title game is? The GMAC Bowl. In Mobile. So much for the idea of the prestigious bowls being on New Year's - or even during the New Year. The Peach Bowl, which was a perfectly good bowl, is now the Chick-Fil-A Bowl. All kinds of ridiculousness.

USC, of course. There's no way any Michigan opponent in a bowl game measures up to either USC or OSU.

Michigan is better than USC. Not much debate there. But not so much better that USC is undeserving of a shot in Glendale. If USC beats UCLA, then they should play Ohio State.

That's like saying my favorite reason for barfing my lungs out is because I've been drinking too much as opposed to a virus or food poisoning.

Oden vs. Hansbrough would have been absolutely phenomenal.

Kind of says something about OSU that there are always Ohio natives that go to Michigan but rarely if ever does a Michigan native bother with Ohio State Actually, I think the reasons are obvious: Michigan has two choices of big-time programs, Ohio has one, so Ohio State gets saturated with local talent. Plus, a very common thread among Ohio natives in maize and blue is that they go to Michigan to rebel against everyone who assumes they'll go to OSU. Anyone wanting to rebel like that against Michigan goes to MSU instead.

New rankings are out. Virginia makes the list, woohoo! Now ranked #25. Of course, we're like 200-some points behind #24 and 2 ahead of #26. Still. I expect to scoot up the standings a bit further in the coming weeks. ACC/Big Ten challenge starts today with Michigan at NC State today. I think Michigan wins. Other matchups, on Tuesday: Maryland @ Illinois Florida State @ Wisconsin Penn State @ Georgia Tech Indiana @ Duke Miami @ Northwestern Wednesday: Michigan State @ Boston College Virginia @ Purdue Iowa @ Virginia Tech Ohio State @ North Carolina Clemson @ Minnesota Looking forward to it. I'd like to see the Big Ten pull it off once to keep it interesting. But that doesn't mean I'll be rooting for Purdue

Not a bad percentage. Most coaches end up getting fired. Nature of the job. MSU really is a good place for a coach right now. Low expectations, lots of room for improvement, and a state with plenty of talent to recruit from. And the conference has plenty of very beatable teams, so MSU has as good a shot as anyone of going to a bowl game next year.

WWE is f'ing stupid. Pretty much always has been.

Wallace butting head(band)s with Skiles Heh heh heh. Ben left because he didn't get along with Flip. Now he's finding the grass definitely isn't greener. Interesting note about the headbands; how Skiles didn't reveal the headband rule until after Wallace signed. In short, Skiles lied to Ben. Very dishonest. Not that I'm feeling terribly sorry for Ben, but did I really need yet another reason to hate the Bulls?

Naw, the SEC champ is slated for the Sugar Bowl, I think. I'm hoping for a Michigan-Cal Rose Bowl.

I didn't really expect Arkansas to make it through. They'd have had to beat LSU and Florida, and get Notre Dame to beat USC.

Sorry. Among Lions fans you'll never get that argument to fly. Maybe when it comes to all the other nationally televised prime-time matchups (a grand total of 34 games just among the Sunday night/Monday night matchups....not including the upcoming Thursday night games, the pre-weekend game to start the season, and oh yeah, the playoffs) there's certainly a strong case for keeping the Lions local. Throw in, of course, all the Redskins games foisted upon the nation at large by Fox (despite the fact that they're 3-7 and I live in Seattle) and I refuse to give in when it comes to getting one stinking chance at watching my team on national TV during what happens to be a 70+ year old tradition.

Absolutely not. Why not just take Terrible Towels away from the Steelers, or make the Packers heat their field so the tundra's not so frozen? The Raiders have their Black Hole, the Browns have their Dawg Pound - we have our Thanksgiving football. And if you've never seen fans with bags on their heads, you haven't been watching the Lions long enough. I think that was pretty much a Silverdome staple that's moved downtown with the team.

*sigh* another year, another wonderful Thanksgiving display. I am pretty much thoroughly convinced that the Lions can do nothing at all to improve their team until Matt Millen is thrown out on the street.

Not a bad idea. I dunno if I dig it geographically. That's part of the reason I like Miami. But Syracuse definitely fits the "tradition" bill.

Time to derail the rematch talk for a bit. Getting tiresome. Here's a question I've kind of been bouncing around in my head all season: If the Big Ten were to expand to 12, and Notre Dame was totally out of the question, what school would be ideal? Some of the usual candidates: West Virginia Iowa State Missouri The last two are Big 12 schools and as such, would be fantastically difficult to pry away. West Virginia is the crown jewel of the Big East, having lost Miami, VT, and BC. So they'd be hard too. My choice would be none other than Miami of Ohio. Because of their Bo-Woody ties, they're forever linked to the Big Ten in some small way. They almost always play a Big Ten team every year. And they're the one MAC school with any football tradition. They'd jump at the chance to join the Big Ten, and the MAC couldn't really say no. They had an awful year this year, but with Northwestern and Illinois still running around, it's not like they'd suddenly be the dregs. Plus, I think it'd have an effect on them similar to what happened when Virginia Tech joined the ACC. Tech is now a school to reckon with in basketball, in just their third ACC season, where before they were a doormat.

How not to overeat on Thanksgiving Sounds like good advice.................FOR ME TO POOP ON. Why would I not want to overeat on Thanksgiving??? Turkey, gravy, Grandma's meat pie, squash, corn, stuffing, jello-molds, cherry pie a la mode, pumpkin pie, more of Grandma's meat pie........and of course, mashed potatoes served in shovelfuls with gobs of butter! (my propensity for eating enormous amounts of mashed potatoes is becoming a bit of a running joke in my family and I plan on living up to it in spades this year ) How on earth would I have use for advice like "no seconds"??? If someone tells me I can't have seconds, I'm cleaning off a garbage can lid and bringing that to the table instead of a puny little plate. Can you tell I'm excited for Thanksgiving?

Don't forget though, the onside kick happened with enough time left that if Michigan had gotten the stop, they'd have had about 40 seconds of play left. OSU needed that first down. Sadly, they got it.