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The College Football Czar: Week 2 Week one in review: There were so few games of consequence during the opening week that Saturday’s highlight was when a Bowling Green defensive lineman attempted the worst fake injury in recorded history. DT Mike Minns lost a shoe between plays in a goal line series against Tennessee, and for some reason expected the officials to stop the game until he could put it back on. They didn’t, so he did what must have appeared to be the only sensible thing to do. Waving his shoe over his head, he pleaded for a stoppage,...

The College Football Czar: Week 1 If you're reading the College Football Czar’s week one picks, that must mean that yet another long summer of terrible TV is about to come to a merciful end. So – if you’ve found yourself holding up a pencil in front of the television and yelling “not so fast” at the morning weatherman... If you’ve been bringing home bags of tiny rubber pellets, in order to give your living room carpet a more footbally feel... If you’ve let yourself be henpecked into renting Jerry Maguire, just because it’s sort of, more-or-less tangentially related to...

The College Football Czar: 2014-15 Bowl Game Picks Week fifteen in review: As critical as the College Football Czar is of the whole concept of the CFP Committee, he is pleased that it has succeeded in selecting the correct four teams, an obnoxious publicity campaign by #5 Baylor notwithstanding. Anybody who argues that any team other than Alabama, Oregon, Florida State and Ohio State deserves a shot at the national title is merely agitating on behalf of playoff expansion for its own sake. Fourth-rated Ohio State certainly has its flaws, but the Buckeyes are one among the tiny minority of...

The College Football Czar: Week 15 Week fourteen in review: The College Football Czar nearly had another sub-.500 week, but rallied in the four late games on Saturday night to finish 14-13. As much as the Czar criticizes the SEC supremacy theory, he admits to have gotten caught up in it himself over Thanksgiving weekend. Not only had he become convinced that Mississippi State was a national championship contender, but he picked the SEC to dominate its traditional ACC rivals, when it turned out that the ACC went 4-0 in those matchups. For the season, that means the SEC is...

The College Football Czar: Week 14 Week thirteen in review: The College Football Czar started the week with a pair of lopsided Friday night losses, and it didn’t get much better from there, as he went crashing to a season-low record of 7-10. And talk about asking for it – did he really pick Penn State, Notre Dame and Michigan? Yeesh! For the year, the Czar’s record now stands at 164-98, for a .625 winning percentage, which, if it remained consistent through the end of the year, would be his lowest percentage since his first season of posting his picks...

The College Football Czar: Week 13 Week twelve in review: With its 25-20 win over Mississippi State, Alabama has vaulted to #1 in the new CFP ratings, with Oregon holding at #2. Florida State, the only remaining undefeated major conference team, failed to climb a spot in spite of the fact that they continue to win, while playing like anything but a national contender. MSU has only slipped to fourth, but the Bulldogs will have a hard time staying in playoff position if they don’t earn a berth in the SEC championship. It has started. ACC Commissioner John “The Lardhead”...

The College Football Czar: Week 12 Week eleven in review: Another national contender from the SEC took a hit, and this time not because they’re all playing each other. Instead, Auburn suffered an unlikely 41-38 upset against Texas A&M, which hadn’t really played a good game since the opening night of the season. Mind you, according to the SEC supremacy argument, this result only proves how tough the conference really is. Why, did you know that all three of the Aggies’ losses have also been to SEC opponents? In their nonconference schedule, they’ve pulverized four whimpering bags of cottage cheese,...

The College Football Czar: Week 11 Week ten in review: It was a tough week for the Mississippi schools, with top-ranked MSU slipping past Arkansas 17-10 on an interception in the end zone, and #4 Ole Miss losing a hard-fought 35-31 game to Auburn, with WR Laquon Treadwell suffering a broken leg on the decisive play. There were a handful of other key injuries during the week. Nebraska running back Ameer Abdullah left the first half against Purdue with a sprained knee, but the injury is being characterized as mild, and with a timely idle week to rest up, he...

The College Football Czar: Week 10 Week nine in review: The College Football Playoff Selection Committee released its first rankings of the season, and its members seem to have been determined to avoid controversy, by (a) ranking the two remaining undefeated major-conference teams first and second, and (b) buying into the SEC hype by awarding that conference three of the top four spots. Mississippi State deservedly received this week’s #1 ranking, but nobody who has watched Florida State this season can possibly believe they’re the second-best team in the nation. Ranking the Seminoles second because of their 7-0 record was...

The College Football Czar: Week 9 Week eight in review: For the third week in a row, those confounded games failed to adhere to the College Football Czar’s brilliant predictions. This time, he actually came in under .500, with a record of 9-10. For the season, his record stands at 101-66, for a .605 winning percentage. If that average held through the rest of the season, it would be the Czar’s worst since he began posting his picks online, and about 90 points lower than last season. At least he correctly picked the week’s biggest game, in which Florida State...

The College Football Czar: Week 8 Week seven in review: One of these weeks, the College Football Czar will wise up and start picking the Mississippi schools to win. In truth, he remains skeptical of Ole Miss, but there’s no question at this point that Mississippi State deserves its new #1 ranking. The Czar did not doubt the quality of the MSU team, but had instead overrated Auburn, which set out to prove that its near-upset at Kansas State was no fluke. For the week, the Czar only went 11-8, although he would protest the result of the Baylor-TCU game,...

The College Football Czar: Week 7 Week six in review: Eight ranked teams lost to lower-ranked or unranked opponents, including #2 Oregon, #3 Alabama and #4 Oklahoma. Top-ranked Florida State was among the few favorites that won handily, 43-3 over Wake Forest, in spite of another pedestrian performance from Heisman-winning QB Jameis Winston. Late collapses by Bama, Tennessee, Stanford and USC sent the College Football Czar crashing to a 10-10 mark, which drops his season record to 81-48, for a .628 winning percentage. The Czar did make a good pick on Mississippi State’s 48-31 toppling of Texas A&M (predicted score...

The College Football Czar: Week 6 Week five in review: By the time the early Saturday games were over, the College Football Czar was only 2-6, but he rallied during the mid-afternoon and night games to finish with a record of 14-8 for the week. He is now 71-38 overall, for a .651 winning percentage. The Czar came very close to predicting three scores in Week 5, including Clemson’s 50-35 shootout win over North Carolina (predicted score 51-35), Stanford’s 20-13 win over Washington (20-14), and Washington State’s 28-27 comeback against Utah (31-30). There were no real blockbuster games in Week...

The College Football Czar: Week 5 Week four in review: None of the presumptive national contenders played very well last week, although LSU was the only one to be upset. Top-ranked Florida State showed that its problems run a lot deeper than the QB position, while Oregon was exposed for a lack of depth on its OL. Alabama displayed lots of power but no discipline, Oklahoma couldn’t get going until halftime, and Auburn would have lost if not for a series of unforced K-State miscues. The College Football Czar is now waiting to see which overpaid studio show host will...

The College Football Czar: Week 4 Week three in review: Sixth-ranked Georgia was upset by South Carolina 38-35, but don’t count the Dogs out of national championship contention just yet. Aside from an early October trip to Missouri, there’s not that much standing in their way between now and their grudge match against Auburn on Nov. 15th. Heisman-winning Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston has already been nominated for the Lardhead of the Year Award, but if there were also a Banana-Brain of the Year and a Nougat-Noggin of the Year, he could easily challenge for the Triple Crown. Coach Jimbo...

The College Football Czar: Week 3 Week two in review: The Delta House defense has won, as the NCAA has ended the Penn State bowl ban after two seasons. So it’s official, then. A four-year postseason ban is too severe a punishment for knowingly allowing a child-rapist to operate on campus for a decade after his acts are made known to campus police. A good argument can be made that because all parties involved in the scandal have departed, it makes no sense to continue to punish those who are there today. In hindsight, the program really should have been...

The College Football Czar: Week 2 Week one in review: The College Football Czar started the season with a record of 18-8, and a winning percentage of .692 – which isn’t great, considering that the dearth of competitive games over Labor Day weekend provided him a couple gimmes. We have a new nominee for the Lardhead of the Year Award, and a pretty formidable one at that. USC cornerback Josh Shaw suffered high ankle sprains to both legs in an off-the-field incident, the details of which he’d rather not disclose. So, naturally, he made up a story that portrayed himself...

The College Football Czar: Week 1 If you're reading the College Football Czar’s week one picks, that must mean that yet another long summer of terrible TV is about to come to a merciful end. So – if you’ve been keeping a football around the house to talk to, with a face drawn on it like Wilson from Cast Away ... If you’ve gone to an empty football stadium during the offseason, sat there for hours, and told yourself that the reason there was no scoring was that Boston College was playing ... If a genie recently granted you whatever...

The College Football Czar: Week 15 Week fourteen in review: Actually, the biggest news of the week has just broken earlier the same day that this installment of picks is being posted, when the attorney general of Florida announced that Heisman trophy favorite Jameis Winston of Florida State will not be charged with sexual assault. Hopefully, this means that the freshman phenom truly is innocent, but all we really know is that the prosecutors did not believe they had enough evidence to support the charges. Alabama’s three-peat chances faded into the Great White North, as Auburn dug into the CFL...

The College Football Czar: Week 14 Week thirteen in review: Before we get to last week’s events, you’ve probably already noticed that this week’s installment of picks is being released two days early. That’s so that they can be available to College Football Czar’s readers at work, on the last day before Thanksgiving weekend. This, of course, leaves the Czar a condensed time frame in which to make a larger-than-usual number of picks, so please excuse their relative brevity and semi-literacy. The number of undefeated national contenders has been whittled to three, with Oklahoma State’s 49-17 blowout of Baylor. The...