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For the first time in the 145 years of college football, a 12-member playoff selection committee has set to convene. It will spend Monday and Tuesday in the arduous seven-stage process of tabulating its inaugural weekly top 25, and it will release that list on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. ET. That will begin a much-anticipated process of seven weekly meetings in Grapevine, Texas, near the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. The meetings will run Monday-Tuesday into early December, then the final announcement of the playoff field will come on Sunday, Dec. 7. That announcement will name the four teams which will...

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...

Obama came on the scoreboard and unanimous "boo" went through the stadium #spartyon— Jake Wasko (@jake_wasko) October 5, 2014   Most interesting MSU student section cheer today? booed loudly when Obama was shown on video board.— Kelly Weber (@StateLady) October 5, 2014  According to reports on Twitter and from several individuals who called into the Rush Limbaugh Show on Monday, President Obama was enthusiastically booed when he appeared in a public service announcement shown on the scoreboard video screen at Michigan State University during Saturday’s football game against Nebraska.The “It’s On Us” PSA, which features a parade of celebrities...

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...

8:00 PM Arizona at UTSA Friday, September 5 TIME (ET) MATCHUP 7:00 PM Pittsburgh at Boston College 10:30 PM Washington State at Nevada Saturday, September 6 TIME (ET) MATCHUP 12:00 PM Florida Atlantic at No. 2 Alabama 12:00 PM No. 4 Oklahoma at Tulsa 12:00 PM Western Illinois at No. 18 Wisconsin 12:00 PM McNeese State at No. 19 Nebraska 12:00 PM No. 20 Kansas State at Iowa State 12:00 PM No. 24 Missouri at Toledo 12:00 PM Arkansas State at Tennessee 12:00 PM Buffalo at Army 12:00 PM Stony Brook at Connecticut 12:00 PM SMU at North Texas 12:00...

Thursday, August 28 TIME (ET) MATCHUP 6:00 PM No. 21 Texas A&M at No. 9 South Carolina 7:00 PM Wake Forest at Louisiana-Monroe 7:00 PM Eastern Illinois at Minnesota 7:00 PM Howard at Akron 7:00 PM Presbyterian at Northern Illinois 7:00 PM Chattanooga at Central Michigan 7:30 PM Idaho State at Utah 8:00 PM Boise State vs. No. 18 Ole Miss* 8:00 PM Cal Poly at New Mexico State 8:00 PM Tulane at Tulsa 9:15 PM Temple at Vanderbilt 10:00 PM Rutgers at Washington State 10:00 PM North Dakota at San Jose State 10:30 PM Weber State at No. 19...

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...

More than eight years after he took his last snap as quarterback of the Texas Longhorns, Vince Young is back with the university in a new capacity. The school announced Thursday that Young, who led the Longhorns to the 2005 national championship, will work for the school’s Division of Diversity and Community Engagement (DDCE). Beginning September 1, he will serve as a “development officer for program alumni relations” where his job will be to raise funds for programs “that address the educational challenges” of both first-generation college students and students who come from “low-income backgrounds.”

The College Football Czar: 2014 Season Preview a sports publication from The Shinbone by Daniel Clark Welcome to the 2014 season preview issue of The College Football Czar, a seasonal sports publication by the author and editor of The Shinbone. In the coming months, you will find weekly analyses of upcoming college football action posted at this site. To find out more, please see the Ground Rules. This issue contains the Czar's rankings for all 128 teams in Division I-A football, as well as conference preview capsules, potential upsets to watch for, bowl projections, and a guide to help you...

Shelby Osborne: Football is her passion and she joins the thin ranks of women in men's college football. Most women have played as kickers. Is Shelby Osborne creating a new normal?When Shelby Osborne walks onto the football field this fall, she'll be treading on ground few women have dared to walk. Fewer than a dozen women have played college football on a men's team. But this week, Osborne made history when she signed a letter of intent to play football with Campbellsville University in Kentucky – as a defensive back, the same position she played in high school. No woman...

Johnny Manziel to Dallas?

College football players should not be paid. Plain and simple. But there is no reason why any player should not be given carte blanche to capitalize on his chosen sport. Capitalism 101 rides to the rescue once again. In addition to the free education players get, any player, on scholarship or not, should be allowed to sell and hawk his personal merchandise from t-shirt to jockstrap. He or she should be allowed to put his name and school name/logo on his jersey or helmet or whatever - just like the pros do. A player could sell and trade cards with...

The National Labor Relations Board in Chicago has decided that college athletes – who are getting a subsidized education and a shot at a multi-million dollar career – have the right to unionize as employees. The Labor backed effort to unionize college students who play games as an “education”, according to the Chicago NLRB, now have a seat at the “bargaining table” in college athletics… Because, obviously, consumers of higher education (AKA: “students”) don’t currently have any seat at the “bargaining table”. The short story is that pockets of education consumers (which is the technical definition for individuals who voluntarily...

Navy football player Will McKamey, who has been hospitalized since collapsing at practice three days ago, has died while in a coma. He was 19. The academy says the freshman running back from Knoxville, Tenn., died at the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore on Tuesday with his family by his side.