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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...

Hold on…do you mean you can't succeed at the quarterback position in the NFL by just upchucking lobs into the middle of the field like you're at the county fair trying to throw rings around milk bottles? Are you telling me that what you could do at Texas A&M, you can't do in the pros? That everyone is faster than you? More athletic? You mean if you don't study hard all the time in a league with so many intelligent men who bust their ass in the classroom, you might fail?

Marcus Mariota, widely considered the favorite over co-finalists Melvin Gordon and Amari Cooper, won the Heisman Trophy on Saturday night in New York. College football's top honor punctuates the Oregon junior quarterback's list of 2014 accolades, which include the Walter Camp, Davey O'Brien, Maxwell and Johnny Unitas Golden Arm awards. Mariota's banner season included 3,783 passing yards and 38 touchdown passes against two interceptions. The dual-threat quarterback also racked up 669 rushing yards and 14 touchdowns on the ground.

Under Armour is rolling out custom uniforms for the Navy Midshipmen in time for Saturday’s Army-Navy game, and, as you might expect, the gear is as American as Duke Nukem fist-fighting a crepe iron. Tagged with the words "Don't Tread On Me," the gear features red stripes over navy and white. Under Armour also made significant use of the First Navy Jack rattlesnake, which will be featured in a non-coiled, flying-out-of-the-fake-peanut-jar form. In short, these uniforms are quite to very fresh, depending on your taste for hammer-down patriotism.

College Football Playoff Bowl Date Location Matchup Prediction Championship Bowl Jan. 12 Arlington, Texas Semifinal winners TBD Sugar Bowl Jan. 1 New Orleans, La. Semifinal Alabama* vs. Ohio State* Rose Bowl Jan. 1 Pasadena, Calif. Semifinal Oregon* vs. Florida State* Selection Committee Bowl Games Bowl Date Location Matchup Prediction Cotton Bowl Jan. 1 Arlington, Tex. At-Large vs. At-Large Baylor* vs. Michigan State* Orange Bowl Dec. 31 Miami, Fla. ACC vs SEC/Big Ten/Notre Dame Georgia Tech* vs. Miss. State* Fiesta Bowl Dec. 31 Glendale, Ariz. At-Large vs At-Large Arizona* vs. Boise State* Peach Bowl Dec. 31 Atlanta, Ga. At-Large vs....

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...

UAB is shutting down the football program. The university announced the decision Tuesday minutes after President Ray Watts met with the Blazers players and coaches. UAB made the decision after a campus-wide study conducted by a consulting firm over the past year. …

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – If you could tap into Nick Saban’s fondest football dreams, you’d probably find the Alabama football coach fantasizing about shutouts and cartilage-rattling tackles and a relentless pass rush. Touchdowns would be down the wish list. But on a surreal November night when the Iron Bowl scoreboard read 55-44 – an abomination to the Pat Dye generation – Saban could deal with it. Because his team had the 55, and Auburn had the 44. His team has the Southeastern Conference Western Division title, and the Tigers don’t. His 11-1 team should still be No. 1 in the College...

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...

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...