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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...

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....

Penn State is toxic. Those aren't my words, but someone involved in the college bowl selection process. And that's how he described how attractive -- or, in this case, unattractive -- the Nittany Lions are as a bowl team. The Big Ten has eight bowl bids and could end up with 10 bowl-eligible teams. If the Nittany Lions (8-2) don't reach the Big Ten title game, it's a very real possibility they could get bypassed by all of the Big Ten bowls and be shipped to a non-Big Ten bowl that doesn't have enough teams to fill its conference obligation....

The Bowl Championship Series is so troubled by the graft exposed in Tuesday’s Fiesta Bowl corruption report that it appointed a special “task force.” Among the members is an athletics director who accepted a free Caribbean cruise from the Orange Bowl just last summer. Yes, there’s nothing like having a guy – in this case, Southern Mississippi’s Richard Giannini – who takes lavish gifts from one bowl game to judge another bowl game for giving out lavish gifts.The obvious news from Tuesday’s 276-page Fiesta Bowl report is that longtime CEO John Junker was fired and is in major legal...

SEC is going south in the bowls...

I did not notice any thread for the New Years weekend Bowl games. Watching a wild game between Northwestern and Auburn go into overtime.

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By Michael P. Tremoglie Tremoglie's Tea Time Blog The past several years there has been a proliferation of football bowl games with sponsors of one sort or another that lead to awkward sounding names. For example, the Menicke Bowl, the Chick-Fil-A Bowl or - my personal favorite- the GMAC Bowl ( shouldn't this really be called the Stimulus Bowl or the Bankrupt Bowl). Since our esteemed Congress has assigned importance ...

With more IMPORTANT issues to be concerned about, Congress WANTS to TELL the NCAA what type of college football bowls to have? Like they don’t have enough on their plate. Rep Joe Bartson (R-Texas) along with members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee feel the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) is unfair and won’t change unless the all-knowing United States Congress pushes them to fix something they know nothing about. First off let me make this clear. I really don’t give a hoot.

Maybe the doubters will finally go away. They should. Not one Big East football team was ranked among the Top 25 in preseason polls. Now, as the college football season is concluding two teams are in the Top Ten and one is in the Top Five. During the season there were as many as four teams ranked in the Top 25. Think about the significance of this. Half of the teams in the Big East conference were ranked among the Top 25 in the nation. What other college football conference can make such a claim? The University of Cincinnati is...

Justice Department to investigate whether college football's Bowl Championship Series is an illegal enterprise. Reps. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga., and Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, are introducing a resolution rejecting the oft-criticized bowl system as an illegal restriction on trade. The resolution would require Justice's antitrust division to investigate whether the system violates federal law....

LINCOLN, Neb. -- Bo Pelini is the new coach at Nebraska, leaving the defensive coordinator post at LSU for a job many Cornhusker fans thought he should have been given four years ago. Interim athletic director and former coach Tom Osborne announced Pelini's hiring Sunday, after introducing him to the players. "We need a head coach with strong defensive credentials and great leadership," Osborne said. "We were also looking for someone who can inspire confidence and get players to play with great effort. "And, of course, we also wanted our new head coach to understand our traditions, including the importance...

This year’s college football bowl pairings were released Sunday, and the last-place teams from the biggest conferences will be crying all the way to the bank. The top teams from the small conferences will be crying poverty. In NCAA Division I football, profits are higher for doormats from the six "major" conferences--Atlantic Coast, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-10 and Southeastern--than for champions from the five smaller conferences.

Ohio State remained the top team in the latest BCS standings that were released on Sunday. But if the Buckeyes take a look back over the shoulder, they'll see a familiar foe: Michigan. The Wolverines, boosted by a 20-6 home win over Iowa on Saturday, vaulted past idle USC in the new standings. It is the first time since Oct. 27, 2001 that the same conference has held the top two spots in the standings (Nebraska at No. 1 and Oklahoma at No. 2, both out of the Big 12). Meanwhile, West Virginia leapfrogged Auburn for the No. 4 spot...

We have the MPC Computers Bowl in Boise, ID pitting Boise State v. Boston College and The Alamo Bowl with Michigan v. Nebraska. Should be a fun day....

In 1986, the rock band Boston released its third album, Third Stage, which was the musical equivalent to Colorado's effort in the Big 12 Championship game a few weeks back. The '70s air-guitar heroes had released one of the greatest all-time debut albums in 1976 (Boston) and then followed it up two years later with a sophomore effort (Don't Look Back) that hadn't been equaled until Dwayne Jarrett's 4th-down catch in South Bend. But then the self-proclaimed "just another band out of Boston" took eight years off. And look what happened. Bowl teams can be like that. After taking as...

Columbus- Ohio State senior linebacker Bobby Carpenter does not know if he will play in the Fiesta Bowl after breaking his right fibula against Michigan. Speaking for the first time since the injury, Carpenter said Sunday he did not need surgery, but the 6-to-8 week recovery time puts the final game of his career on the edge of his timetable. The Fiesta Bowl will be played on Jan. 2, 44 days after the Buckeyes' 25-21 win over Michigan. Carpenter began walking without crutches only in the past few days, while still wearing a protective boot. He not only has the...

Another season of college football is just around the corner. As fans and players from Boston College to Hawaii gear up for the season, they will undoubtedly engage in casual discussion (or heated debate) some of the serious problems facing college football, especially Division I. Below is a list problems and suggested solutions. Media Relations: Commercial breaks during games have become obnoxious. The frequency and duration of television time outs has come to the point that they impact the game itself by stifling any momentum built by a team or enthusiasm built up in the crowd. The NCAA needs to...

IT'S enough to make you wonder why they insist on putting the seat down. A new survey shows 22 per cent of professional Australian women crouch or squat over the toilets in their workplaces rather than risk contact with the seats. And another 14 per cent - making more than a third of women overall - wipe the seat first, then crouch over the seat just to be safe. The survey, conducted by Initial Healthcare, gathered the responses of 200 women working in advertising agencies, publishing, finance, pharmaceutical and general business in Australia last month. Forty-six per cent of respondents...

Hopefully, AP's move will destroy BCS Now, coaches must also show integrity and pull out. COMMENTARY By Mike Celizic NBCSports.com contributor Updated: 12:42 p.m. ET Dec. 22, 2004 It took six seasons for the Associated Press to realize it was being used by an inherently flawed and unjust system. But at last it has disassociated itself from the BCS and its fraudulent national college football championship. advertisement We can only hope that this is the signal event that finally will trigger the collapse of the current bowl system and force the university presidents who have so zealously and wrong-headedly preserved...