First, the NFL football guide. Who cares. Watch whatever you want. They are mostly a bunch of criminals and spoiled brats anyway, but at least with helmets on you can mostly avoid looking at their faces.
Okay, now that the NFL is out of the way, we can get to what we all really care about - NCAA Football. Here's some guidelines for watching NCAA Football.
- The SEC is the definition of football. Auburn. Arkansas. Tennessee. Florida. South Carolina. LSU. Alabama. Georgia. Ole Miss. This conference always seems to have at least one title contender. Can you just imagine trying to go undefeated in conference play in the SEC? Any SEC game is a good one.
- Generally avoid any PAC-10 matchup if you can help it. The PAC-10 is the most overrated conference in all of football, and watching it will cause you to erroneously think that those teams are really good. With the exception of USC, most of them are not as good as everyone seems to think (witness the recent 35-18 rout of #23 Tennessee over #9 Cal last Saturday). Exception: watching a real conference destroy a PAC-10 "opponent" is good fun.
- Notre Dame games are usually a good bet. With their high-profile TV contract, these guys usually draw a great opponent every week, from all across the country. And with Charlie Weis directing things for the next 10 seasons, this really good team will only get better.
- Other good football conferences are the Big 10 and the Big XII. The ACC is okay, and the Big East is overrated - but not nearly so much as the PAC-10.
A couple of other pointers. First, a BYU-Notre Dame matchup is usually good fun. BYU likes to make this into a "religious war" of sorts. I don't think Notre Dame really views it that way. The facts are, Notre Dame is usually orders of magnitude better than BYU, so they usually win, which causes many BYU fans a bit of consternation.
Actually, any game where BYU will probably be destroyed is generally a lot of fun.
Outside of that, don't concern yourself much with any conferences west of the Rockies. The PAC-10 is overrated, as I said, but at least they can blame the stupid media for that. The MWC and the WAC, however - well, they overrate their own selves. Nobody else thinks they are that good. There are some obvious exceptions (Utah in 2004 for example), but one good team does not a conference make (USC and the PAC-10 for example).
Don't concern yourself with the Utah State game, if it is even on TV. Sadly, my alma mater is pathetic at football. If you are cheering for USU, you will just become frustrated; if not, you run the risk of witnessing an embarrassing upset if the improbable should happen.
Bottom line, stick to the SEC, Notre Dame, and key Big 10 and Big XII matchups and you will have a very satisfying season of college football.
Predictions? Well, what do I know? Nothing. I'm not a sportscaster. But hey, they seem pretty clueless also - after all, they are the ones who keep saying that the PAC-10 is good!
I won't name teams. I'll just say the following - this is how it SHOULD be:
First - if any SEC team goes undefeated, they deserve a national title shot. They have the toughest conference in all of football (including NFL, excluding possibly the AFC West).
Second - if Notre Dame goes undefeated, they also deserve a national title shot. They play top teams from many different conferences, having to adjust to many different styles of offense and defense. Tough.
Lacking that, my guess is that the national champion will be the conference champion from either the Big 10 or the Big XII.
Of course what we might get is another matchup against USC, since it is much easier to run the table in the PAC-10. Which will be fine in one sense, in that we get to watch them lose again. But it will also mean that another deserving team gets shut out (think Auburn and Utah 2004), which is a problem.
