John L. Smith, your bus out of East Lansing is gassed up and ready to go. . .

OK, the Notre Dame loss was bad, one of the worst things I’ve seen on a football field, but to follow it up with a home loss to ILLINOIS? I wish I was kidding, but unfortunately when I predicted that the Spartans’ season was over after falling apart in the Notre Dame game it appears I was 100% correct. To put this loss in perspective I’m going to give you a stat from the Illinois-Rutgers game earlier in the year. In that game Illinois was shut out, but even worse, they never made it across the 50 yard line into Rutgers territory. Now I know that Rutgers is much better than Rutgers is usually, but I’ve never heard of a Big Ten team not making it into enemy territory the ENTIRE GAME. So that should tell you how not good Illinois really is. Click the read more if you want to find out how bad the Michigan State Spartans really are.

That’s the Gamecocks I Was Expecting

    I was a little caught up in the debacle at Spartan Stadium on Saturday that I’m just now catching up on all the sports happenings from Saturday.  I was pleased to see that my South Carolina Gamecocks put a hurt on the proud Florida Atlantic Owls.  I realize that it is a victory over not a particularly intimidating football team but a 45-6 victory is impressive nonetheless. 

Way to get yours Reggie Bush

“Apparently” Reggie Bush and his family received $100,000 in benefits while he was still an “amateur” athlete at USC. You know what I say. . .more power to you Reggie. I’m fairly certain that 100k doesn’t even scratch the surface of how much money Reggie generated for the school, conference and the NCAA. I know all about the supposed evils of paying college athletes and a lot of them make sense. So while leaving out the bigger discussion of whether or not we should or shouldn’t pay college athletes and just give some props for Reggie getting his.

Fighting Gamecocks

Despite a very disappointing outing against what could only be categorized as a superior Georgia team the South Carolina Gamecocks proved they still have some fight in them. Well, at least starting QB Blake Mitchell did. Mitchell was arrested in the early hours of the morning today after a trip to a local watering hole. Mitchell was charged with simple assault which could either mean it was a bar fight or he decided to beat the shit out of a man with Down Syndrome. Albert Pujols’ representative was unavailable for comment, but we are sure he is outraged.

Don’t Sleep on the Gamecocks

For the second week in a row South Carolina has a primetime SEC match-up televised on ESPN (7:45 Eastern on the mothership). This is just another sign that South Carolina is a team on the rise. This is going to be a much tougher test for than last week for the Gamecocks but don’t let the 15 points scored against Mississippi State scare anyone of the Gamecocks’ bandwagon. Don’t think for a second that Spurrier was saving a few things for this week. He is that type of sneaky bastard that would sandbag against an inferior team like Mississippi State just to surprise the Bulldogs.

Here come the Gamecocks

After much deliberation and research I’ve decided on a College Football team to pour my heart and soul behind. Well maybe it’s not that serious but I’m at least going to root for them. I even reconsidered becoming a Michigan State Spartan fan, but after hearing that an MSU fan had the audacity to claim that Michigan had better potatoes than Idaho that door has closed for good. But for better or worse, in sickness and in health and for richer or poorer I’m attaching myself to the Gamecocks of South Carolina . . . at least for the confines of the college football season.

Oh damn, it’s go time.

College football officially starts today. The hell with Central Michigan having played a game on Thursday, no one really gives a damn about them. Today is the day where things begin to go down.

The day where Notre Dame gets beat, or at least Calvin Johnson makes an awesome one handed catch against them. One of the two. Marshall probably beats West Virginia, seeing as I called the Mountaineers a National Championship contender. Ohio State puts a hurt on Northern Illinois. My personal favorite, Drew Stanton starts his Heisman campaign against Idaho. Over/Under on how many weeks that one lasts this year? Probably 4ish. USC shows whether they are going to rebuild or reload.

The game of the day looks to be this California at Tennessee match. Cal is the higher ranked team coming in, and the Pac-10 team knocking off a big time SEC program on the road would certainly be fun.

The thing I want to happen most in College Football season (aside from PSU winning the National Title, MSU beating Notre Dame, Michigan losing a game in the last seconds to end an undefeated season) is Chris Leak to get off to a poor start with Florida. Maybe toss in an injury to get Tim Tebow some snaps. No way some dude who had a documentary on ESPN called “The Chosen One” is going to pan out. That is failure waiting to happen and here’s to hoping it goes down in the most entertaining manner possible.

Joboo College Football Preview: West Virginia Mountaineers

We started off this season preview talking about the Boise St. Broncos. We wanted to set the stage of this preview, which is essentially that we’re not going to write about it ALL, so we’ll try to write about what you aren’t going to hear about consistently.

So, why today is this preview about the West Virginia Mountaineers?

Because you haven’t been hearing about them enough. West Virginia is a contender for the National Championship, but you hear more about teams with no shot than you do about the Mountaineers. The main reason for that is fairly simple, this is a team that legit doesn’t get enough respect. A ton of teams talk about not getting respect. I’m sure if you interviewed all of the Notre Dame football players, at least 25% would talk about respect to the media. The Mountaineers have a legit complaint, though.

Joboo College Football Preview: Boise State

They play their football on a blue field…and that is why the Joboo College Football Preview begins in Boise, Idaho. Well, the other reason why Joboo is starting with the Boise State Broncos is that we realize we can’t preview ALL of the college football teams, so we’re going to try to give you previews of teams that you might not typically see a preview for. ESPN certainly isn’t going to give you much Boise State coverage, but, they’ve got Notre Dame covered.

Also, be sure to check out Ryan Doherty’s post about wanting to find a college football team to root for and toss in a suggestion.

Boise State Profile
Conference: WAC
2005 W/L Record: 9-3, 7-1…Tied for 1st in the WAC
Schedule Know-How: Their toughest Conference opponent will be Fresno State, and they have that game on the Blue. Also, their series with Pac-10 Oregon State is on the Blue as well.

College Football Team

Ok, here’s the deal. I’m taking suggestions for a college football team to follow, maybe for this season, maybe longer we’ll see how things pan out. In a lot of ways i think College football is superior to the NFL, but maybe most significantly in the connection the fans feel with the team. Unfortunately, I think I’ve been missing out on this aspect. So I’m asking for help on rectifying this situation.