The Sports Nerd: Lists, Rants, and Other Nerdisms: More Football and More Marvel Madness

College football kicks off in only two days and sitting at home on my day off without football to keep me company is really, really hard right now, because I know that come Saturday I'll be at work missing a bunch of games.

That being siad, with kickoff dedicated television available all day long on ESPNU, I am happy with how I spent my day.

To recap some of the posting over the last few weeks, here is my top 25.
25. South Florida
24. Tulsa
23. Texas
22. Arizona State
21. Michigan
20. Georgia
19. TCU
18. Michigan State
17. Stanford
16. Ohio State
15. Nebraska
14. Virginia Tech
13. Texas A&M
12. West Virginia
11. Arkansas
10. Wisconsin
9. Notre Dame
8. South Carolina
7. Oklahoma State
6. Boise State
5. Oregon
4. Alabama
3. Florida State
2. LSU
1. Oklahoma

That is the top 25 I posted, after some unfortunate training camp events, I would ammend that and drop LSU and Arkansas each 3-5 spots because of the losses of Jordan Jefferson and Knile Davis. With that exception, I am comfortable with the way it looks.

5 Things Things You Need to Know About The Upcoming Season

1. At least three teams will finish unbeaten
People can argue and debate the merits of the BCS system to determine a national champion but as long as more than two teams finish undefeated in a season, people will not be happy with the current system. The last two seasons have seen more three and five teams left unbeaten respectively, and an undefeated team has been left out of the title game for five years running now. This year, I am picking Florida State, Oregon, and Boise State to finish unbeaten, and the system will look broken again, Alabama has a great chance to be a fourth. You know how this song plays out, Boise State watches the title game.

2. Andrew Luck will not win the Heisman Trophy
To win the most prestigious award in college football, there are two things that have to happen. First, your team has to be in the national title, or at least the BCS race. Second, you have to statiscally be one of the best three players in your position among BCS conferences. Andrew Luck is a great quarterback and has all the potential in the world to be a great NFL player. However, statisically speaking, last year Andrew Luck was not one of the top three players at his position. Luck was a Heisman finalist because of how great his team was. This year, I don't believe there is any chance Stanford contends for a national title, no matter how great Luck is, he can not win games by himself and his team lost a ton of talent from a year.

3. The winner of the SEC East will be decided in week two.
The SEC East in my opinion is a two team race. Georgia and South Carolina are by far the two best teams in this conference. Now South Carolina, should be a much better team, but Georgia has serious scheduling advantadge. The Bulldogs get to skip Alabama, Arkansas, and LSU from the West this year. So if they beat South Carolina in week two, they will have to lose two games against Ole Miss, Miss. State, Auburn, Tennessee, Kentucky, Vanderbilt, and Florida without a South Carolina loss to lose the division. Now the Bulldogs are far from perfect, they'll drop one of those, but I don't know about two. Whoever wins this game has an enormous leg on the rest of the season. The Boise State game is big but for Georgia, the season will be defined by what happens a week later.

4. The Big Ten will be the best conference championship race in football
I'll make no debate that the SEC is the deepest conference in the land but at the top it's really a two team race between Alabama and LSU. In the Big Ten you could give about half of the conference a realistic chance to win the conference. Ohio State, Wisconsin, and Nebraska are getting all the hype but all of these teams have issues either in personel (Ohio State, Wisconsin) or in big game success (Nebraska). Michigan State, Michigan, Penn State, Northwestern, and Iowa all have enough talent to contend of the big three have some slip-ups.

5. Controversy will rule the season once again
A lot of writers are saying that after a long offseason, mired in scandal ofter scandal, the season will finally put it all to rest. I laugh at that proposition. It was during the season last year when the scandals at North Carolina and Auburn peaked and the scandal at Ohio State started. Add in the investigations that have also happened at Georgia Tech, Miami, Boise State, and Oregon, and you have seven major programs under scrutiny in under a year. Those numbers, along with the stand-by opinion of "it's not that these are the only places this is happening, it's just where it is getting caught" and I'd be hard pressed to buy that more won't come out this year. I won't speculate about who it will be, but I suspect you will hear about a minimum of three more investigations start bt bowl season.

Also, the following will continue to be true.......