11 College Football Predictions For Aught Seven

1. At the end of the year, Brandon Coutu will have been the Bulldogs most important player, and he will walk off into the sunset {and NFL} with the Lou Groza award. I've mentioned it before, but if he doesn't go down injured a few games into the season it is very likely that the close losses to Vandy & Kentucky, where multiple field goals/extra points were missed, are close wins, and UGA finishes last year reg season 10-2 and ranked in the top 10 instead of a somewhat disappointing 8-4. Anyway, dude is beyond money {platinum? gold?} and has plenty of length to boot {pun intended}: multiple 50+ yarders on the resume already. Basically he doesn't miss, unless there is a fuckup with the snap, hold, or blocking, none of which have much to do with his abilities as a kicker. As long as there are no lingering effects of his leg injury last year, he is going to be the man this season.


{to the Davy Crockett theme}
"Bran-donnn, Brannn-don Coutu!
King Of The Long Field Goal!"

2. Two teams in the top 10 as of today will finish unranked. Now if only I knew which 2 they were, then I'd be onto something...

3. Mid majors trying to get into the BCS discussion will try to shoot par whenever possible. "Par? What do you mean Kanu?" I mean holy shit, did you see Louisville shoot 1 over par last night {Louisville 73-10 Murray State}? Prime candidates for this are Boise and Hawaii, but as it develops anyone with the wherewithal and opportunity will do it, rather than pack it in and take knees, in an effort to grab attention from the "look: shiny!!!" types in the mainstream media who tend to determine such things as "the narrative", rankings, and who the alleged best player in the land is {read: getting all worked up about an overhyped popularity contest that is the Heisman trophy}.

4. Speaking of the narrative... Boise State was such a media darling of a cinderella story last year when they got into the Fiesta Bowl and beat Oklahoma in Hollywood movie fashion, that I GUARANTEE that ESPN will start out fellating Boise and Hawaii, but after 4-5 weeks they will latch on to whatever team looks like they will have the best shot at sitting at the big boy table this year {be it Boise, Hawaii, or someone else, meaning they will drop Boise and/or Hawaii like a hot rock if they lose}, and they will latch onto them and shove them down our collective throats so much that by mid November everyone will hate that team and want them to lose just so we can stop seeing endless special reports from Shelley Smith or whomever they send out to set up shop on campus and overexpose that team to everyone's annoyance {see: ESPN 2005, creating a nation of haters against SC when in reality it wasn't SC they hated but they way they were covered by big media, in this case ESPN. For further reading see: Tiger Woods, and his legion of haters who don't even really hate him but rather the media over-coverage of him}.

5. Speaking of the "WorldWide Leader", they will exploit the Virginia Tech tradgedy for ratings early and often. Don't think this is a one off, where they changed the site of GameDay and their focus for the 1st weekend from Cal-Tennessee to Blacksburg and then it's business as usual. Rather, this will go on and on throughout the season, and the better they do, the more it will intensify. Now that Bonds has surpassed Aaron, we might be getting Pedro Gomez special reports from Blacksburg on the regular. No disrespect at all to the VT family, but the exploitation of this by ESPN {and surely others will follow to a lesser extent} for ratings and getting casual sports non hardcore football fans to tune in, is sad. Not quite Faux News sad, but certainly in that same neighborhood. Someone on a comment thread over at I think PWD's house back when the GameDay switch was announced said it best, and I'm paraphrasing: "this is like your mom dying of cancer, and then a year later after you have started to heal and try to move on with your life some asshole coming up and rehashing the whole thing by saying 'hey, man, remember last year when your mom died? That sucked.' "

6. A coach will lose his job this season because of off the field impropriety caught on camera and published on Youtube or a similar site. In other words, someone is going to do something really stupid and get busted, a shitstorm will ensue, and he will either be fired or resign: the college football version of macaca if you will. Hell, Gary Moeller getting canned at Michigan for a drunken outburst in a public restaurant was in 1990, and ISU hoops coach Larry Eustachy's drunken reveling at a frat party after an AWAY game was in the internet era but pre Youtube, so it's only a matter of time. Might not be at a big time school, might be DII or DIII, but it will happen.

7. There will be some sort of legal incident arising from the mass of people behind the College GameDay set this season. You're already starting out with a mass of very intoxicated and amped up people with contrarian allegiances crammed into a relatively small space, which is always a recipe for interesting things to happen. The last few years have seen the pushing of the envelope, and each time this just encourages people to push a little further. Most famous was the Georgia fan with the "Lee Corso Is A Penis" cocktail party accoutrement sign. I'm not sure exactly what form this will take, whether it will be an FCC shitstorm a la Janet's SuperBowl titty over something seen in the background {nakedness\sex\obscene signage\other}, or whether someone will get seriously injured from falling or a drunken brawl or whatnot and sue the other parties, ESPN, the host school, Home Depot, and the company that makes Fowler's hair product. I really don't give much of a shit, since I don't even watch the botched abortion that the show has become much anymore; I'm much more informed and entertained by the weekly writeups by the great LD.

8. Speaking of great writeups, Phil Steele's News & Notes column will once again be the best weekly column in all of college football, JAMPACKED WITH INFORMATION that you won't find anywhere else.


The awesomeness of Phil Steele is beyond words.
The awesomeness of Phile Steele rocking Georgia gear
is beyond words to the power of beyond words.

9. Arkansas will be the most entertaining team to watch, both on {Wildcat formation rulzz!!1!1!!} and off the field. I'm just bummed that the sun-saluter of a yogini punter they had last year has graduated.


Gone but not forgotten.

10. The BCS Championship will cause mondo controversy, as the odds of two and only two unbeatens from major conferences is so remote when compared to all of the other scenarios. Duh. I am aware that this is the shortest little twig of a limb that one could ever go out on {I suppose saying Orson Swindle will be funny or that The Mayor will be verbose is even less daring}, but it's still worth mentioning.

11. Both Doug and myself will make it through the season without smashing the fuck out of something.

On second thought, scratch that last one. Some random household item in Birmingham or San Francisco is likely getting fucking destroyed this year.