Ahh, New Year’s Day is here with a full slate of great games headlined by the much-hyped Rose Bowl. Speaking of the hype, wow, the ABC/ESPN machine really went after it in the past couple days, huh? How about that coundown to the Rose Bowl running on ESPN? I told the gang here I wish they’d do that for every Michigan game. As far as the game, I’m thinking Michigan will have a little too much for J.D. Booty and the Trojans and will win a tight one: 26-20. The keys? Getting pressure on Booty and containing Jarrett. It’s been so long since the Ohio State game and I’m looking forward to seeing David Harris fly around the field and see what trouble Woodley and Branch can cause up front. Prescott Burgess is completely healthy and it’ll be interesting to see his impact. Here’s some more New Year’s Day predictions for you, against the spread: Wisconsin +2 over Arkansas Tennessee -4 over Penn State Nebraska +1.5 over Auburn Georgia Tech +9 over West Virginia Oklahoma -8 over Boise State
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Desmond Howard’s Holiday Bowl
UPDATE 12/22: This really isn’t going away. The nerd-o-sphere is all over Howard (rightly so). Check out these comments from one of the top blogs, Deadspin
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Piling On
The biggest cliche during week one of the bowl season was to dog Oregon’s uniforms. Fine, here you go:
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Onion Sports: Bowl Game Gifts
I grabbed a copy of the fake news newspaper, The Onion, while in Minneapolis this week. There were some real classic articles in the Onion Sports section. Check out some lines from an Onion “Sportsgraphic”, higlighting some of the gifts that are awarded to this year’s bowl participants: Sugar Bowl: In keeping with college-football tradition, Notre Dame and LSU will receive different gifts of equivalent value: Each Notre Dame player will receive a 2007 Saturn Sky roadster, a PlayStation 3, and a video iPod; the LSU team will receive an autographed football signed by the entire 2006 Notre Dame Squad. Liberty Bowl: Upon satisfactory conclusion of the game, participants will be given the most precious gift of all—–liberty. Rose Bowl: USC and Michigan players will follow trails of rose petals to their locker rooms. Upon entering the changing area, they will find the rooms lit by the flames of 1,000 red candles and filled with string-quartet music and hundreds of bouquets of roses; both teams will then slowly begin tearing up as bowl officals present them with engagement rings.
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Gary vs. Herbie on 1270 WXYT
Check out this post on the king of Michigan blogs, Brian at mgoblog. He presents the audio clips from WXYT’s interviews with Gary Danielson and Kirk Herbstreit back to back. Danielson actually admits that he would have taken just about any other conference champion over Michigan.
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On the Coaches
It is really odd how college football gives the some power to the coaches to determine the structure of the post season. Can you imagine another sports league where this would be acceptable? What if the NFL coaches voted on wildcard teams [would Bill Belichick leave the Jets off his ballot]? It’s silly, but I guess no sillier than allowing members of the media to vote to determine the worthy team or the computer system. So the system it what it is and the college coaches had a major say in sending Florida to the big game. Here’s my take on some of the coaches and their votes (or lack thereof):