It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year.

Do you smell that? It is the scent of hamburgers and hot dogs roasting on an open flame. Beautiful isn’t it? College football will be upon us soon. Cheerleaders, marching bands, drunken students and alumni, stadium traditions, and two teams battling on the gridiron. I get a warm and fuzzy feeling just thinking about it.

This leads to yet another round of college football pool, a game that vexed me terribly last year. To my defense I only had 20 minutes to research teams as I didn’t expect to play. Pick one team from every conference and a wildcard. Count up the number of wins during the season, conference championships, and bowl games. If you have the most number of wins, you win. Victory is life! I performed research this year. I wrote out a spreadsheet of every team with my predicted records. I had the number one pick baby!

My #1 was Ohio State, a legitimate threat to go 12-0 this year. Normally I would despise the Buckeyes, but I’ll root for them this year. Besides, my beloved Boilermakers will not play Ohio State this year so I can be generous with my affections. I had the last pick of Round #2 and the first pick of Round #3. I believe I picked up California (I have them at 11-1, and professionals believe a 10-2 team.) and Oklahoma (I have them at 11-1 with Athlon Sports picking them as the #1 undefeated team and SI saying 9-3.). It was either the end of Round #4 or maybe in my back-to-back Round 2-3 pick that I snared a potential 10-2 Navy team as my wildcard. Perhaps Round #4 was the Oklahoma pick as most of my companions were using Sports Illustrated predictions and a few 9 win teams are still in Round #4. A run was started on the SEC and ACC so Big 12 was ignored for a bit allowing the Sooners to drop a little if I recall correctly. With luck I have four 10-win minimum teams in my pool and a potential 9 win University of Central Florida team from Conference-USA. C-USA has one or two pretty good teams that can hang with the big boys!

Of course they’ll need to make up for a likely bomb in Idaho (WAC), Central Michigan (MAC and at least I didn’t pick Buffalo this year!), and depending on who you listen to a Wake Forest team that’ll tank on me (SI has them at 4-8, but AthlonSports were thumbs up on Wake Forest so I predicted 8-4.).

Unless a few teams melt I will not embarrass myself this year. Yet competence isn’t good enough for this year. I want to win! This is FOOTBALL! In the spirit of this most glorious game I only want total victory!

I love the smell of victory and hamburgers in the morning.

PS: Can someone out there explain to me why Midget Lover picked Vanderbilt IN THE FIRST ROUND!?!? I’m sorry if you’re a ‘Mores fan, but Vandy is a 3-4 win team max. If you’re picking a SEC team in the first round Auburn (my almost #1 pick), LSU, Florida, or Georgia are the teams to pick.

Also very interesting was a move that may prove to be merely the second stupidest move of the day by Father Of The Year: he picked LA-Lafayette out of the Sun Belt in the first round as well. They were 6-5 last year and the only Sun Belt team to finish above .500! I too predict LA-Lafayette to be the pick of the Sun Belt as well this year I believe 7-5 to be reasonable. Yet a First Round pick was wasted on a Sun Belt team and I believe the beer was still running around FOTY’s bald and waterlogged head. I’m not going to share FOTY’s stupidest move of the day since you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. I’m serious you would think I made it up.

Ummmm….football is almost back baby!