Adieu

College football wraps up tonight with the championship game between Louisiana State and the Ohio State University, a game in which the Bayou Bengals are favored by four points (at last check). Frankly, for me, I'm ready to see football go away. This year has just been kind of bad all over...unless you're a fan of the Ohio State or LSU, I guess. Even these teams have had their high and low points this season. The BCS, itself, needs this to be a good game, since most of the other high profile bowl games have been either bad games (VT/Kansas) or games where the outcome was known pretty much from the kick off (Georgia/Hawai'i, USC/Illinois). Personally, I'm not sure which it's going to be.

The Buckeyes were, of course, in this same position last year...with one less loss and a Heisman quarterback behind center. We all know what happened, so no need to repeat it here. A lot of people seem to think that the same will happen again, since LSU supposedly has a lot of "team speed" and OSU's quarterback isn't nearly as mobile as Troy Smith was last year. However, I think one thing that everyone is overlooking is Jim Tressel. The Sweatervest is a good coach, and pretty smart, as well. Yeah, OSU got beat bad last year by Florida's faster defense. I'm pretty sure Tressel has heard that a few (thousand) times since last January, and will have prepared his team appropriately.

The one problem that Ohio State might have issues with is that it's been 52 days since their last game. 52 days. That's over seven weeks. That's almost two months. That's a long damned time to sit and prepare for a game. A ridiculous amount of time, but that's the flawed system we're under now. Get to play for the national championship...and wait. Wait wait wait. I think it's unfair for the teams that have to play in the national championship game (LSU has had about five weeks of watching film, themselves) to wait this amount of time to play. It's almost like starting a fresh season, and only playing one game.

To that end, I think that Tressel will have his players prepared and hungry after last year. Despite this being a home game for LSU (does LSU play a bowl game anywhere outside of Louisiana? It just always seems like they're either in New Orleans or Shreveport or something), I think that the SweaterVest will prevail. Ohio State 27, LSU 24.

In other news...
Yes, Notre Dame does have a top class coming in this year, which is pretty cool, since, you know, they shat the bed this year. Picking up Deion Walker was a nice land from this past weekend, and took a little of the sting out of the defection of Omar Hunter. Fortunately, Hunter was not our only nose guard recruit for this class, though he most likely was the best of the crop (and is one of the best defensive linemen in the country). Plus, he was a bit of a bonus recruit. Hopefully, there is enough time left in the recruiting period (signing day is in February) to fill in any gaps left by defections.

The thing that...I dunno...disgusts? angers? disappoints?...me is that this is the second year in a row that Florida has yanked a recruit out from under the Irish. The nice thing is, this seems like not only a good, talented class, but also a very cohesive class. They're all friends, and a lot of the other players were suprised by Hunter's defection. Hopefully this means lots of good things for the future of the program, as it will leave fewer years like this past year (7 seniors) in the offing. The other thing is, it's nice to see that, despite having the worst season in the history of the program, the coaching staff could still assemble a good, talented class to help fill in the depth chart left decimated in the wake of You-Know-Who that seems wholly and totally committed to playing for the Blue and Gold.