Be safe out there everyone. I’ll be back on Sunday with my BCS bowl preview….

After a fairly sleepy start to the bowl season, with most of the favorites coming out on top, the last couple days have seen all hell break loose.

Underdog teams have won five of the last eight bowl games that have been played.

What’s more, there have been comebacks galore. Nebraska came from 11 down in the fourth to win, while Virginia rebounded from a 21-7 deficit and Missouri crawled back to win after being down 28-7.

Even the games that didn’t end up with the upset saw teams rally, as Arizona State squandered a late 12-point but hung on to beat Rutgers, Nevada nearly lost a solid lead against UCF, Northwestern blew a 22-point lead to UCLA and Boston College frittered away a 27-point lead over Boise State.

Before the bowl season started, I wrote that bowls are usually far more unpredictable than regular season games. Turns out that was one of the few predictions I have made of late that was dead on!

Bowl season is not only a nice reward for teams after a long season, but also a preview of coming attractions in the Heisman race.

A good performance in a bowl can go a long way toward providing that post-season publicity boost that often leads to more pre-season hype heading into the following season.

Matt Leinart’s MVP performance in the 2004 Rose Bowl put him on magazine covers and helped make him the Heisman favorite in the run-up to last season.

Vince Young’s superhuman feats in the 2005 Rose Bowl paved the way to him being a preseason favorite this season.

Assuming Young goes pro, the two main candidates for next season are Brady Quinn and Adrian Peterson.

Peterson plays against a top-10 Oregon team tonight. He’s had a quiet, injury-riddled season, but he has a chance to reintroduce himself to the nation tonight. If he pulls off a big game against the Ducks, it could lead to a lot of ‘Peterson Is Back!’ stories over the summer.

Quinn will play under a much bigger spotlight as he and Notre Dame go up against Ohio State in the Fiesta Bowl. If Quinn leads the Irish to a win over the Buckeyes, he will become an even heavier Heisman favorite for next season (he is already the front runner). You’ll see Quinn on all the big magazine covers and the majority of the buzz will be about his Heisman chances and the return of Notre Dame.

So while this year’s Heisman race is over, remember that the race for the 2006 trophy is just beginning.

Look for Adrian Peterson to go off against against the Ducks

Jeremy Hermanns was on an Alaska Airlines flight that lost air pressure. So what did he do? He took pictures and, when the plane landed safely, he went home and blogged about the experience.

Check it out.

Everybody do the Michigan Rag
Everybody likes the Michigan Rag
Every Mame and Jane and Ruth
From Weehawken to Duluth
Slide, ride, glide the Michigan
Stomp, romp, pomp the Michigan
Jump, clump, pump the Michigan Rag
That lovin’ rag!

–Michigan J. Frog, Looney Tunes

Oh, what it must be like to be a Michigan fan right now.

As for me, I was once again sucked in, seduced by Michigan when I picked the Wolverines to romp over what is, well, a pretty poor Nebraska team.

I should have listened to one of my friends, who told me before the season that Michigan can’t seem to beat anyone by more than four points…but can’t find a way to lose by more than four either.

Sure enough, Michigan was involved in seven games this year decided by four points or less and lost four of them. I suppose the Wolverines could easily have been a 9-3 or 10-2 team. But then, they could also be 4-7, too.

Michigan is easily a top five talent team in the country year in and year out, so of course it is easy to get seduced by Maize ‘n Blue’s potential. Surely, I thought, the Wolverines–who after all played in the nation’s best conference this season–would be able to handle a Nebraska squad that played in a lousy conference, that got smashed by hapless Kansas by 25, that squeaked by a lousy Kansas State team and whose marquee win this season was over a Colorado team that is to this day still giving up yards and points to Texas.

But then, I forgot about, or chose to ignore, the Lloyd Carr factor. I forgot that Carr is in that grand fraternity of coaches that includes Phil Fulmer and Mack Brown, a group that has oodles of talent at its disposal and, every year, seems to somehow fritter it away. Does that mean that on occasion the talent doesn’t come together to do something special? No. Carr won a title and so did Fulmer. Brown–who proved himself to be one point better than Carr in last season’s Rose Bowl–may win his this year.

But Carr has really outdone himself with this loss. Can he keep his job with this performance? How much more of this can Michigan fans take?

Michigan is the only team in the country that quits when it is ahead, as the Wolverines held an 11-point fourth-quarter lead against the Huskers and promptly decided to stop playing. Oh, that’s wrong. Some of the team decided to get involved in that hilarious almost-like-Cal-vs.-Stanford lateral fest on the game’s final play.

But, Michigan doesn’t do plays like that. The Wolverines don’t do miracles. Miracles happen to other teams who play them, like Colorado and Kordell Stewart, or the countless kooky Notre Dame wins over Michigan. The Wolverines are always victims, the masters of losing because of bad officiating. They are the nameless, faceless, unfeeling team in the football movie that gets beat by the underdog, much to the audience’s delight.

I have learned my lesson, finally. As long as Carr is the coach, I will never pick Michigan to win another game.

Thank God my lot in life wasn’t to blog about that team, or I would be having a nervous breakdown about now.

Good story here by former coach John Mackovic on the spread offense and how it allows teams without much talent to be successful.

However, there is an offense being used today by many teams that is far exceeding the hopes of many teams and their fans to challenge anybody. The Spread offense is by far the most exciting and productive offense being employed in the college game, and you can see it in almost every bowl game. Even the teams that use a more traditional offense such as USC have incorporated spread elements in their attack….Teams using the spread have now become capable of matching points with superior opponents when they do not have enough strength on defense to stop their foes. How can a team like Northwestern give up 483 yards per game and 32.5 points per game (357 total) and still win seven games? Of the 117 Division 1A football teams, where did the Wildcats end up in the final NCAA football statistics for total defense? You guessed it 117. Before the spread, coach Randy Walker would be out of a job. Now he and his 7-4 team are headed to the Sun Bowl to play UCLA on Friday.

What Mackovic writes here is basically much of what I’ve been trying to get across all along with regards to the latest trendy offenses in college football, exemplified at this site by a group of teams I called the Gang of Six. Unfortuntately, many seemed to think that these teams were supposed to go undefeated or something, that by highlighting them I was saying that they were unbeatable. Others thought I was saying that no other schools had innovative systems or didn’t utilize elements of the spread or whatever system they thought I was talking about. In reality, the reason I singled them out is they struck me as the best current examples of teams that had utilized some unique offensive schemes to make themselves not only better than they would have been otherwise, but also dominant in select cases.

Just as Mackovic pointed out about Northwestern overachieving, there’s no way Boise State dominates the WAC the way it has without the system it has in place. The Broncos finished a disappointing 9-4 this year, but the fact that a nine-win season is a letdown for a program from Idaho is a testament to how far their system has taken them. USC has a ton of talent, but without its system, it doesn’t win 34 straight by an average margin of 26 points. Without its offensive scheme, Notre Dame doesn’t go from an underachieving squad to a BCS team. Because of its system, Cal managed to stay afloat at 7-4 (almost 9-2) with a quarterback who could barely throw the ball. Florida was hardly a huge offensive success in the SEC this year, but a closer look at the history of Meyer’s system reveals that year two has always been when the real impact is made. So the jury is still out there.

Whatever the case, it’s clear that much of the innovation in college football right now is happening on the offensive side of the ball. The result will be corresponding changes in defenses, recruiting and conference power structures. It will be interesting to see what kind of changes are in store for college football as a result.

Here’s some thoughts on what’s going on in college football this Christmas Eve:

–First off, I’m very disappointed for my fans, my family and my city that I didn’t win the 2005 Weblog Award. I’m just basically emotionally upset about that. It gives me a little more of an edge to go out there and blog now.

–Well, I am off to a 2-1 start in my bowl predictions. I nailed the Cal win (off by just a point) and also had Navy over CSU (though not by that much). Only loss so far came after I picked Houston. Boy, do the Cougars have a bad defense or what?

Update as of Dec. 28: My bowl record is now at 4-4, but man, some of those games were close. I nailed the ASU score, but a late Rutgers TD ruined the cover. I reluctantly picked Boise, who lost a heartbeaker to Boston College. Nevada blew a late lead. Could easily be 7-1 against the spread (I am 6-2 picking straight-up winners). Crazy, crazy bowls (but what fun).

–The talk is heating up about USC and whether it deserves the moniker of ‘greatest team ever.’ Some writers are saying that we should wait until after the Rose Bowl until making that statement. But then, what ever happened to going out on a limb? If USC beats Texas, then even the bums on LA’s skid row will be able to figure out that the Trojans were among the best ever. The reason experts get paid good money is to clue us in on these things before they actually happen. Sadly, most of them try their best to get on all sides of the issue, saying things like: “I think USC will beat Texas, but then I wouldn’t be surprised if the Longhorns win either.” This year’s award for wishy-washiness goes to a writer from ESPN, who picks USC to win but writes: I believe that the Big 12 champion will actually show up this year, making this a potential classic. There should be no shortage of offense and no shortage of drama. By gametime I might be picking Texas.

That’s the kind of analysis my grandma gives and she can’t even see the TV clearly. More media picks here.

–Speaking of USC, there seems to still be an element out there that doesn’t think the Trojans are going for their third-straight title. No, they are not Japanese soldiers stuck out on an island off of Sumatra, but some real, live journalists. And of course, the LSU Tigers themselves. Other writers, like Pete Fiutak of Collegefootballnews.com, also tried to tout this line of thinking in the past year but gave it up after it quickly became apparent how untenable it was.

It really boils down to this, straight from the BCS website:

2003
For the only time since the BCS was formed, there is a split national champion. LSU finishes atop the coaches’ poll by beating Oklahoma in the Sugar Bowl in a pairing of the top two teams in the BCS Standings. USC, ranked first in both polls on Bowl Selection Sunday, is left out of the BCS championship game when the Trojans finish third in the BCS standings. But USC wins the Associated Press’ championship after beating Michigan in the Rose Bowl. Oklahoma, which spent the season as the top-ranked team in both polls, earns a spot in the Sugar Bowl by finishing first in the final BCS Standings even though the Sooners lose to Kansas State in the Big 12 championship game. LSU, the SEC champion, edges USC for second place in the final BCS Standings to advance to the Sugar Bowl. The Result: A split decision: LSU finishes atop the coaches’ poll; USC is No. 1 in the Associated Press poll.

Got it? There are no half national titles. Both USC and LSU won the national title in 2003. They were co-champions, which is one reason both were invited to the White House. The BCS decides the winner of the Coaches Poll, something the BCS itself admits to in the above text from its own website. So USC is going for its third national title in a row. Case closed.

–Entertaining write up here by HP prodigal son Solon on his bowl picks. We think Solon is a little too engrossed in stats–see his ranking of Ohio State as the No. 2 passing offense in the country, for instance–but he’s had a pretty good season thus far. In fact, he’s at a 58% clip on the year, just like HP. Happy Holidays, ol’ boy.

–Who is an All-American anyway? According to the NCAA, there are only five teams that count: AP, Football Coaches, Football Writer’s, Sporting News and Walter Camp. That doesn’t stop some programs from touting their players as All-Americans, even though their only honor might have come from a list made by some guys hiding out in a basement. Last year, UCLA touted Spencer Havner as an All-American, even though the only team he made was comprised by CBS Sportsline.com (basically, the Dennis Dodd squad). This year, USC calls Sam Baker an All-American, even though he too only made the Dodd Squad. Other schools call a player an All-American if he made the Rivals.com or Collegefootballnews.com team. When will it stop, with the HP team? Are these guys really All-Americans? Not according to the NCAA.

–Of course, there are no offensive linemen on the HP All-American team. I don’t pick offensive linemen because I have no way of knowing who is the best. And neither does anyone else. And here’s a another good reason not to pick offensive linemen.

Ryan O’Callaghan, Cal’s 6-foot-7, 345-pound senior, was recently named the winner of the Morris Trophy as the Pac-10′s best offensive lineman. Shortly after that honor was bestowed, The Associated Press announced its All-America first, second and third teams. O’Callaghan was passed over on all three, while USC offensive linemen Taitusi Lufui and Sam Baker were named to the second and third teams, respectively. O’Callaghan, a two-time All-Pac 10 player, also noticed three Texas offensive linemen were chosen by AP ? Jonathan Scott on the first team, and Justin Blalock and Will Allen on the third.

The fact is, O’Callaghan probably deserved to be on a team. But the people who vote on these squads–usually sportswriters–know as much about offensive line play as they do about sub-atomic particles. So, instead of doing their research and finding who are really the best players-really an impossible task, given the numbers–they pick names of guys who are supposed to be good. Is O’Callaghan better than Marcus McNeil? He may be. But there’s no way to quantify it. So, we end up with darts on a dartboard instead.

–The story of the year, according to the Aspen Times Sports section?

No, the best sports story of 2005 is the one where the self-confident American conquers the peaks of Europe to win his sport’s most treasured prize. Arguably the toughest prize to win in all of sport, right up there with the one another cocky American won last July in Paris. Last March, after five months of racing in nine different countries, Bode Miller did something only one American man had ever done before him – win alpine skiing’s coveted World Cup overall title.

Now you know.

–I’m getting closer to formulating my final thoughts on the upcoming Rose Bowl, currently being billed as the greatest matchup since last year’s Orange Bowl. For a clue on which way my thought process is going, read this column about Vegas handicapper Patrick Bartucci, who says that Texas and its Big 12 Conference counterparts play a “slower, more primitive brand of football” than the Trojans and their Pac-10 opponents. Along that line, here’s one thing I think may be key: Looking at Texas’ schedule, they didn’t play a single team that utilizes the tight end with much effectiveness. Since the Longhorn defense is an aggressive, attacking group, I think this gives USC an opening to use its tight ends a LOT in this game. The position with the usual responsibility to handle the tight end is the strong safety, in this case Texas’ Michael Huff. But Huff is used more as an extra linebacker than a true strong safety and, anyway, he appears to want to shadow Reggie Bush all game (how would one do that anyway?). Can a player like Huff, who plays up near the line of scrimmage much of the time, be ready to run with Dominique Byrd and Fred Davis? Or will he bite on play fakes and get caught in no man’s land? Oklahoma wasn’t ready for USC’s tight ends. Will Texas be ready? This could be a key to the game. Stay tuned.