NCAA Football Round-Up; Notre Dame vs the SEC for the Title
The Crimson Tide will need to bottle up the Bulldogs for a shot at Notre Dame.
Ok, you can admit it. You’re in a catch-22 of epic proportions because you’ll be damned if another Southeastern Conference school is going to win another BCS Title right? Throw in the fact that you hate Notre Dame more than you hate the person who told you Santa wasn’t real right? Well my friends get ready for the “I don’t care who wins because I’m screwed anyway” National Championship game.
I know, there are many of you out there who are dying to spread your pro-SEC biases and there are many of you who have dreamed of this day in South Bend since Lou Holtz hung’em up 20 years ago so this is your game whether the rest of us like it or not. The Fighting Irish won as they so often have all year by playing solid defense and smart, fundamental offense in beating USC this past weekend. You can’t argue how and you can’t argue against who because the Irish did what every team sets out to do and that’s go undefeated. Congrats to the Golden Domers out there.
The other side of the BCS Title game bracket will either be Alabama or Georgia. Florida, Oregon and K-State had their chances but complain they will to no avail. Whoever wins the SEC Title in Atlanta this weekend will punch their ticket to Miami. The down-side? The loser in this one could fall as far as the Chick-fil-A Bowl in the same stadium they’ll be in on Saturday.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the Ohio State Buckeyes who if they were eligible, would be in the Big Ten Title game against Nebraska this weekend. Unfortunately, the Bucks will be home but they beat rival Michigan which was as much a bowl game to this squad as anything else. Anyone else find it odd though that the Horseshoe crowd gave Jim Tressel a standing ‘O’ while they celebrated their 2002 national championship team? I mean, if he hadn’t left, they wouldn’t have Urban Meyer and probably wouldn’t have been unbeaten but oh well…
Key Conference Title Games
Lynch and Huskies can prevent Kent State from a possible BCS bid in the MAC Championship.
MAC Title Game – Northern Illinois (-5)Â at Kent State – Believe it or not, if UCLA falls in the Pac-12 Title Game and the Golden Flashes win this one, they very well could be headed to the BCS and most likely the Orange Bowl. All they need to do is finish one place higher at #16 and they’d qualify and no one is rooting harder than me. With that said, Huskies’ QB Jordan Lynch will have a hole lot to say about that. If Lynch played for an AQ school he’d be a Heisman front-runner. I like the Huskies to win outright over Kent this week.
PAC-12 Title Game- UCLA at Stanford (-8.5)Â – A rematch of last week’s big win for the Cardinal and further proof that one does not need to run the spread to be dominant. Stanford completely dominated the Bruins on the ground by a margin of 221-73 and I don’t really think that will change much this week as the site shifts northward to Palo Alto. While I think the Bruins play better, the Cardinal will still win and cover.
SEC Title Game – Georgia vs Alabama (-7.5) – It’s this simple, whomever wins this game goes to the BCS Title game to play Notre Dame. QB Aaron Murray of Georgia has called for his teammates to go on a ‘social media blackout.’ This signals that the Bulldogs are taking this pretty damn seriously. The problem is that Nick Saban rarely loses big games like this and I trust his running game and his quarterback AJ McCarron just a little bit more than Murray. Take Bama to cover.
Other games (My picks in BOLD)
Nebraska (-3) vs Wisconsin
Florida State (-14) vs Georgia Tech
Texas at Kansas State (-12)
