Effing Bowl Season: About to be underway!

So, kiddies, seeing as how this is a blog, and the one thing that blogs do more than anything else is link to other blogs and miscellaneous substantive information that the blogger in question is too lazy to provide himself, I present unto you a virtual quasi-wealth of crap to read and think about regarding the Bowls, CFB in general, and anything else that caught my fancy.

Editor's note: Provided that Todd hasn't dropped off the face of the planet (although I have to say that I'm excited for whatever Phil-esque "surprise" he's gonna throw at us at some point this bowl season ... something like "Oh by the way, I'm only gonna be here for 26 hours - I have to drive to Odessa, TX for no valid reason" or "Sorry, I forgot to tell you: I can't watch the Fiesta Bowl because I'm taking Scooter to go get his sex-change operation that day." I think we're all looking forward to it), he will be providing us with some SOC Notes for tonight's gawd-awful New Orleans (Except not really in New Orleans) Bowl. Woo hoo.

I'll start over at CFN, since we're totally swiping the idea and format of the SOCs from them. Anyways, they and all their college football media buddy-types have entered their own Bowl Pick 'Em, and it uses confidence points, just like ours. The pertinent information to glean from that link is the fact that someone named Todd Wright, who is apparently affiliated with ESPNRadio in some capacity, not only picked Notre Dame to win, BUT MADE IT HIS 28-POINT CONFIDENCE GAME. That either shows a frightening and bizarre lack of respect for OSU, or a thorouoghly-expected display of media adoration for an ND team who hasn't beaten anyone. You decide (Although it warrants mentioning that Fiu - who already picked a 38-20 score for the Fiesta, in favor of OSU - picked the Bucks and put 28 confidence points behind it (Bonus parenthetical-within-parenthetical: here is some info on this "Todd Wright" character, courtesy of the highly-unreliable wikipedia. Do with that info what you will)).

Also speaking of CFN, appropriately-titled CFB blog (with a heavy, HEAVY Florida slant) Every Day Should be Saturday takes issue with one of CFN's official picks: Rutgers over Arizona State. It is now official: use a picture of Carl from ATHF and I WILL link to it if I see it.

Bonus material from EDSBS: their first annual "WTF Awards." Definitely worth a read, although it should definitely be preceded by some variation of the sentence WARNING: EXTREMELY DISGUSTING AND TERROR-INFLICTING PICTURE OF TYRONE PROTHRO'S LEG ACTUALLY, YOU KNOW, BREAKING. Watch out for it, and make sure you don't look. It's about 18 different kinds of gross.

Sunday Morning QB is starting what I assume will be a running feature throughout bowl season, as he will apparently rate every bowl game's watchability beforehand. And he not only looks at the game, but at what it's competition will be on other channels. Tonight, the N'Awlins Bowl - which is up against "Gilmore Girls," a Barbara Walters special, and the Lifetime Original Movie, "Miracle on the 17th Green" - rates an unsurprising 1 out of 5.

Someone named John Walters is apparently a CFB writer for CNN/SI, and he has contributed his thoughts and picks for each bowl game. It's nice to know that they have someone other than Stewart Mandel there if you ever want to read about college football. Worth a read, if only to find out that on top of scoring tons of points on offense, Northwestern and UCk-LA rank 111th and 117th, respectively, in total defense. Should be shamelessly wild.

Notre Dame-centric blog Blue-Gray Sky has chipped in an admirably in-depth and pretty accurate assessment of the 2005 Buckeyes, as well as some "keys to the game"-type stuff on the Fiesta Bowl. Worth a read for the enemy's perspective.

Finally, I have to make you all aware of this fantastic prank that went on at Michigan while people were studying for exams. It's basically a variation on the old "run into the library screaming during finals" thing, except much funnier and much much MUCH more clever. I found the link to it over at the hilarious, informative, and prodigious Michigan blog MGoBlog. Worth a read every single day.

Bring the SOC, Toddger.