California has hired some help from the NFL. The Cleveland Browns assistant Steve Marshall will be helping to coach the CA offensive squad this upcoming year. I’m curious if this is going to help. I mean, have you seen the Browns lately? They haven’t gotten to a Super Bowl ever, as far as I know, and they have did not improve between last season and this season. They need all the help they can get. California needs help too, but it’s just a college team. We’ll have to keep an eye on it, because perhaps a pro coach will make a bigger difference than any of the normal college coaches will.

The Mountain West Conference seems to be lobbying for an automatic BCS bid, like there are with 11 other conferences. It’s kind of an interesting question, and we’ll see where it goes. But an interview with one of the people who know about these things suggests that this is unlikely. The man said that the conference will probably not be able to get the automatic bid because there are contractual agreements amongst the other conferences and with TV stations and different bowls. It’s kind of unfortunate for them, and the BCS is a bit complicated anyway. It seems very doubtful that this will happen, but you can’t blame them for jumping in as it seems that there are changes afoot.

NCAA Football suffered another blow in Congress this week. The Congress passed a normal resolution to congratulate Florida on its win in the BCS national championship. But there were an alarming number of “no” and “present” votes in the actual decision. Many of the votes came from Utah and Texas. What does that mean? If you’ll think way back, Utah and Texas had schools that seemed like they had a good case to play for the championship. But because of the strange system the NCAA uses to select the team, U Texas and Utah were unable to play for it. Other teams were also put out. The government looks like it’s about to change the rules about this and we’ll just have to see whether we’ll get some new system next year or in the future.

College football has a problem, according to ESPN today. The problem is that the black coaches in the league don’t win. The reason for this, though, is that there are only a few out of 120 programs that even have African-American head coaches. And where they are, they aren’t at good schools. They are stuck at mid-level schools, like Buffalo and New Mexico State, which aren’t considered to be heavy-hitters in the leagues. So you have coaches stuck into bad coaching gigs and only one of them is in a BCS contending position, the coach at Miami. So it’s no wonder that these coaches aren’t considered the best when they don’t even get a chance. Is there some sort of bias going on? Or is this just happenstance?

USC quarterback, or former quarterback, Mark Sanchez has opted to enter into the NFL draft rather than stay his senior year in college. He and Georgia’s Matthew Stafford, considered the finest two quarterbacks of the 2008 NCAA football season, will surely be taken witin the first round. After playing for the nation’s sweethearts USC Trojans, Sanchez may find himself in the deep pits of Detroit-Lions-despair.

The NCAA football season is over. It seems unlikely that we could get our picks in now, but there are some people already looking at the teams for next season and trying to guess what it is that’s going to happen next time around. As usual, the same teams come up in the conversation as usual. The football teams at the top are Oklahoma, Florida, Ohio State, etc. Michigan is going to be an interesting question for next year since they did so very poorly this year, at least in comparison to their usual performance. Anyway, obviously, it’s much too early to know for sure, but there we are.

The outcome of the BCS National Championship is in: Chomp. The Florida Gators took on the favored Oklahoma Sooners and fulfilled the underdog dream. Chomp. While Tebow wasn’t deadly accurate, 18 of 30 with 2 Interceptions and 2 Touchdowns, he imposed his overall will to defeat the Sooners 24-14. Chomp. But it was not only Tebow that helped win the game. Chomp. His defense held the Sooners twice at the goalline, once with an interception and once on a fourth and goal. Chomp. This marks the second time that Florida has won the title in the last 5 years. Chomp times two.

The Sun Bowl was played last week, on New Year’s Eve. It pitted Pittsburgh against Oregon State. Almost nothing happened. For you defensive play specialists, this may have been a great game. It was kind of hard to watch, because there was very little going on for much of the game. A lot of stops, sacks, a few turnovers. It ended being 3-0, which means that no one scored a single touchdown and only once did either team get to the point of kicking a decent field goal. At the same time, the end of the game was pretty nice, with Pittsburgh going for a 58 yard field goal right at the end. It didn’t quite make it though, and Oregon State took the game. The coach said that he had more confidence in a long long field goal than going on 4th and 8. Exciting in a way.

USC came and won. For the 3rd time in 3 years, the USC Trojans made the most of their Rose Bowl appearance. Though their offense racked up 474 total yards on offense, it was their defense that was especially impressive yesterday against a Penn State offense that average 40.2 points per game during the regular season. Although the final score was 38-24, the Trojans defense dominated throughout the first three quarters, allowing only a single touchdown. Perhaps it was late game laziness or generosity, but it was only in the 4th quarter when Penn State cracked through the stalwart USC defensive lines and put up 17 points. It seems as though this was just another, all-together too easy win for the Trojans. Perhaps more capable opponents should be selected from now on.