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Guilty pleasures: nudie bars and college ball
Cold, Hard Football Facts for September 4, 2009
We have too many guilty pleasures in our life to be healthy: alcohol and rural Pennsylvania nudie bars high among them.
But our greatest guilty pleasure is our love affair with the Grand Old Game. Despite the fact we have an entire site devoted to NFL analysis, there's only so much pro football on the air each week.
So we watch A LOT of college football, and attend more than our fair share of games around the country, too. Like most Americans, we get to watch just three pro games each Sunday (and take in bits and pieces of others). But college football offers us an endless onslaught of options each weekend, from noon Saturday 'til 2 a.m. Sunday morning ... giving us just enough time to catch some Zzzzzzzs for Sunday's NFL festivities.
Plus, college football is more than just a game: it is a celebration of the bounty of our land and the strength of our youth and our institutions. Entire states rally around their university football teams as symbols of state pride and power.  There's nothing like it anywhere else in sports -- here or anywhere.
Finally, if you really want to know what's up, there are sh*tloads of young hotties at college games (as this tasteful photo of Ohio State fans can attest). An NFL crowd, meanwhile, is typically a swordfight.
So, with the college season underway this week, a few days ahead of the big boys, we ask you to indulge our guilty pleasure and put these 10 games on your must-watch list in 2009.
We promise it won't interfere with your pro football experience ... though it could lead to problems in your relationships. But, really, do you care? It's football season after all.
1. Saturday, Sept. 12: USC at Ohio State
The 2005 season began with one of the great September epics in modern college history: the Texas Longhorns walked into the frenzied Ohio State Horseshoe at night – a stadium so massive that most NFL arenas would fit inside it – and toppled the mighty Buckeyes behind the amazing effort of Vince Young. Young established himself as the Heisman front runner that night, the Longhorns established themselves as legit national title contenders, and they ruined Ohio State's season almost before it began.
Other than that, it was no big deal.
Those are the same stakes in this game: a meeting of two talent-laden traditional powerhouses with virtually everything, from Heisman hopes to national titles, riding on the line right out of the season's gate. Proponents of the existing college football championship system like to point out that every game in college is a playoff game. Sure, the college system does suck, but in this case they're right: the NFL won't give us a game this big until January.
2. Saturday, Sept. 26: Iowa at Penn State
Ever see a "white-out" game at State College, especially one at night like this one (8 p.m. ET)? It's one of the most electric scenes in global sports. In fact, here's a little clip of what it's like to walk into Beaver Stadium in front of 110,000 people.
Iowa had a good, old-fashioned Midwest revival last year, with a 9-4 record and a top 20 finish. The Hawkeyes shocked then No. 3 Penn State last year, 24-23, at home. But if they truly want to be considered a legit Big 10 contender this year and in the years ahead, they must win this game on the road – amid that deafening cacophony of Beaver Stadium.
3. Saturday, Oct. 3: USC at California
The Cal Golden Bears produced the Chief Troll's all-time favorite and most well traveled college football t-shirt, purchased at the Berkeley gift shop (14 countries and counting, see accompanying photo from about 50 pounds ago). But Cal has also been producing a mountain of NFL talent in recent years, while nipping at the heels of the Trojans – good but never good enough.
USC, meanwhile, never quite seems to live up to the hype and annually blows a game against a Pac-10 rival. Last year, it was a loss to unranked Oregon State. In 2007, it was losses to Oregon and a dreadful defeat at the hands of unranked Stanford. In 2006, USC was toppled by Oregon State and then by UCLA in a huge end-of-season upset.
Cal, however, last beat USC back in 2003. If the Golden Bears want to take the next step, they must win this game. The beer and tofu-fueled fans of Berkeley will be rocking – at least by their standards.
4. Saturday, Oct. 10: Alabama at Ole Miss
The Rebels haven't been this highly touted since their victory at Chancellorsville. (Actually, we just wanted to use that line. Ole Miss claimed a handful of national titles in the late 1950s and early 60s.)
Ole Miss had a breakout season in 2008. They went 9-4, they fielded probably the best run defense in college football, and they handed the national champion Gators their only defeat of the season (prompting Tim Tebow's impassioned and now legendary postgame interview).
Alabama, meanwhile, is one of the two or three great powers in college history and had a return to glory last year under Nick Saban, with a 12-2 record and a No. 6 ranking. They should also have one of the nation's top defenses this year.
The Tide edged out the Rebels, 24-20, in Tuscaloosa last year. The game this year moves to Oxford , perhaps with the SEC West title on the line, and long-suffering Ole Miss fans will be more juiced than Mark McGwire.
5. Saturday, Oct. 10: Florida at LSU
We posted a skit the other day from a Buffalo radio station that joked that Tedy Bruschi was "half man, half god, half possible centaur." In the case of Florida quarterback Tim Tebow, that description is not a joke. You know we love our football history, and we don't think that things that happen today are the greatest ever just because we've seen them.
But in the case of Tebow, he may in fact be the greatest college football player of all time. If he pulls off another Heisman Trophy (his second) or another national title (his third), he would in fact have a very, very legit claim to the honor of G-O-A-T. He's got a rocket, laser arm, he runs like Larry Csonka and he has boatloads of that intangible "it" that rallies his teammates at critical moments of big games.
This game will go a long way toward confirming or refuting the Tebow legend. LSU is the other great college power this decade – like Florida, they've also won two national titles. And Saturday Night on the Bayou is always one of the most raucous nights in all of sports – they eruptive crowd has actually registered on the school's seismograph.
They'll be a little extra-juiced for the arrival of Tebow and the defending champs with a possible national title riding on the line.
6. Saturday, Oct. 17: Oklahoma vs. Texas (Red River Shootout)
The PC a-holes ruining this country (not to mention, let's be fair here, the game's sponsors) have insisted that the traditional name for this game be changed to the Red River Rivalry. We will continue to call it the Red River Shootout.
Texas-Oklahoma is more than just a college football epic each year. It's one of those events that makes us proud of the country: a muscular example of overindulgent Americana.
It's a neutral site game, played each year halfway between Austin, Texas and Norman, Oklahoma at the Texas State Fair in Dallas. Think of Oktoberfest (which is basically the Munich version of a state fair), but instead of big beer tents, everybody gathers inside the Cotton Bowl to watch two great college football powers battle.
The battle lines are easy to see on the tube: half the stadium is decked out in burnt orange, the other half in crimson.
The fact that the game routinely features the nation's best players and best teams simply adds to the atmosphere. Last year, Colt McCoy and the Longhorns outgunned Sam Bradford and the Sooners, 45-35 -- the highest score in the 103-game history of the rivalry.
But Bradford got the last laugh, while McCoy got Darrell Royally douched. Bradford won the Heisman and, thanks to the archaic college football system, his one-loss Sooners played for the national title instead of the one-loss Longhorns, losing to Florida 24-14.
7. Saturday, Oct. 24: Boston College at Notre Dame (the Holy War)
After all, we'd seen this out of a Coughlin team before. Back in November 1993, Coughlin's rep was chiseled when he took a decent Boston College team into South Bend to face the unbeaten, No. 1-ranked Fighting Irish. In one of the all-time great college football games, Notre Dame ripped off 22 fourth-quarter points to overcome a big deficit, only to fall, 41-39, thanks to a wobbly last-second 41-yard field goal that had no business going through the uprights.
It was one of the watershed defeats in all of football history: 16 years later, and the Irish have still never recovered the No. 1 ranking that they enjoyed that day.
Neither team is likely to be a big power this year. But embattled Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis may find himself in a must-win situation if he hopes to return the Irish to prominence ... or even keep his job.
This game is also compelling for the curious social and cultural undertones that define the most interesting college rivalries in a way that does not exist in pro football. Boston College and Notre Dame, for example, are the only Catholic universities in major college football: families with members who attended one school often have members who attended the other (even our Chief Troll is in a mixed ND-BC marriage).
So a BC-ND game is kind of like a bunch of inbred drunk Irish Catholics battling it out for family bragging rights. Pass the rosary beads and the Jameson's. This will be fun.
8. Saturday, Oct. 31: Georgia vs. Florida
The Bulldogs and Gators meet each year in Jacksonville, a neutral site game that has spawned a tailgate known around the south as the World's Largest Cocktail Party.
The Halloween date and the likelihood that the game will have SEC and national title implications should lend a little something extra to the already legendary party atmosphere.
The Gators tend to celebrate a little more at the World's Largest Cocktail Party in recent years. They boast a 16-3 mark against the Bulldogs since 1990.
Oh, did we mention Tim Tebow's playing?
9. Saturday, Nov. 7: Ohio State at Penn State
We'll just put it this way: the Cold, Hard Football Facts crew is trucking out from Boston for this one – with a stop  along the way, natch, at one of our all-time favorite watering holes, the BYOB PleasureDome. Penn State is a frequent stop on the CHFF crew tailgate circuit, because it's the closest place to the cardboard-box world headquarters where you get serious, big-time football and tailgating. (Sorry, folks, Gillette, is not quite the same thing. Trust us.)
This one's a meeting of traditional powerhouses, battling in front of 110,000 of our closest friends, in a stadium plopped in the middle of farms with sheep grazing around you as you tailgate. (In fact, here's a photo from our last Penn State trip: Big Wally busted with a sheep!)
That's right, folks, you can literally pitch tents and camp outside Beaver Stadium. Hey, the tailgate lots at Penn State open at 6 p.m. Thursday night. So people need to sleep somewhere.
10. Saturday, Dec. 12: Army vs. Navy
Sure, they're not national powers. But Army-Navy is one of the great spectacles in all of sport, from the march-on to the flyover to players saluting the fans on each side at the end of every game. Plus, if you like old-school football, Army and Navy are annually among the best rushing offenses in football. We wouldn't miss it.
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