Farewell 2012 football, hello 2013 football

2013 arrives with the Chick-fil-A Bowl

As our glorious sporting year of 2012 comes to an end, so – finally – the college bowl season picks up pace. There’s a number of decent matchups today, which will nicely whet the appetite ahead of the BCS bowls kicking off tomorrow. The highlight is a BCS-quality matchup of 10-win teams, both of whom are called the Tigers, kicking off just after midnight in 2013.

Chick-fil-A Bowl: #8 LSU v #14 Clemson
Tuesday 1^st January, 12.30am (live on ESPN America)
Clemson start the season how they began it – against SEC opposition in the Georgia Dome – hoping to erase the memory of their embarrassment in last year’s Orange Bowl. They’re in a good position to do so, with Tajh Boyd, DeAndre Hopkins and Andre Ellington combining to test an LSU defense that could boast three first-round draft picks. Les Miles’ team has disappointed on offense this year, particularly QB Zach Mettenberger averaging just 207 yards a game.

Today’s other games after the break:

The Regular Season ends here

RG3 had his way with Dallas earlier this season. Can he do it again tonight?

Gosh darnit, I’m excited about this evening. Of the 16 NFL games taking place today, nine of them will play a part in deciding who plays who come the playoffs (NEXT WEEK!!!). That’s all the more remarkable when you consider ten of the 12 spots are already filled, with only three teams locked into a specific seed number.

There’s a whole lot of things that Roger Goodell has done wrong with the NFL – overprotecting QBs, neutering kick returners, talking about extending the playoffs – but the decision to make Week 17 all in-division games was nothing short of genius. Even in divisions where the title has been sewn up, like the AFC South, the rivalries keep potentially dull games interesting.

Of course, I’ll be watching events in Indianapolis a little more closely than usual for Broncos reasons…

Five more for Saturday

Potential first round QB Ryan Nassib of Syracuse

I’ll be honest with you, I’m running out of original things to say about these Tweenmas games. After all, there’s only so many ways to say “this is a meeting between two teams who ranked in the 50s and lost as many games as they won”. There’s ten teams playing today, and only one of them – OregonState – won nine games, compared to the six who won seven or less. And they say bowl season is watered down!

Pinstripe Bowl: West Virginia v Syracuse
Saturday 29^th December, 8.15pm (live on ESPN America)
This is the one to watch today. A shootout between two teams who love to throw the ball, thanks to two NFL-bound QBs. Everyone already knows of WVU’s Geno Smith, who could well end up at Kansas City as the #1 overall pick, but it’s Ryan Nassib of Syracuse that’s going to fly up draft boards. Nassib won the previous two meetings of these two, when both were still in the Big East. The Vegas over-under for this game is in the 80s, and it’s also played at Yankee Stadium which adds attraction to the fixture.

Today’s other games after the break:

Endure these, it only gets better…

Terrance Williams, Baylor, play late Thursday night

Are you over-full on Turkey? Is your fridge overflowing with stinky leftovers? Does your oversized NFL jersey that you just received as a present already feel a little tight round the waist? If the answer to any of those questions are “yes”, then you’re probably well on the way for post-Christmas blues. Luckily, the cure is an extended dose of college football, and with 11 games in the next three days, that’s exactly what you’re going to get.

Your Christmas entertainment

You see, I told you the early bowls were going to get the season off to a whimper, didn’t I? Hmmm. Well, if you missed the New Mexico Bowl and the Potato Bowl on my say so, I apologise. At the time of publishing there are two down, 33 to go for this year’s bowl schedule. The Poinsettia Bowl and the St Petersburg Bowl were previewed on last week’s blog to pad it out a bit. There are three more before Christmas and one on Boxing Day before I post another preview, so here we go…

Bowl season starts with it’s perennial whimper

The Potato Bowl comes to Boise

It’s one of the anomalies of the big bucks world of college football that it’s flagship month – bowl season – always kicks off with a whimper rather than a bang. Between now and January 7^th there are 35 games that cross the usual conference divides and give us a real idea of who is the best.

Nine of those 35 games pit two ranked opponents against each other in the ultimate Christmas television schedule, so you’d expect a real marquee game to whet your appetite, wouldn’t you? Something like Texas A&M vs Oklahoma or LSU vs Clemson? Sadly not. You have to wait until after Christmas for those ranked vs ranked games, and instead we get…

Three more weeks of excitement beckon

Last week I shared my projections for the “lesser” end of the NFL spectrum, looking at which of the stinkier teams will end up picking first in the draft. My opinions have already had to change in that respect after this weekend’s games, but who cares about the crap teams when the Broncos are riding his with ten wins?

Yes, it’s time to project forward on the crystal ball that is the ESPN Playoff Machine. Who’s going to end up winning the crapshoot that is the NFC East? How many rookie QBs will make the playoffs (no, Brandon Weeden isn’t one)? And who will actually square off in Nola come February 3^rd?

And your NFLUK Heisman winner is…

No, not him…

Ahead of this Saturday’s big ceremony at the New York Marriott Hotel, it’s only right that we finish our year of NFL UK college football polling with our very own Heisman Trophy award. There have been some amazing individual performances in 14 weeks of football this year, but the award for the most outstanding player is a year-long affair which makes the shortlist a much shorter one.

In the “real world” Kansas State QB Collin Klein, Notre Dame LB Manti Te’o and Texas A&M QB Johnny Manziel will be seated on the front row as the formal shortlist for the 78^th award, and it looks likely that this year will provide a historical winner as neither a linebacker (Te’o) nor a freshman (Manziel) have won college football’s most prestigious individual award. Sraw polls suggest that the voting will be unprecedentedly close, too, with both Te’o and Manziel the hot favourites.

Klein actually didn’t receive a single vote in our five-man poll, so is nothing more than an “honourable mention” behind three other quarterbacks. It’s perhaps a little harsh on the Wildcat, but it highlights the difficulty in picking who should be #3 behind the clear-cut top two…

Three-Quarters Hall of Shame

Listening to Ross Tucker’s Power Rankings on ESPN Radio’s Football Today Podcast, it struck me that there are a whole lot crappy teams in the NFL this year. Counting down from the Raiders at #32 (which pleased me no end, incidentally), every team they revealed down as far as about #25 I found myself thinking “yeah, they suck”.

It shouldn’t be that much of a surprise. After all, we’re only three quarters of the way through the season and four teams have already sealed playoff teams, and it follows that if there are teams with loads of wins at the top of the pile there must be teams with loads of losses all the way down at the bottom.

There are nine teams – and I’ll count them below the cut – who are 4-8 or worse. Jacksonville and Kansas City have only won two games each this year, and the Chiefs’ second win only came last weekend in an emotionally charged game against the only-3-win-themselves Carolina Panthers. So who’s going to end up picking #1 overall come next April? I’ll use ESPN’s Playoff Machine to make my projection:

NFLUK FBS Week 14 Top 25

And now, the end is near, and so we face the final rankings. With the exception of the always entertaining Army-Navy game, the college football regular season is over, the bowl games are all set, and there is nothing more to do but decide our final Top 25, and vote on a Heisman Trophy winner (to be announced on Thursday – it’s looking like a close one).

It will come as a surprise to precisely no-one that our rankings agree with the BCS’ assertion that Notre Dame and Alabama are the top two teams in the country, and deserve to square off in the national championship game. The Irish have been solid all season, while the Tide only slipped up against Johnny Manziel a week after their most intense victory in years. Beyond the top two, there are other similarities between the polls…