And so it begins...again...

College football begins tonight and with that comes the end of my open-schedule Saturdays until December. From today forward, I will awake at 8am on each and every Saturday, in order to listen to the pre-game discussions and prepare my space, where I will sit for the next 12-14 hours while drinking, eating and staring at the 12 games in front of me. I won't be wearing a Notre Dame jersey or Ohio State one or anything team affiliated though. Instead, I'll be in a pair of high heels and likely one of my 350 black dresses. (While many may disagree, I believe that the dress is one of the most comfortable outfits one can wear, especially when sitting in a folding chair all day). And I won't be drinking a beer or a bloody mary or any of my other favorite drinks with vodka. Instead, I will be drinking water and a tall, non-fat, sugar-free-vanilla latte from time to time when I can convince Brett to run across the street and grab one for me from Starbucks. That's because I won't be waking up and watching College Game Day before heading over to a sports bar to watch the games, but instead I'll be attending the pre-game meeting before taking my place on the set of ABC's College Football Studio Show, as I always do. And I actually get paid to do this.

Wow...there are two ladies in the same fantasy league...

In all of the years of randomly drawing names to determine the order in which we choose our draft order, it finally worked to someone's advantage. Melanie has Adrian Peterson as a keeper in the first round and elected to go last...meaning that she gets All Day as the 12th pick of the 1st round.

Meanwhile, I had the guys on the set of ABC's College Football Studio show pick the names from a hat while we were at rehearsal on Saturday and the official name-drawer, Dave Bearman, was pretty impressed when he picked the second name. He responded with a surprised observation that the first two names were Steph and Amy, two female names, meaning that two girls are in the league. He noted that he wasn't sure if he knew two girls that played fantasy football, let alone in the same league. I laughed to myself and told him to just wait. Next name, Leila...then Claudia...then Sharon, Sarah, Jacquie, Sarah, Christina, Melanie, Malia and Alexandra. Yes, all ladies. And despite how much of a little girl my friend Eric from law school acts like, I'm not letting him in our all-female-fantasy league.

Fantasy Keeper Options 2008

(my fantasy league is apparently still on vacation)
It's fantasy football pre-season and in usual fashion, no one from my fantasy league has bothered to read my emails or the extensive document I attached to one of them, explaining in grand detail exactly how the fantasy keeper selections work. Therefore, in an attempt to save myself time and aggravation, I am choosing the keepers for them.

Christina actually already told me who she's keeping for the Black Widows this year, but I was imitating her general practice of tuning me out and happened to miss what she said. I think she should probably keep Santonio Holmes in the 9th round as that's a pretty good value for him. Not bad for a guy who had 8 touchdowns and almost 1,000 yards last year.

Purple Haze has the least number of options as Malia added and dropped (which automatically disqualifies a player from being kept) a multitude of players in order to get her team on track for a championship last year. It worked, she won the league title and now her only true keeper option is Ben Roethlisberger in the 6th round or nothing at all. While he had a lot of TDs, Roethlisberger's passing yards were on the low end in 2007. I expect the Steelers' offense to improve this year, but this is a very inconsistent QB#1. With that said, he finished last year as our 4th best fantasy QB and he's a good deal in the 6th round so I'm keeping big Ben for Malia. By the way, while it's hard to convey my lack of enthusiasm for Purple Haze to the fullest extent here without being able to use voice inflection, please note that I harbor intense resentment towards her team, which unwittingly pays tribute to Jimmy Hendrix, as I lost to her in the Finals. (Fact: Malia loves purple but when she came up with her team's name she had no clue as to its origin).

Both Malia and Sarah are new moms in 2008 so congrats to them--hopefully their babies will create enough of a distraction to prevent them from picking up the good free agents...hehehe...

Red Dogs owner Sarah will be keeping Braylon Edwards in the 5th round. His 16 TDs and almost 1300 yards last year make this one a no-brainer, assuming he can keep his shoes on and keep people from stepping on the back of his feet. I'll mention Sarah's other options just because it wouldn't be football if I didn't mention Brett Favre. And I don't mean that in a complimentary way. She could keep Favre in the 8th round, which is what his true value is thanks to his projected decreased passing yards, increased interceptions and downgrade in offense. No thanks. The next option is to keep his new teammate, Jerricho Cotchery, in the 7th round. Cotchery somehow caught 82 passes for 1130 yards in 2007, but had just 2 TDs. Theoretically those numbers should improve with a hall-of-fame-qb throwing to him this year. But, I wouldn't count on it.

Jacquie is new to the league this year and while she was on vacation in New Orleans, she won the keeper rights to Plaxico Burress in the 5th round or Eli Manning in the 7th round. Manning was a great fantasy quarterback in weeks 1 and 17 last year (not to be confused with weeks 1 through 17). Clearly the Super Bowl MVP was not a fantasy MVP throughout the regular season. Just goes to show how meaningless fantasy really is. Burress has an ankle injury keeping him out of the pre-season, which actually could benefit him if you happen to be one of those people (such as myself) who thinks the pre-season is all risk and no reward for veteran players. Burress has only caught one touchdown in 2008 so far and that was the one that won Super Bowl XLII. That plus the fact that he's Eli's favorite target makes him worthy of a 5th round pick.

Alexandra won the rights to Julius Jones in the 5th round or Isaac Bruce in the 14th round. Since she just got back from spending the summer abroad in Oxford, England (tough life), she may or may not know that both of these players moved around during the off-season. Bruce signed with the 49ers, after being released by the Rams, and although I can't be too excited for a guy who's almost as old as Brett Favre and catching passes from Alex Smith, I do like his upside. Not as much as Julius Jones' potential though! I love the move to Seattle from Dallas where he had to share his carries with Marion Barber. This former Irish tailback had over 1,000 yards two years ago and there's no reason why he can't surpass that with the Seahawks. But what remains to be seen (yuck-awful use of passive voice) is what he can do as far as scoring goes...

And for our third and final new fantasy member, Brooke, who has been busy working on her 15th career while flying across country to the ESPYs and getting back surgery and whatever other trouble she can possibly get herself into , the players at decent keeper value are Brandon Marshall in the 13th or Lendale White in the 5th. Apparently Marshall went to Iraq in the off-season with the amount and types of injuries he had-- perhaps warfare is what they mean when they say "off-field incidents." If he plays he definitely going to be worth more than a 13th round pick, whereas White could easily be a 5th round value depending on how our draft goes. White should be the starter in Tennessee, but with the pick of Chris Johnson in the first round of this year's NFL Draft , who knows? I'm giving Brooke Mr. Marshall.

Golden Rules without a doubt should keep Adrian Peterson in Round one and then choose to go 10th in the draft order. Unlike most of the "guys" out there who leave their draft order to random chance, this league takes control and uses the random drawing of names from a hat merely to provide guidance as to the order in which we choose our draft order. Therefore, Melanie can easily end up with All-Day as the 10th pick in the first round. Last time I spoke to Melanie she explained to me that she had fallen from the uneven bars and then went biking on a nice path-- or actually the drugs explained that to me. Therefore I'm going to just go ahead and confirm this decision for her.

Big Cats owner Leila will be taking a 10-day excursion to Peru right in the middle of draft week and although I wanted to kill her at first, we have finally come to a resolution as to when our draft date is, so all is forgiven. Miss Peru has two decent wide receiver keeper options as she can keep Randy Moss in Round 2 or Greg Jennings in Round 12. Moss is definitely a second round pick and Jennings is more like a 6th or 7th round pick. Obviously the value lies in the latter, but I'll let her decide if she wants to secure Moss in that second round spot.

Dientes Locos, also known as Bubble Girl, Wine Sipping MBAs and Beer Guzzling Machines has some pretty nasty keeper options and I don't mean nasty as in Malia's favorite song. Go with Leon Washington in the 9th round or nothing at all. 9th is probably a little high for a back-up who's only going to touch the ball in single-digit numbers per game without an injury to Thomas Jones.

As for me, I may have to pass on a keeper this year. My options are Tedd Ginn Jr. in the 9th, Joey Galloway in the 6th, Chris Cooley in th 5th or DeAngelo Williams in the 3rd. Any thoughts?

SEC West Auburn vs. LSU

Everyone can pretty much agree that the West will come down to LSU and Auburn at this point. Auburn's schedule is very do-able with games against LSU, Tennessee, Arkansas and Georgia all at home. But, LSU is the defending champ with more than enough talent in the 2-deep on both lines. The problem with LSU is that they lost both of their mediocre quarterbacks from last fall, their top rusher in Jacob Hester and their top receiver when he was healthy in Early Doucet, not to mention top 5 draft pickGlenn Dorsey and 2 of their defensive backs. This team is loaded, but it's a team that only got where it was last year because of the disaster that took place in college football. From week to week we didn't know which #2 ranked team would fall or which ranked opponent would lose to an unranked. You had about 50 ranked teams falling to unranked, a 2-loss national championship team and a goofy sophomore as the heisman trophy winner. I'm just glad 2007 is over.

Auburn is dealing with change at quarterback and more importantly, their entire offensive system. But, the spread offense might just be the key to put this team over the edge and into a national championship contention. Last year with the most unexperienced offensive line ever to play under Tuberville here, the team stepped out and fell flat on it's face in consecutive home games against USF and Mississippi State. This year the line returns 4 starters. Which will be good for the quarterback, whoever he is. Kodi Burns and Chris Todd competing for the job. Burns ran Franklin's offense well in the bowl game against Clemson. And Todd has experience in this offense having played for Tony Franklin in high school. The running backs are more experienced this year and perhaps Brad Lester will decide to stay academically eligible for the entire season this year.

In sum, why I like Auburn over LSU:
* Auburn's new offense--they're addressing their biggest weakness from last year--passing game. They finished 103rd in passign offense and 97th in total offense.
* Plus, losing Brandon Cox is an opportunity for them-- you can't throw for 100 yards and 4 INTs against Georgia and expect to win.
* Auburn also has an improved offensive line, which was the most unexperienced line Tubberville had ever coached at auburn last year
* LSU's loss of key players and especially the question at quarterback is not something they had anticipated. The losses are Early Doucet, Jacob Hester and three DB's is also significant. They lose the leading rusher--both passers, the two interception leaders--and top 5 draft pick Glenn Dorsey.
* LSU did well in a strange year for college football and beat an OSU team that wasn't anywhere near ready to be playing for the title again after losing basically their entire defense after 2006.

Tennessee 2008 Football Preview

Tennessee.

Phillip Fulmer did the unthinkable and finally went outside of the "family" for his coaches this off-season. I wasn't a big fan of David Cutcliffe even though this offense managed to have the 2nd best passing yards in the SEC behind Erik Ainge. And I wasn't a big fan of Ainge even though he managed to have the third best passing efficiency in the SEC. He had -32 rushing yards on the year and the win over Georgia had nothing to do with his meager 165 yards and no scores. Take out the Arkansas St. and Kentucky games and there goes 11 of his TDs. Thus, I'm looking forward to seeing what new Offensive Coordinator and QB coach Dave Clawson can do with fourth-year junior quarterback Jonathan Crompton.

Good news for the Vols-- since the spring and the decision to curfew themselves, the team has not had any reported off-field incidents. Also good-- Arian Foster and Lucas Taylor at tailback and receiver, respectively. This offensive line gave up a total of 4 sacks last year. And even though this unit may be one of the best in the SEC if not the country, their position coach is not satisfied with their performance so far and I consider that the right attitude.

On defense, they were one of the worst teams in the SEC last year in several categories, especially when it came to passing yards and passing efficiency defense. Their rushing defense was down considerably too, with the exception of the fairy-tale game against Georgia. The linebackers and defensive backs look strong this year. So the question remains--how will this line be?

Texas Football Preview 2008

Last year re-discovering the zone read gave this team a much-needed spark—especially for Jamaal Charles. He finished 10^th in the country in rushing. In fact, in the three games Texas lost in 2007, Charles had less than 100 yards in each of them (he also had lower numbers against Rice, Iowa State and Baylor, but those were all blowouts). Colt McCoy had somewhat of a slump—his TDs were down and his INTs were up. This year defense should work on keeping opponents out of the end zone in goal-to-go situations (going into the bowl game they had allowed touchdowns almost 90% of the time in that situation). McCoy is injury prone. Did Mack improve their pass defense last year? Just 99^th in 2006 allowing 236 ypg. No! It got worse in 2007. They were 109^th in 2007 and allowed 277 ypg. Good rushing defenses the past two years though(2006 61.15 ypg (3^rd in nation) and 2007 93.38 ypg(6th in the nation). But they have just 4 defensive starters back. You don't have to worry about that as much on a Mack Brown team as you would another team. But it still could have an impact.

Texas A&M Football Preview 2008

The running game was the one good thing the Aggies had going for them since Jorvorskie Lane arrived on campus. They went from being in the bottom half of the Big 12 in rushing in 2004 to 2^nd each of the past three seasons and in the top 15 nationally. With that said, it is important to point out that tailback Mike Goodson had about the same number of rushing yards as Lane did last year. If you take out the Miami game in which Lane only had 2 carries, in the other 12 games, Goodson surpassed Lane in 75% of the games. While Goodson carries the ball down the field, Lane is the one that puts it in the endzone and there's no reason why he can't continue do that (16 touchdowns to Lane's 4). Questions for this team? Will Stephen McGee get the new West Coast Offense? Will Lane lose weight, be aggressive as a blocker, successfully be utilized as a receiver (Goodson had three times as many receptions, receiving yards and receiving tds as Lane did last year) and realize his potential to play in the NFL as a fullback?

Kansas Football Preview 2008

Kansas could have some problems this year with just 6 starters on offense. The interior of the line remains intact, but hey lose both tackles. And while Dexton Fields may have had the most receptions in each of the previous two seasons, they lose their top producer in Marcus Henry, who had 1,104 yds and 10 tds on 54 receptions last year (18.78 yards per catch-- pretty impressive). They get 9 starters back on a defense that led this team last year. But the 8th best rush defense in the country last year loses right defensive tackle James McClinton--who had 39 tackles and 11 tackles for a loss. All three Linebackers return. Gone in the secondary is Aquib Talib--but for a unit that finished fourth in the country in interceptions with 23--Talib only accounted for 5 of them. Justin Thornton started the last four games and has 5 INTs himself.

Todd Reesing had 213 straight passes without an INT (school record). Through week 5 they had outscored 4 mediocre opponents 214-24—but week 6 was their first big 12 opponent. What worries me about Kansas? Who did they beat last year?

Missouri Football Preview 2008

The thought last year was that they'd be as good as their defense allowed them to be. Yet going into Week 6 they were allowing over 275 passing yards per game. They ended allowing around 256 yards per game—96^th in the nation. I guess that’s okay when your offense is putting up almost 500 yards per game (5^th in nation, 2^nd in Big 12 to TT ,of course). This year once again, this team will be as good as their defense allows. 10 starters on defense returning. But they lack depth. They don't play Oklahoma this year-- which is good since that was their only loss last year—twice. Rush defense was 25^th in 2007. But for this team, stopping the running game doesn't seem to benefit them significantly. They held two teams under 100 yards rushing last year and ironically, those were their worst games. The Illinois game was the only one they didn't win by double digits and they lost the two games against Oklahoma. As for their own running game, they lose Tony Temple, but Derrick Washington has tons of potential.

Nebraska Football Preview 2008

This team is all about potential this year. You've got to love the hiring of Bo Pelini. He comes from a team that was 3rd in the nation in total defense to a team that was last in the Big 12 in total yards allowed, points allowed, sacks and rushing yards allowed. The schedule is tough--they play Virginia Tech in week 5--but defensive mind Pelini had no problem with the Hokies last year when LSU held them to just 150 yards of offense and one meager touchdown. It may not be LSU, but this is still Nebraska with about 1200 pounds of man returning on the front four. Their main losses come at linebacker and defensive back. But with Pelini's reputation with developing the secondary, I'm not concerned.

Offensively, they now they have a quarterback they can trust in Joe Ganz. He set three of the schools top five passing records in just five starts. Marlon Lucky says he's excited to play for Pelini and he should be. They were in the bottom half of the Big 12 in rushing last year and that stat should drastically improve this year. The line slimmed down over the winter and their conditioning changed to focus on speed and stamina. They have four players back with substantial starting experience.

Texas Tech Football Preview 2008

I thought Mike Leach was actually brilliant for leaving Graham Harrell and Michael Crabtree behind on Big 12 media day. His reasoning is that they get a lot of attention already, and the team is more than those two players. Furthermore, those two players do not determine the success of their season, they have done their job. But rather, it will come down to whether the other guys play up to their potential. And when he says other he's referring to the worst running game in the nation last year and defense. They finished 3rd in total defense last year and Leach is even more excited about it this year. This unit actually finished first in the Big 12 in passing defense, but it's rushing and scoring defense that really could use some improvement. In their four losses last year, they gave up an average of 45 points. It's Defensive coordinator Ruffin McNeill's first full season on the job and I expect there to be significant improvement from last year's fill-in position.

Oklahoma Football Preview 2008

This team was unbelievably blessed in 2007 with two redshirt freshman that may be the key to their next national championship title. Sam Bradford and Demarco Murray. The offensive line couldn't look any better. Five senior starters return to a line that gave up just 14 sacks in 2007 (5th in the nation). While their offense ranked 17th nationally, they were only 7th in the Big 12. This conference is all about offense, especially passing, so the Sooners are going to have to step it up in 2008. With Bradford and Murray having more experience combined with the team's leading pass catcher from '07 in Juaquin Iglesias (led team with 68 catches) and tight end Jermaine's Gresham's 11 TDs from last year, the only thing this offense needs to worry about is staying healthy...and turnovers (according to Stoops). Stoops claimed that turnovers and penalties were a "major hit" on them last year and that both need to be reduced for them to be successful this year. The turnovers may have come at inopportune times, but they most certainly were not a significant problem. OU tied for 23rd in the nation for turnovers lost...it's not really that bad. But, Stoops is right when it comes to penalties-- they were at the bottom half when it came to getting in trouble and being punished for it. And maybe Stoops should also pay attention to what this team does on 4th down. Not only do they not stop teams on the desperation down, they don't push themselves to do anything about the impending loss of possession. It doesn't matter what you do on the first 3 downs if you don't finish it-- and speaking to that--in the inexplicable loss to Colorado, the defense gave up the last 20 points of the game to Colorado and knocked Oklahoma out of the top 5.

As for the defense-- another solid line. The rush defense was excellent all year, even against A&M and Texas, until they faced West Virginia in the Fiesta Bowl. In that debacle of a game for the Sooners, their rush defense went from allowing 92 yards per game to 110 to finish the year. That's a difference between finishing 6th in the country (1st in the Big 12) and being 17th in the country (3rd in the Big 12). Not only did they end on a bad note, but this unit loses 5 starters, including their 4 leading tacklers (three from the secondary and what was their best linebacker in Curtis Lofton). They gave up some big passing games last year and the Texas Tech game killed them (420 yards passing).

Perhaps the no-huddle offense will catch the Sooners up to the Big 12 offense statistically speaking. But even if they don't, they seem to find ways to score just fine without moving the ball too much. (5th in nation and 2nd in Big 12 behind Kansas in Scoring offense).

Last year what happened to this team?

This team is by no means perfect and those who believe in a sophomore slump best stay away. I, however, believe they can win a national championship this year. And it might just be fitting for Ohio State and OU to play each other for that $30,000 crystal football given that these two teams combined have played in and lost four of the last five national title games. Unfortunately, that wouldn't break the streak for one of the coaches as that game would hand either Jim Tressel or Stoops their third loss in three tries.