It's Time for Football

This is the week we finally get started.  Here's where our money goes:

* Illinois vs Missouri -13 1/2
Saturday at 11:30 Fox Sports Net
This is touted as a neutral site game since it's being staged in St. Louis.  It's more of an almost-home game for the Missouri Tigers, whose fan base is going to pack the house, and a house it is: the indoor playpen that is Edward Jones Stadium.  This would be a great site for a game if it was early November.  Seems that being indoors at the end of summer just ain't right.  That's the way the Illini are going to feel after Mizzou roughs 'em up at.  The Tigers have a little more of everything.  Zookwatch 2010 starts after this one.

**Northern Illinois @ Iowa State -2
Thursday at 7:00 p.m.

The Spartus football helmet clock,
 featuring"The Six O'Clock Earhole".

Two Gun Pete is nothing if not a caring and supportive man.  Except when he's apprising the Northern Illinois Huskies.  He wishes to remind all of us that it was the Huskies who will go down in history as the losers of the final edition of Toronto's International Bowl, which was, technically, international, since Canada is another country, but Toronto is pretty much like Chicago, or like Chicago would be without all the criminals and gang bangers and mutts and the crooked politicians and...ok, it was the International Bowl.  The boys from Iowa State have been a pretty good play for us over the years, and they should be able to handle the visitors from DeKalb in a Big 12 vs the MAC matchup. 
***Southern Mississippi @ South Carolina -13
Thursday at 6:30 on ESPN
Southern Miss from Conference USA takes to the road for the opener against Steve Spurrier and the Gamecocks.  It's a big step up in class for a mid-pack C-USA team against an above average SEC team, and the equation gets worse for SoMiss when the Spurrier factor is brought to bear.   We may be doing a little last minute tap dance on this one---5 of SC's starters are under scrutiny for the hotel fiasco and could be unable to participate in the opener.  Without that distraction, we're confident that the Gamecocks will cover in their home opener.  If there's 5 guys missing, we're being pushed to bet on faith...and that doesn't pay the bills.  Stay tuned.
****USC-19 @ Hawaii
Thursday night, 10 pm on ESPN
Four stars on a coach we find odious and a team that has had its sleazy side turned out for all the world to see.  USC isn't going to be allowed to go to any bowl games this year as the NCAA punishes the current players for what Reggie Bush did years ago, so I'm figuring that USC wants to make every game a little more, um, memorable.  So they're off to beautiful Hawaii  ( a better destination than almost all the bowl games ) to begin the season by thrashing the locals.  Big spread, bigger victory.

Games start Thursday evening. Enjoy the holiday.

Week One : 4 Star Pick

Cue the drum roll, please.  It's time for the big bet of week one.

OK, skip the drum roll. 

Some may accuse of us of hypocrisy.  That's not wholly inaccurate, as we rail on regularly in this space about the creepy goings on of various coaches and programs across the college football landscape, while our stated purpose here is to turn a profit from their performances.  If we pull back to a macro viewpoint, an indictment of the entire college sports world is unavoidable: kids going to school for free in return for playing games that are sold to the public.  If I ran the IRS, I'd like to figure out how to tax all this tacit compensation (free tuition and stipends and equipment and who really knows what else) that flows to all these athletes, tax free.

But our mission is not to debate that.  It is to exploit it, and so we shall.

Google your own photo of the USC cheerleaders.
This week it's all about the money. 

Our four star spotlight in the very first week of the season falls on the lovely and talented...Lane Kiffin, and his USC Trojans.  They are traveling this first week to the islands of Hawaii, where they are going to pound the hula-hula crap out of the University of Hawaii Rainbows.

Kiffin is despised in Tennessee, where he played the role of the king of the carpetbaggers.  His legend grew, as did the revulsion he elicited from Tenneseeans (how often do you see that word, Tennesseeans?) when Kiffin hired a coach from the NFL's Titans right before training camp, leaving a gaping hole where the backfield coach formerly toiled.  It mattered not to Lane Kiffin that he was further villified, as he is king of football in southern California, and the Pacific shores have very little resemblance to the Tennessee valleys, and Nashville cats don't hold up against the hardbodies of Malibu beach. 

It is this single minded narcissicism that makes this a beautiful four star play.  The spread on this game, USC @ Hawaii, opened at 19, it stands at 21, and when the actual results are final, should be over 30 points.  USC, the pantheon of PAC 10 football, along with its coach, has a lot to prove.  The school has been disgraced, its former coach fled up the coast, one of its heroes has been expunged from its history...they even returned Reggie's Heismann, for heaven's sake, the Heismann!  The administration, the heavy handed alumni, everybody connected with this team, LA's biggest autumn show, needs to get their public squarely back behind them, or realistically just give their supporters something positive to feed on, as none of them really abandoned the program.  It's all about winning.

What better setting than beautiful Hawaii?  The Rainbows haven't recaptured the glory of the June Jones years since he galloped off to save SMU.  Hawaii is overmatched, and Lane Kiffin needs to launch his legacy in grand style.  The spread is big, but not big enough.

The Trojan horns will blare, the crimson and gold will run wild, new SoCal heroes will emerge, and Kiffin will be just fine.  USC 42, Hawaii 10. 

It's all about winning.

Week One: 3 Star Pick

Once again we turn to the big shooter, Two Gun Pete, for sagacious insight on Week One, and the answer comes back "USC". That's USC as in University of South Carolina, home of the Gamecocks. Coached by Steve Spurrier, the 'Cocks have been big in the news the past week as the NCAA has begun investigating how a group of SC players can afford to live in a cushy hotel in downtown Columbia. As those questions picked up steam, one of the linemen was suspended for smacking around his girlfriend in a parking lot. Oh, yeah, they have a little quarterback controversy going, too, with a freshman giving a nice preseason performance to unsettle the veteran returning QB.

 Love that SEC football!

The Gamecock.  One of the least attractive
mascots anywhere. Distinctive, though.

Back on point, the 'Cocks open the season on Thursday night at home.  Southern Mississippi University (another bird, Southern Mississippi's team is the Eagles) will visit Columbia to get things started.  Two Gun consulted the Dead Sea Scrolls, his prized personal repository of football factoids, and developed a compelling and convincing case for the 'Cocks:

• Steve Spurrier has never lost a season opener
• USC returns 9 starters on offense
• USC returns 7 starters on defense
• USC doesn't lose at home on Thursdays (four times)
• Spurrier needs to bury the memory of a bowl game loss to Connecticut
• USC is going to challenge for the top rung of the SEC South, and finally
• Two Gun thinks Spurrier is sufficiently soul-less to want to decimate, destroy and demoralize lesser opponents in order to advance his and his team's status, reputation and ranking

 The visitors, Southern Mississippi, are going to be unable to hang wiffem (as Two Gun's favorite TV voice, Hawk Harrelson is wont to say) as this game unfolds.  Southern Miss, coached by a chap named Larry Fedora, is a member of Conference USA, where they finished 3rd in their division last year, with an overall 7-6 record. Their #1 and #2  running backs from last year are gone, their top 2 receivers, their TE, lots of people from the offense, gone.  Their defense, a pushover last year, brings back a few guys and will be better, but this is a step up in class for the Eagles, and it's going to be too large a gap.  .  SC 35, Eagles 16 as Spurrier & Co. cover. 

Next up, on Friday, the first 4 Star pick:  a bit of a rerun.