We?re big fans of College Football here at Sportable. However, we usually don?t jump into coverage until we get to read some preseason magazines and play EA Sports? NCAA Football. This guest article will be part of a new weekly feature on Sportable. Every Thursday until the start of College Football season, Ted Bauer from A Price Above Bip Roberts will discuss college football. If you?d like to submit a guest article, send us an email.

The Debut Weekend

I felt like actually taking a look at the first weekend of action for the season, which this year falls on Labor Day (I mean, I guess it does virtually every year, but I’m not very good with elements of life like “consistency” or “patterns”). Here’s five games I’m anticipating:

Buffalo vs. Rutgers

Ha, what? If Buffalo and coach Turner Gill - yes, that Turner Gill - can get out of the box after a miserable string of losing seasons with a win over last year’s media darling, it could set the entirety of college football on its ear. It has less chance of happening than I have of bedding a cheerleader that same weekend, but still, a boy is nothing without his dreams.

Northwestern vs. Northeastern

If this game goes 20T and is decided by a kicker whose last name is an anagram for “south,” I think that might be the equivalent of crossing the streams in Ghostbusters, and the universe may just end on the spot. It would also be nice to see NWU actually win a game.

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We?re big fans of College Football here at Sportable. However, we usually don?t jump into coverage until we get to read some preseason magazines and play EA Sports? NCAA Football. This guest article will be part of a new weekly feature on Sportable. Every Thursday until the start of College Football season, Ted Bauer from A Price Above Bip Roberts will discuss college football. If you?d like to submit a guest article, send us an email.

I had a friend - honestly, singular - in college from West Virginia. When that school was just starting to get good (think Amos Zeroue at tailback) and they appeared on national TV every so often, me and this girl watched a primetime ABC game of the Mountaineers once. The beautiful thing about the ABC prime-time game on the east coast is that you can justify beginning to drink at 7:30, make some kind of game out of Musberger (for example, whenever he calls a TD from the 20-yard line, you must drink), and be good to go out by 10:30 or so. It’s an ideal situation.

I liked WVU that night - they looked like they were building something. Across the past two years, it seems that process has been completed, and everything should be leading to right now: Slaton at tailback (arguably the best in the country, or second best to McFadden), Pat White at QB (arguably the closest thing to Vince Young in the college ranks since VY), and Rich Rodriguez, who re-energized college offenses across the past half-decade, is back to coach despite having a shot to lead the Crimson Tide. Essentially, the WVU vs. Louisville game in November will once again decide the Big East - and might well decide a national title game berth.

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We?re big fans of College Football here at Sportable. However, we usually don?t jump into coverage until we get to read some preseason magazines and play EA Sports? NCAA Football. This guest article will be part of a new weekly feature on Sportable. Every Thursday until the start of College Football season, Ted Bauer from A Price Above Bip Roberts will discuss college football. If you?d like to submit a guest article, send us an email.

Around the beginning of my sophomore year of college, I kind of went through a transitional period with regard to friends. I had been hanging out with one group - mostly my suitemates - during frosh year, but when I came back after that summer, I kind of didn’t like them as much. I don’t know what it was; I certainly wasn’t off doing high culture things like going to the Washington Monument every weekend. I was pretty much attending keg parties, nothing more and nothing less. If I had a productive Saturday, that typically meant reading Sports Illustrated while sitting outside.

I became better friends with another group of people, but because housing for junior year has to be determined mid-sophomore year, I kinda wasn’t in their housing plans. To make an extremely long and belabored story much shorter, here’s what happened: I ended up living back on campus for the beginning of junior year, with one transfer (from the University of Georgia) and one kid who had nowhere else to live (a surfer dude from Cali). It was an interesting mix.

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We?re big fans of College Football here at Sportable. However, we usually don?t jump into coverage until we get to read some preseason magazines and play EA Sports? NCAA Football. This guest article will be part of a new weekly feature on Sportable. Every Thursday until the start of College Football season, Ted Bauer from A Price Above Bip Roberts will discuss college football. If you?d like to submit a guest article, send us an email.

LSU has a lot going for it headed into this season. Most college football pundits are slotting them into the BCS Title game next January - which, coincidentally, will be held in New Orleans - behind their stellar, Glenn Dorsey-led defense and their explosively serviceable offense. There’s also that whole “a few years removed from tragedy, a team must triumph” angle, which definitely helped provide the Saints enough mojo in some games to ultimately propel them to the NFC Championship (albeit in a losing effort). Also recall that the team right before LSU to paste Notre Dame in a bowl game was OSU, and we all know what happened to them the next year (all good things until, er, Chris Leak showed up). Read the rest of this entry »

We’re big fans of College Football here at Sportable. However, we usually don’t jump into coverage until we get to read some preseason magazines and play EA Sports’ NCAA Football. This guest article will be part of a new weekly feature on Sportable. Every Thursday until the start of College Football season, Ted Bauer from A Price Above Bip Roberts will discuss college football. If you?d like to submit a guest article, send us an email.

In the summer of 1997, being the huge nerd that I am, I took part in an “Economics for Leaders” camp at the University of Washington, up in Seattle. I had selected Seattle as the site, despite being from New York, because I thought it would be cool to go really far away. Fact of the matter was, in the one week I was there, I got so homesick (n.b. I was 17) I almost pissed myself.

There were a few good parts to the trip, though: once, during free time, I strolled around campus and - by virtue of no one who worked there really watching me - got to saunter onto the field at Husky Stadium. This was pretty friggin’ sweet, mostly because about six years prior, the national champions had walked on the same sod currently beneath my feet. I didn’t have much time to appreciate it, though; within probably 10 seconds, I heard the whole “HEY KID!” piercing shriek and had to hightail it off said field.

While I was at that camp, generally not giving my fellow economic nerds any credit as people (I tend to do that), I met a kid. His name escapes me at the moment, although I think - somewhat generically - that it was “Joe.” Regardless, he was the “fifth ranked quarterback in the state of Washington,” or so he claimed. “Washington is looking at me,” he would say, flexing his right arm. Some girls would swoon. I resented him tremendously. Read the rest of this entry »