Christmas is coming!

If you’re like me, then you’ll wait up until the last possible moment when everything is gone and then end up with a crappy present for your loved one(s), disappointing them yet again.

After the jump I have a bunch of recommendations you can use for your college football and/or Husker fan for the upcoming holiday season.

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If you're looking for a Nebraska bowl announcement, you'll be waiting until at least after the Big 12 Championship game.

If you remember a few years ago, Kansas State was upset by Texas A&M in the Big 12 title game, which caused the poor Wildcats to fall all the way down to the Alamo Bowl, where they lost to Purdue because of their shattered psyche.

This caused the Big 12 to (wisely) hold off on bowl assignments until after the Big 12 title has been settled to keep the same thing from happening.

I expect everyone is giving Missouri no chance against Oklahoma. I'm feeling the same way, but strange things are always occuring in college football. Therefore, it's best to wait and see what happens. At least that's been my general thought about the bowl game. It'll get here, just relax.

But it occurs to me that college football wouldn't exist without rampant and unwarranted speculation, so I thought.... what the heck. It looks like we're going to play Clemson in the Gator Bowl. That could change tomorrow.

We have a few days to burn, so let this be your rampant speculation thread about the possibilities (or not) of playing Clemson. Or Florida State for that matter.

Once the announcement is made we'll have plenty of time to discover more about Clemson. Speculation is all about the unknown. Have at it.

I haven’t done an update in a few weeks, so there’s lots of catching up to do.

In Week 12, Wolverine finished in first place for the week, with a 15-1 record and 132 points.

In Week 13, imh5306 finished in first place for the week at 11-4, and 104 points.

In Week 14, last week, zoomerjoe finished in first place at 10-2 and 71 points.

Here are our current top five leaders going into the last week of the contest:

I'm running out of prizes, but if Wolverine, imh5306, or zoomerjoe wish to contact me, I'll see if i can still get you your choice of a free copy of Gary Andrew Poole's excellent book about The Galloping Ghost - Red Grange or one of the prizes from Asgard Press.

Good luck to you guys into the last week of the season.

(There is a bowl game contest a brewin' on the horizon. I have not yet 100% decided whether or not to run one of these. If you're interested, let me know.)

Lordy what a week it was. Nebraska beats hated Colorado in life-sucking fashion. Mizzou chokes. Oklahoma dominates, while Texas gets screwed or depending on your perspective, gets what's coming to them!

Big 12 Cob of the Week Nominations are:

From Husker Mike:

Bo Pelini
I've watched several replays of that fake field goal, and it just keeps looking dumber and dumber.  The tight end who apparently was supposed to be the intended receiver never blocked Colorado's Jimmy Smith, who then could have blown up any play at that point.  Nevermind the play looked exactly like the trick play Nebraska ran three weeks prior.  It turned into an easy touchdown for the Buffaloes which changed the momentum of the game.

Missouri
Tank job.  Choke job.  Slow start.  Whatever you want to call it, you took your eye off the ball in a rivalry game, and Kansas pounced on it.  Then letting Kansas drive the field in the last 2 minutes of the game, including a touchdown on 4th & 7?  You Pinkeled it away, and now have to share your Big XII North trophy.

From Corn Blight:

Cody Hawkins
Cody Hawkins for his impersonation of me attempting to tackle Ndamukong “My name is Suh, how do you do, now you’re gonna die!” Suh. I don't think I'll ever get tired of watching it!

The Texas Fan Base
Their players have come out and taken getting screwed by the Big 12 and BCS like men. Their fan base, not so much. Here’s my problem with Texas. They have everything. They have every advantage that could possibly be given to a NCAA school.

They a limitless number of athletes from which to choose, they have as much money as anyone else in the nation. They used their political clout to slant the rules in their favor when the Big 12 conference was formed.

Well, you Texas guys missed the tie-breaker rule. The conference where you got most of what you wanted just screwed you, and yet you blame them as if you were never in charge. Ever hear of karma? This is what the shit end of the stick feels like! 

Dennis Dodd writes a bit about how the coaches shouldn't be allowed to vote or their votes shouldn't count and they shouldn't be allowed to determine who gets millions of dollars and blah blah blah.

As I'm reading, I'm thinking that this is just another bunch of crap written by one bunch representing a subjective, skewed poll complaining about another bunch representing a subjective, skewed poll while all the while talking about how they're not biased but the other side is. As if media people can't hold grudges nor biases.

Then we get to this bit of blather:

Questionable voting is a longstanding tradition in the coaches poll. Who can forget 1997 when the coaches gave Tom Osborne a retirement gift, awarding him a national championship a month after the coach announced his retirement?

Don't buy into this "gift to Tom Osborne" bit. It's used repeatedly when media people want to complain about the coaches poll. This is proof that if you say something enough it becomes taken as fact when it's pure bullshit.

The fact is both Michigan and Nebraska were undefeated. They played comparable schedules. Michigan struggled to win their bowl game, while Nebraska annihilated Tennessee. The teams deserved to split the title because there wasn't a better way of doing things then. 

Hey, Dennis, if it was a gift from the coaches to Tom Osborne, then the other half was a gift to Michigan since they hadn't won a national title since 1948 and all y'all just wanted to sell more media crap.

I'm so bloody tired of seeing this from media people, I'll think I'll write a book about it.

It’s Oklahoma over Texas for the fifth-level tie breaker in the Big 12 South to determine the South champion.

Most of the Husker fans I’ve talked to are perfectly happy with Oklahoma winning the South. I’m guessing that goes back to all those years of playing Oklahoma as a rival, and blaming Texas for screwing us in the formation of the Big 12 conference, so the general attitude amongst Husker fans is that it’s a good day whenever Texas gets screwed. Agree?

Longhorn fans are not taking it lying down, jumping all over CC Machine’s declaration of themselves as Big 12 South champions. It’s not so much the article as it is the comments from ‘Horns fans.

Texas players react. They speak well. Nothing nasty (they apparently leave that up to the fans).

Someone might mention to Orakpo that this season isn’t over yet. It’s not a foregone conclusion that Oklahoma will lose to Missouri, nor is it forgone that Texas will be shut out of the national title game.

Mack Brown reacts too, and like all coaches who get screwed, wants a change in the system after the fact: 

In other words, Mack Brown would deny you of so much fun in the interest of fairness.… or in the interests of Texas Longhorn football, whichever comes first. Mack Brown hates chaos, all the more reason why you should embrace it!

Because if you think you know all the angles, Doc Saturday throws another grenade.

  Something tells me there’s plenty more left to this season with only one regular season week left to go, more chaos and gnashing of the teeth. A playoff would take all of this away from us, and yet it seems to be what so many want. I still don’t get it. Why??? This isn’t fun enough?

The Nebraska Volleyball team will be staying home for the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament. Nebraska received the number four seed in the tournament.

Only four Big 12 teams made the NCAA tournament, amongst them #3 seed Texas, Kansas State, and Iowa State. The complete bracket layout may be found here.

The Husker women will face the Liberty Flames (25-8) on Friday after the conclusion of the first game between the UAB Blazers (26-7) and the Missouri State Bears (23-12).

Should the Huskers win out, they will continue on to the Seattle, WA regional. Regional sites are determined ahead of time, not by seeding or record. The four regional sites for 2008 are Austin, TX (Texas), State College, PA (Penn State), Fort Collins, CO (Colorado State), and Seattle, WA (Washington). 

Earlier, Nebraska won a share of the Big 12 title after Nebraska and Texas finished with the same record and split the series between them with each team winning at home. Not bad for a team from which not much was expected after having to replace uber-volleyballers Sarah Pavan, Christina Houghtelling, and Tracy Stalls. This year's title makes it five consecutive Big 12 titles.

Unfortunately, Nebraska will be without three-year starter middle blocker Kori Cooper who tore her ACL in the match against Texas in Austin.

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My top five haven't changed since last week.

#1 - Alabama, although I'm not sold on them as a solid #1, I think Florida will beat them in the SEC Championship game. A solid win over their rival Auburn, although not that impressive because Auburn lost a lot this season (especially their minds).

#2 - Oklahoma.

#3 - Texas.

#4 - Florida. No doubt either Alabama or Florida will be in the national title game, so right now rankings don't matter as much. Win the game, you get your shot at immortality. I don't care for either of these teams, so don't ask me to pick one.

#5 - USC. USC lost that one game to Oregon State and it cost them everything. Pete Carroll did his whining about a playoff earlier in the year, so hopefully we won't have to hear much more from him.

Oklahoma - Texas

I have Oklahoma ahead of Texas for the following reasons:

- End of season high. Oklahoma played a better opponent on the road and beat them. Texas got a down Aggies team, the Sooners got an Oklahoma State team that's done as well as any Cowboy team in the last 20 years.

- Texas non-conference schedule is a joke, while Oklahoma soundly beat both TCU and Cincinnati. Should the "head-to-head" reference come up in a discussion with a Longhorn, feel free to throw the "body of work" phrase in their face.

The bottom line here is I firmly believe teams (especially power house school like Texas) should be doing a better job of scheduling tough games and if they're not they deserve to be penalized where it hurts the most - at the end of the year. 

Is this subjective? Yes, but all things college football are subjective. This is not the NFL where things are neatly packaged (and I might add, is boring as watching corn grow when compared to college football).

Other

Yeah, I'm ranking Nebraska at #24. Our four losses came against Oklahoma, Missouri (before the loss to Oklahoma State sucked the life out of them), Virginia Tech, and Texas Tech in OT. That's not a bad group to lose to.

Again, tell me why I'm wrong.

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