Destination: East Lansing, Michigan.

My pick: Notre Dame 33 - Michigan State 28

In today's other "big" game, Penn State-Ohio State, I'm picking the Bucks 42-3.

Posted at 07:49 AM | Permalink | in Big Ten, Game of the Week, My Games, Notre Dame | Comments (0)

Chris Fowler in his column today touched on ESPN's decision to send College GameDay to Los Angeles, when clearly there are better games in Auburn and Notre Dame on Saturday. It seems he is just as disappointed in the decision as I am:

For 13 seasons, the locations of the GameDay road shows have been editorial decisions based on the college football landscape. The basic principle was to (almost) always come from the site of the "biggest game," or occasionally, "the best story."...

Now, the philosophy has been rethought by upper management. For the first time, the competitive landscape of football programming is a frequent consideration. Serving the needs of ABC's new prime-time package of games is often a priority. The decision on GameDay's site is less a clear-cut "best game" philosophy now and is more complicated, made on a landscape where terms like "synergy" and "branding" live.

Please know this: Lee, Kirk and I have no say in decisions on GameDay's location. But as host of the show for 17 years, I am mainly concerned with the show's specific legacy, not the global college football landscape.

Let's hope that ESPN can get it right in the future. It reflects poorly on ESPN to only showcase ABC's games. Hey, I know there's a game on ABC on Saturday night. You don't need to hold a two-hour-long show at the game's site to inform me. Go to the site of the best game!

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Posted at 02:23 PM | Permalink | in TV Coverage | Comments (1)

I'm heading to South Bend in less than an hour for the Michigan-Notre Dame matchup tomorrow. Should be an interesting game, as it will most likely be the stiffest test for each team until their final games of the season. (Michigan closes at Ohio State and Notre Dame closes at USC.)

My pick: Notre Dame 21 - Michigan 20.

Posted at 01:38 PM | Permalink | in Big Ten, My Games, Notre Dame | Comments (0)

Tomorrow is Showdown Saturday. There are seven games that feature AP Top 25 teams going head-to-head. Teams from seven conferences plus Notre Dame will take part in those games. For some odd reason (or perhaps because it's the best game on ABC tomorrow), ESPN College GameDay is headed to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum for the Nebraska-USC showdown, even though it was voted as the 3rd most popular game this week in an ESPN user poll. I suppose they didn't want to hype a game on CBS (LSU-Auburn) or NBC (Michigan-Notre Dame). It's a shame that they can't go to a better game though. Anyway, here are the games with my score picks (with rankings in parentheses):

(2) Notre Dame 21 - (11) Michigan 20
(3) Auburn 15 - (6) LSU 9
(12) Louisville 27 - (17) Miami 24
(18) Oregon 31 - (15) Oklahoma 17
(20) TCU 38 - (24) Texas Tech 31
(4) USC 42 - (19) Nebraska 21
(7) Florida 20 - (13) Tennessee 14

Posted at 01:21 PM | Permalink | in ACC, Big 12, Big East, Big Ten, Game of the Week, MWC, Notre Dame, Pac-10, SEC | Comments (1)

Dropped from rankings: Clemson (12), Penn State (18), South Carolina (24)

Posted at 01:30 AM | Permalink | in Rankings | Comments (0)