A few years ago, ESPN created the perfect drug for the general college football degenerate: College Gameday Live, a once-a-week quality-produced show that is not only insightful but also entertaining. Needless to say, I quickly became a regular weekend user. But after growing accustomed to the euphoria of this early Saturday morning show, it would take months for me to come down and re-enter normal civilian life. I considered this a good thing. A once-a-week user. It didn’t affect my life negatively and I could only convince myself of the positives. I’ve now realized it was only a gateway.

The geniuses at ESPN, knowing my addiction, decided to street College Football Live—the crack to College Gameday Live’s cocaine. They have helmet contests and sound offs. They rotate anchors, giving any columnist who has ever written an article in a major publication a chance to give his thoughts on why the grass (actual grass, not the mary jane) in Florida seems to blow out as many ACLs as Joe Pa does birthday candles, along side an over-hyped, overrated College player who never did anything at the next level, so he can say things like “Well, when I played” or “Back when my coach [fill in the blank]”. Every day, some player that’s in line to be placed on the mantle of over-hyped tell us he and his team are going to take it one game at a time.

But here’s the catch, the thing about crack: I can’t stop watching it. I watch it nightly as soon as I get home, like a jonesin’ junkie. I need to watch FSU beat USC in a helmet on-line vote off. (Really? It doesn’t help that it airs when we’re still at work and they’re already a few drinks past happy hour.) I need to watch unwatchable Sound Off smack running videos. I need it until College Gameday Live returns in three weeks (and even then I’ll still probably watch). I simply need it.

Please—if anyone has any good cures for getting me off this crap until the good pure rush of College Gameday Live returns, I’ll gladly take it.

Please feel free to post suggested cures in the comments.

10. Mark Mangino begins a rigorous pre-season fitness regimen.
9. OU cheerleaders scramble to memorize the words to Boomer Sooner.
8. Nerds across the country prepare for twelve weeks out of the shadows as they don Micheal Jackson-esque pseudo-military uniforms to march in the band.
7. A Northwest Florida cryogenics lab begins de-icing Bobby Bowden.
6. Joe Paterno starts sundowning.
5. BYU embraces its African-American population (may also be an indicator of the start of college basketball, or track, or baseball, or hockey).
4. Los Angeles County Superior Court places priority on the probation hearings of the USC backfield.
3. Schools like Boise State escape safety school obscurity and begin to matter.
2. Perennial powerhouse Notre Dame prepares for a daunting schedule against such formidable opponents as San Diego State, Stanford (err, wait a minute), and Navy.
1. Louisiana increases to the 49th most desirable state as LSU makes a run at another championship.

• A judge ruled that Reggie Bush must quit stonewalling and must testify.
• O.J. Mayo was reported to have taken $30K in cash and gifts.
• DeMar DeRozan (second-highest rated basketballer ever to sign with the school) is reconsidering after the Mayo incident.
• That ridiculous youtube video with Brendan Carroll f-bombing the walk-ons has exploded all over the Internets.
• Lofa Tatupu, one of the few USC products who hasn’t been an utter disaster, got a DUI.

Just to repeat: that’s JUST THIS WEEK.

I hear about it nonstop: USC’s athletic department is worse than Ohio State’s, worse than Florida State’s, worse than Miami’s, USC is an SEC school and not in a good way, lack of institutional control, inmates running the asylum, a school without any shred of integrity, etc.

Maybe it’s because I have two kids now and going to the games isn’t quite as logistically easy as it once was, but I’m giving serious thought to selling my season tickets and staying home this season. (And yes, I know that doesn’t hurt the athletic department, but at least karma-wise it might if my tickets go to the opposing fans at each game). Based on the goodwill of a few great teams, they have jammed the entire community with higher ticket prices and a raw deal, and now every SC alum gets to walk into the office every day and hear about how they went to school at “The Program” and are basically one notch above SMU.

If there’s another way to file some kind of protest, I’m all for it … not that the school would give a damn, but still. Anyone associated with the school who has any interest in sports whatsoever should be embarrassed by it.

Alabama is in the post-Major Applewhite era, and seems very happy with the new offense.

Oklahoma is trying to forget their last trip to Arizona. I think they might refuse a Fiesta Bowl bid this year.

Still no offense for the Seminoles. Good luck, Jimbo …

Florida’s spring game highlights Chris Rainey in the backfield, not former USC RB Emmanuel Moody. Anybody still (ever) think this transfer was a good call?

UCLA names Patrick Cowan (aka USC killer in ’06) starting QB.

LSU’s Ryan Perrilloux apparently didn’t need spring practice in order to start for LSU this fall.

USC’s first opponent apparently wants the Trojans to worry about their new passing attack.

Finally, from University Park/Howard Jones Field, Joe McKnight can’t handle 3 classes this semester and Mark “Dirty” Sanchez will be SC’s starting QB unless his arm falls off before August 30th.

Tonight: The Battle of the Techs, with the lovely Erin Andrews on the sidelines. I might watch, since there’s nothing else sports-related on television, but these two teams are seriously dull.

Saturday:

• Early Games: Wisconsin at Ohio State on the Big Ten Network (noon Eastern). For those of you without DirecTV enjoy not seeing this game—meanwhile, I will try and watch on mute as Thom Brennaman and Charles Davis suck. FOX and the BTN should fire them now.
• A little Nebraska at Kansas (12:30 Eastern, FSN) should be interesting, if only to see how Mangino looks in his TENT sweatshirt and how Nebraska responds to playing without Sam Keller.
• Navy at ND (2:30 Eastern, NBC). Will the streak end, or can Charlie the Weis make it 44 in a row against the Middies? If I wasn’t going to be in LA for SC’s homecoming, I would probably see how this one goes.
• Late afternoon: none of the 3:30 Eastern kicks are exciting, so you’ll just have to wait until 5:00pm for the Saban Bowl. LSU will be fired up, but since Les Miles is still on their sideline, I like Alabama’s chances if they can keep it close into the 4th quarter.
• Story of the week: ESPN worked it out with the Pac-10 and FSN to broadcast the ASU/Oregon game to the rest of the country (6:45pm Eastern). Bonus points because Gameday will be there, even if they are making Herbstreit fly to Boston after the show instead of trading him for Blackledge. Maybe Herbie hates Mike Patrick as much as the rest of us do? Dennis Dixon for Heisman can take another huge step forward here.
• Finally, the ABC regional games at 8pm are not great, but most of America will get to see if BC can beat FSU at home.

1  USC at Notre Dame            20-Oct       $409          1        $379
2  Ohio State at Michigan       17-Nov       $408          3        $876
3  Oklahoma vs. Texas            6-Oct       $400          2        $419
4  UCLA at USC                   1-Dec       $312          4        $172
5  Tennessee at Alabama         20-Oct       $238          5        $181
6  Georgia at Florida           27-Oct       $274          7        $284
7  Texas at Texas A&M           23-Nov       $268          6        $233
8  Alabama at Auburn            24-Nov       $373          8        $321
9  Tennessee at Florida         15-Sep       $248          9        $180
10 Michigan at Michigan State    3-Nov       $218         11        $193
11 Notre Dame at Purdue         29-Sep       $105         10        $281
12 Arkansas at LSU              23-Nov       $128         12        $226
13 California at Stanford        1-Dec       $118         13        $ 77
14 Miami at Florida State       20-Oct       $113         14        $137
15 Army/Navy Game                1-Dec       $285         16        $150
16 Florida State at Florida     24-Nov       $401         15        $195
17 Georgia at Georgia Tech      24-Nov       $156         17        $161
18 Oklahoma State at Oklahoma   24-Nov       $160         19        $228
19 Pittsburgh at West Virginia   1-Dec       $139         18        $ 87
20 Oregon State at Oregon        1-Dec       $170         20        $173
21 Clemson at South Carolina    24-Nov       $414         21        $282
22 Virginia Tech at Virginia    24-Nov       $191         23        $147
23 Iowa at Iowa State           15-Sep       $122         22        $218
24 Arizona at Arizona State      1-Dec       $ 80         24        $ 69
25 Purdue at Indiana            17-Nov       $ 77         25        $ 59

Granted, this is a fairly useless ranking, as it only uses gross dollar volume of tickets sold through StubHub. But it’s interesting nonetheless. Also, it looks like the Washington schools didn’t make the cut.

For those of you residing east of the Rockies, you may want to sit down for a second: the very concept of a big Pac-10 game that doesn’t involve USC may just blow your mind. The showdown at Autzen will feature two of the most electrifying offenses in the nation, and these two teams proved their defenses are clearly ready to challenge USC by allowing a combined 58 points last weekend to Arizona and Stanford. (Ducks by 4).

Read the whole thing.

1a. Under extenuating circumstances, however, you may have up to three Division I-A rooting allegiances, so long as the schools meet the following criteria:
[...]
(e) You’re a bandwagon-jumping, low-self-esteem weenie and scurry from Notre Dame to Miami to Ohio State to USC to Boise State depending on the year, the polls and the amount of water flooding into the ship. [I don't understand how this counts as one of the criteria for schools, but anyway.]

9. You are allowed to root freely against the following schools for no specific reasons: Notre Dame; Notre Dame in their puke-green jerseys; Notre Dame when playing on “Triumph of the Will”-shaming propaganda house organ NBC; USC; any school that plays its fight song approximately 4,387 times per game like USC; Michigan; Miami; Ohio State; any school like Ohio State with a pretentious “the” in front of its name, because otherwise how would we know which Ohio State university they were talking about?; any school coached by Steve Spurrier; any school coached by Nick Saban. [I began to understand this rule when we watched last year's Oregon State game in a sports bar in Columbia, Missouri. Although I would add this addendum: you can't root against USC (for example) unless you can name the college town its opponent comes from ...]

25. It is never OK to deny the hotness of the USC song girls.

25a. Not even if you attend UCLA.

26. Please observe the following age guidelines on appropriate thoughts to have while ogling the USC song girls:

• 11-15: What is this strange tingling feeling?
• 16-18: College is going to be awesome.
• 18-24: Damn, I wish she’d wear that skirt to sociology class.
• 25-35: College was awesome.
• 36-50: Damn, I wish she’d wear a burka or something. That could be my baby daughter!
• 51-75: Gee, what a lovely young lady. I hope she meets a nice boy.
• 75-over: What is this strange tingling feeling? Do I have to go to the bathroom again?

41. Observe the following statutes of limitations:

(a) Bragging about national title: 25 years
(b) Bragging about a top-five finish: 15 years
(c) Bragging about a top-five finish if you are Ohio State, USC, Florida , Miami, Tennessee, Michigan, Florida State, Texas, Oklahoma: 0 years
(d) Bragging about a BCS bowl win: 10 years
(e) Bragging about a blowout BCS bowl win over Notre Dame: one year, or until someone else joins the club
(f) Bragging about Heisman winner: 10 years
(g) Bragging about Heisman winners whose last names rhyme with “Baretta”: six months
(h) Bragging about Heisman winners named “O.J.”: null

Circa 14 years ago, these programs played “The Game of The Century”: #1 vs. #2. Now, Notre Dame and Florida State have to hold press conferences to announce who will get to lead them to 8 wins. I’m sure the suspense is killing you.

For Florida State, it’s going to be Drew Weatherford. (Xavier Lee, meanwhile, is pretty upset about choosing Tallahasee over Gainesville.) In South Bend, Coach Weis has decided upon a QB, but doesn’t want to tell anyone—not even the kids.

Weis has said repeatedly since the team began practicing this month he would not announce whether Evan Sharpley, Demetrius Jones or Jimmy Clausen would start at quarterback until it was time to take the field Sept. 1 for the opener against Georgia Tech.

Thursday night following practice, Weis said for the first time he had made his choice.

“I’m absolutely sure who the starting quarterback is,” he said.

Weis became agitated when asked further about his choice.

“Do you think I’m going to be so fickle that I won’t know who the quarterback is going to be?” he asked.

Pressed further, Weis said he has known for a week or two who would start. But he said he still hasn’t told the player.