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.

So, Ohio State dominated Michigan St for most of the day then gave up some free points before running it down Sparty’s throat to seal the win.

BC moves to #2 without doing anything and 5 nights from now they will go down—making it 4 weeks in a row that #2 loses.

LSU got gifted a win by Tommy Tuberville’s special teams strategy of squibbing it every time, even with a one point lead and less than 4 minutes to go. Also, if LSU doesn’t make that last catch, Les Miles’s house would have been torched because they would have lost when they were in line for a chip shot FG to win the game.

Thanks for playing, Cal—now go end ASU’s dream season. (Also, props to ESPN’s Pat Forde, who predicted ASU would be 7-0 going into the game with Cal.)

Apparently OU can’t play outside of Norman or Dallas.

Game of the Week not on Thursday night: SC at Oregon (which has no line as the Dwarf’s status is still questionable). Oh, and VT is -3 to open the week.

• The weekend opens with Texas A&M at Miami and Erin Andrews probably in a tank top—YEAH! (Erin will also be in Tampa for South Florida, so it might be a tank top twofer.)
• We’ll see if Coach Fran really has a team that can compete with Texas and Oklahoma.
• The GE/NBC train wreck returns with “Sparty” coming to South Bend. Right now, I think ND needs to worry about positive rushing yards before it worries about points.
• Ron Franklin and Ed Cunningham are following Ohio State around: they get the Buckeyes Big 11 opener at N’western after seeing them throttle the Huskies in Seattle. Michigan gets 4 home games in a row; nice job, Mr. Big 11 Schedule Maker. And we’ll see if Penn State is as good as Herbie says they are.
• CBS brings you to Baton Rouge for the Head Ball Coach and the Gamecocks’ visit. Gameday and the ESPN Primetime game (Mike Patrick shut up) are in Tuscaloosa as Georgia looks to get to 1-1 in conference.
• ABC will show part of the country Wazzu at USC while Brent and Kirk head to Madison for Iowa at Wisconsin.
• Finally, the night ends in Pasadena as UCLA tries to bounce back against Jake Locker and the Huskies.

“I’m interested in staying here,” he told the Miami media just days before accepting an offer from Crimson Tide athletic director Mal Moore. “I’m committed to our team.”

On more than one occasion he lashed out at the Miami media by denying he had been approached or was interested in the job. Dolphins owner H. Wayne Huizenga even relayed a message from Saban in late December that the coach was “not going anywhere.”

Nick contends that he never had a good relationship with the South Florida press, and that the call of College Football in the South drew him back. He also joins the growing list of SEC coaches who take shots at other major conferences, saying that the Big 10 (a conference he couldn’t win while at Michigan State, by the way) is very top-heavy:

“No disrespect to the Big Ten, but most of the time there were three or four good teams in the Big Ten each year,” he said. “Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State were pretty good and then there might be another team or two that was better that year. But here (in the SEC) there were eight or nine teams that were all pretty good. That was a challenge to play with the kind of consistency you needed to be able to sustain that kind of performance.

And of course the SEC is the best place for college football.

“The Big Ten has a lot of tradition,” Saban said, “but the SEC to me is different because most of the people’s passion is greater because they grew up relating to their school. Pro sports were not as prominent 25 years ago in the South so this was everybody’s passion and they identified and related.”

Well, Nick, at least you won’t piss off anyone on this year’s schedule …