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.

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.

This means that Missouri, America’s feel good story for one week, gets relegated to ESPNU on April 19th (same day as SC’s spring game). Also, according to the ESPN release, College Gameday Final will air a show on the 12th at 10pm EDT and the 19th at 7pm EDT (I hope without Lou Holtz) to recap other Spring stories that Gameday does not cover.

More college football on TV is better than less, but the Gators don’t need any extra national coverage. They already play in America’s Most Overrated conference …

1. Florida
2. USC
3. Georgia
4. Ohio State
5. Oklahoma

Herbstreit:

1. USC
2. Georgia
3. Florida
4. Missouri
5. Oklahoma

Ok I am sorry to everyone for not posting in the past 12 days.  After my visit to LA for the yawnfest that was the Homecoming win, I had a business trip then family in town so yeah I forgot to post about week 11.  Ohio State, thanks for playing.

Thursday Night: Holy Sh*t, the Pac-10 on Thursday night.  It gets even better for Thanksgiving with SC at ASU, but tomorrow Oregon tries to stay in the hunt for the BcS title game with a visit to Tucson.  (Erin Andrews will not be in the Top 50 of hots in that Stadium)

Saturday: Ohio State at Michigan (noon ABC, Musburger/Herbstreit) Ok, this game is worth a trip to Pasadena and maybe the end of Lloyd Carr, but Herbie calling this one seriously, ABC/ESPN come on.  Nessler/Greise without McGuire should have called this one and you should have sent Herbie and Brent to Lubbock.

Saturday Night: Oklahoma at Texas Tech (8pm ABC, Nessler/Greise/McGuire) 4-hour game guaranteed.  Maybe OU spits the bit like 2 years in Lubbock but since the Big 12 officials will be out to get Leach, I doubt it.  West Virginia at Cincinnati (7:45pm ESPN Patrick/Blackledge) maybe the Mountaineers will lose so they won’t complain about being 11-1 and left out.

Ok, that is all that I can recommend for Saturday, you can flip by LSU at Ole Miss (3:30pm CBS Lundquist/Danielson) to see if everyone has a problem concentrating when they come to Oxford because they would rather be in the Grove than in the Stadium whipping Ole Miss and Duke at Notre Dame (2:30pm NBC Hammond/Haden) just to see if Lucky #10 can happen.

I hate what has happened to college football because this used to be the best weekend of the year, rivalry Saturday across the country but with selling out for TV and conference title games the next 2 weekends are better this season. (sad)

Also, to everyone who complains that the Pac-10 doesn’t have a conference championship game, F*CK OFF!  The SEC (Die Roy Kramer for creating these things), Big 12 and ACC all went to 12 teams to get to have a title game ($$$$$$$$$$$) that is the only reason.  The Pac-10 teams play everyone now so stop complain or we will go to 12 teams (hello Utah and BYU) and then we can have years where Oregon would miss USC and ASU and everyone would say they haven’t played anyone.  So, let that stupid tired argument go away like Corso needs to.

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.

• Dan Shanoff, formerly of ESPN.com’s Page 2 and now a weekly College Football contributor at Deadspin likes Ohio State over Penn State, Oregon over USC, Cal over ASU, Florida over Georgia at the Cocktail Party, WVU over Rutgers, and Virginia Tech to continue the curse of being #2 by beating BC on Thursday (Something bad needs to happen to Boston sports soon).
• SI.com’s Cory McCartney throws out his take with BC surviving its trip to Blacksburg, Ohio State staying undefeated, Florida continuing to own Georgia, and—in the Pac-10′s big games—SC to upset Oregon and Cal to upset ASU.

Since the multi-color (credited to Jim Rome) keeps paying this guy to make lines (which he steals from LVSC) I will let people see what he has on the big games of the weekend.

• VT -3.5
• Oregon -2.5
• ASU -3.5
• Florida -9.5
• Ohio St -3.5

Highlights:

• Thursday night: South Florida at Rutgers (ESPN: Fowler/Flutie/James). South Florida’s last test on the road.
• Saturday (Noon Eastern): Nothing worth watching.
• Saturday (3:30pm Eastern): Florida at Kentucky (CBS: Lundquist/Danielson, Gameday in Lexington) and SC at ND—2 years ago a clash of Top 10 teams, this year NBC (Hammond/Haden) might get better ratings from the test pattern.
• Saturday Night: Auburn at LSU on ESPN (Patrick/Blackledge and please stop the bit where Todd eats) along with Michigan at Illinois on ABC with the Brent Musburger Drinking Game and the Kirk Herbstreit bus story from Lexington, KY to Champaign, IL.

Carville’s family has had LSU tickets since the early ’50s. He can point to the place on the Tiger Stadium field where Billy Cannon fielded that fabled punt in ’59.

Not that he’s letting that color his opinion of some of the highest-profile quarterbacks in college football:

Carville called out Tim Tebow (“If I was Mr. Tebow, I would be slightly concerned.”) and lobbed a jab at USC (“I’d like to play them too, I’m sure [John David] Booty wouldn’t make it to halftime.”)

See you in January, James.