College Football

Five things to watch this week in college football: 1. Texas vs. Texas A&M might be on last legs as a storied series, but it appears the Big 12 preservationists club will be able to save Texas-Oklahoma. This week's Red River Rivalry game at the Cotton Bowl gets cranked up a few deep-fried turkey legs as both teams enter undefeated. 2. Florida had the misfortune on this year's Southeastern Conference schedule to be the school designated to play Alabama and Louisiana State in consecutive weeks.

PLAY IT FORWARD Five things to watch this week in college football. 1. Pittsburgh and Syracuse were accepted Sunday as members of the Atlantic Coast Conference. That sets the stage for further conference expansion. Regents from Texas and Oklahoma meet separately Monday to discuss possible moves to the Pacific 12 Conference. Stay tuned. 2. Big 12/Pac-12/Southeastern Conference game of the week? Oklahoma State plays at Texas A&M in a Big 12 game that actually might involve three conferences.

I already miss the Bowl Championship Series like an old pair of shoes that might have stepped in something. Is it really going away in two years? What will be left to lampoon? College football's smart people, however, insist it's time to move forward to some sort of post-2014, post-modern, postseason involving four teams. Although ordinary folks would call this a playoff, conference commissioners as late as Wednesday preferred the euphemism "four-team event. " After two days of meetings in South Florida, commissioners on Thursday only officially announced there would not be an eight or 16-team playoff.

This is the second in a series of five story lines advancing the 2010 college football season. Five games that could determine this year's national championship: —Sept. 6: Boise State vs. Virginia Tech in Landover, Md. The plot line is pretty simple: Boise State's dream of knocking through the glass ceiling and becoming the first team from a BCS "mid-major" conference to win the national title begins or ends Labor Day night. Both schools will enter the game in the preseason top 10, but Boise State, because it plays in the lowly regarded Western Athletic Conference, is the team that can least afford to lose and be able to recover to make the Bowl Championship Series championship game in January.

Coach Mark Richt owns a 96-34 record in his 10 seasons at Georgia, but let the record reflect that's not Bulldog-gone good enough. Wait, it gets better, or worse. Richt stood up at Southeastern Conference media days and actually (sort-of) braced fans for a possible season-opening home venue (Atlanta) loss to — Boise State. "The winningest college football team in America over the last 10 seasons," Richt said. "I've probably never seen anybody play any harder than they play as a team down after down.

Ten quick-hit observations as coaches, coast to coast, continue to scour for players off Penn State's roster: 1. While it announced plans this week to broaden its powers to crack down on rules violators, the NCAA may have inadvertently helped major rules violator USC win this year's national title. Is there a law of unintended consequences on the NCAA books? President Mark Emmert's unilateral ruling on the Penn State scandal included immediately releasing all Nittany Lions players from their scholarships.

Unbuckling the mailbag: Question: College football? Beyond the drunken student body, booze-fueled alumni, gambling junkies and the entire demented state of Texas, who cares? Not this baseball fan. As for college and pro football … I can't work up any enthusiasm for a game that routinely concusses the brains of so many players to a spongy mush, reducing these once-vibrant human beings to drooling hulks by late middle age. I don't think I'll stand and cheer for that.

Nebraska's Big Ten Conference indoctrination last year at Wisconsin's Camp Randall Stadium was more like a boot camp. The Badgers kicked the stuffing out of the Cornhuskers, 48-17, in a game in which everyone was seeing red. "I'm embarrassed," Nebraska Coach Bo Pelini said afterward. "I apologize to the fans of Nebraska. " The goal this year is to not need an apology. Nebraska's first year in the Big Ten was, um, probably a 6 on a scale of 1 to 10. The Cornhuskers finished 5-3 in conference and 9-4 overall after a season-ending thumping by South Carolina in the Capital One Bowl.