Lazy Sunday afternoon. Curled up with my laptop at the coffee shop. Think I'll check out what my peeps are doing on Twitter.
Baron Davis writes to always line up your beard at your chin line to give your beard a sharper look. Nice. Shannon Elizabeth informs that American Airlines saved $40K in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served in first class. Good to know.
And there was this tweet, about the idea of having playoffs in college football. "With a playoff, the more you move down the rankings, the more teams have identical records and arguments about why they should be in."
Um, thanks. That was from ... the BCS? Yup, the Bowl Championship Series is on Twitter and Facebook now, because who wouldn't want to know what the hip BCS is thinking about. So far, the BCS is not passing on its movie picks or any links to funny videos -- it's sticking to the meaningless drivel about why the BCS is rational and fair.
Which, of course, it's not. To the point about more teams being upset about being left out of the playoffs, who cares? No one cares what Penn State or Virginia Tech think. The current system, at this moment, would leave three undefeated teams -- TCU, Cincinnati and Boise State -- with no shot at a national title and the only reason is that Florida, Alabama and Texas and their conferences have more money and pull.
I am not sure Twitter is the right approach for the BCS. People in positions of power who are predominantly unliked should not yell from the mountaintop. The bowl officials and university presidents own the mountaintop. Pop in a Diana Krall CD and chill out up there until the big bowl games start up in January.
Or else, really go for it and tweet us something cool that happened at that party the other night. The one where Urban Meyer and Mack Brown laughed so hard, the fruit punch came out their noses.
BOWLING FOR DOLLARS
As far as the antitrust challenges from the government, Uncle Sam's got nothing. All the BCS has to do is make sure Boise State gets an at-large bid, and the public outcry will be kept to a low pitch.
Speaking of the bowls, it's about time we make some projections as things are starting to clear up thanks to No. 1 Florida's exciting 62-3 win over Florida International and No. 2 Alabama's thrilling 45-0 win over Chattanooga.
Assuming Florida beats Alabama in the Southeastern Conference Championship game (and we are going to assume enough to make an ass out of u and me), Florida will play Texas in the BCS Title Game.
The Sugar Bowl gets first choice to replace its SEC team and would take Alabama. The Fiesta Bowl is up next and would replace Texas with Oklahoma State. If Oklahoma State loses to Oklahoma on Saturday, word is that the Fiesta folks love Iowa fans ... if not their hard-to-watch team.
The Orange Bowl is up next and would take TCU to face Georgia Tech (the Atlantic Coast Champion is locked to the Orange). The Fiesta is back on the clock and, with a wink at its bowl-committee brothers, selects Boise State to go against Iowa. (Yeah, we have Oklahoma State losing to Oklahoma).
This is fun. Who's next? The Sugar Bowl snaps up Cincinnati (after it beats Pittsburgh to win the Big East) to go against Alabama. The Rose Bowl, of course, sat out the draft as it already had Ohio State going against the Oregon/Oregon State winner (the Ducks).
OK, I gotta go. The BCS is tweeting me again.
WHAT WE LEARNED
-- Jeff Tedford outcoached Jim Harbaugh on Saturday. Besides the Axe, Cal gets a national ranking (No. 21) by its name again. Number-crunching guru Steve Sanchez said it's only the second time in 12 games as an underdog since 2004 that the Bears have won. (The 31-24 win at Oregon in 2007 was the other one.) Cal was 8-6 as an underdog in Tedford's first two seasons.
-- Just like Tedford will always hold Mike Mohamed dear (his interception saved a lot of questions about that taking a knee business minutes earlier), Florida State coach Bobby Bowden owes Maryland punter Nick Ferrara big time. Ferrara couldn't kick it out of bounds like his coach asked, and a big return with two minutes left set up a bowl-clinching and job-saving win for Bowden and the Seminoles.
-- Harbaugh and his play-calling late cost Toby Gerhart the Heisman Trophy. His four touchdowns against Cal and another big game against Notre Dame would have completed a late-season run to the award -- just like USC's Carson Palmer in 2002. But four losses and Gerhart's out.
-- Jeez, Tim Tebow is going to win it again, isn't he?
-- The Pac-10 really is the best conference in the country. I wrote that last week and didn't get a lot of love coming my way. So, I thought about it some more and ... the Pac-10 truly is No. 1.
Top to bottom (with the exception of Washington State), the Pac-10 is the most competitive, exciting, unpredictable league out there. It has great running backs, young and promising quarterbacks and top-notch coaches -- and those seven schools we went through in the story on the left are going to have a better bowl record than any other conference.
The SEC? Please. It has two very good teams and that's it.
The Big 12 has been a cakewalk for Texas. That conference won't even be able to fill all of its bowl slots.
The Big 10? The Iowa-Minnesota game Saturday had more punts (17) than points (12). Ohio State should root hard for Oregon State a week from Thursday because Oregon would drop 50 points on the Buckeyes in the Rose Bowl.
-- Alabama's Nick Saban is a great motivator:
"I told the players if we had lost this game (against Chattanooga), there would be nothing else that would tarnish what you've accomplished more than that. You would someday be an NFL player in a Mercedes-Benz and roll your window down to talk to a pretty girl and she'd say, 'You lost to Chattanooga when you played at Alabama,' " Saban said. "Nobody would ever forget that one."
(E-mail Vittorio Tafur at vtafur(at)sfchronicle.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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