Success With Hyperlinking Wants Some Bowl Swag

Bowls, we have them. I guess first thing first: Rematch? Rematch. Oklahoma State's blowout of OU pulled them closer to Alabama, but it ultimately wasn't enough to jump over the Tide. Who's to blame? Well, themselves, for starters, for losing to Iowa State, but you can also cast curious glances at Missouri's Gary Pinkel, Duke's David Cutcliffe, Syracuse's Doug Marrone, Stanford's David Shaw, (GASP!) Alabama's Nick Saban and Air Force's Troy Calhoun, who all voted the Pokes 4th except for Calhoun, who put them at 5th. The individual ballots from the Harris Poll are right here. Several voters put Oklahoma State as low as 6th. Fun!

You can find a full schedule for all the bowl games right here.

Don't like the BCS? Bill looks at a few of the popular alternatives. Personally, I'm a playoff proponent, and I'd take pretty much anything over the BCS. From the sounds of it, a plus one may be on the way after the 2013 season, which is cool with me. The system can start with four teams, but considering the nature of these things, will almost surely expand to eight or sixteen eventually. The nature of football would prevent it from getting much bigger than that. I think eight teams might be the sweet spot, but I wouldn't be upset if it were bigger.

The carousel continues to spin.

Fresh vacancies: Fresno State, after letting go of Pat Hill after 15 years.
New candidates: Arizona State is going after SMU's June Jones after their pursuit of Kevin Sumlin went belly up. UCLA was turned away by Chris Petersen, but it sounded for a while like Petersen was really considering it. They now are trying to lure in Sumlin and... Al Golden?
New hires: Ole Miss has found their man in Arkansas State's Hugh Freeze.

You can see all the coaching moves condensed into one handy dandy chart here.

Now time for a different carousel to start. Tis the season for transfers, too, and reportedly the first big name to get on that train is Notre Dame's Dayne Crist. Possible destinations include Utah, San Diego State, and of course Wisconsin.

An entire sheet of gold stars. Michigan State's Keith Nichol is kind of awesome. He was the one who caught the hail mary to beat Wisconsin back in the regular season, and he also pulled this fancy little move on Saturday night. I don't often take a shining to players from other Big Ten teams, but I make an exception for Nichol.

Troll Tide, y'all. This was the front page of LSU's official team store last night. [Ed. Note: Apparently this is just a coding error, as both LSU and Bama use the same online vendor for their team stores. But still, I lol'd.]