Writing about the FSU thing and Peter Warrick, I couldn’t resist going to YouTube to try and find some old Peter Warrick highlights when he was in college and still considered a good football player. I couldn’t come up with what I wanted — I was hoping for a compilation of Peter Warrick clips, clips that would show defenders falling out of their shoes trying to tackle him. What I came up with is his game against Virginia Tech in the National Championship game. It’s a pretty good video, and it helps remind us that Peter Warrick was once a very marketable, very good athlete. It also let’s us remember a time that Michael Vick wasn’t behind bars.

When you hear 20 players have been suspended at the same time from the same football team, it usually makes you scratch your head. It makes you realize something isn’t right. Something’ fishy. What’s going on, you may ask yourself.

Until you find out those 20 players play for Bobby Bowden and FSU, where cheating, stealing, and beating people up is widely accepted, and often encouraged. The story, or at least what’s broken of it thus far.

“We have some players not traveling for one reason and some for another, including those who are ineligible for the bowl because of academic issues,” coach Bobby Bowden said in a statement released by the university Tuesday.

The word is that there was a “cheating scandal” going on around the FSU campus, and possibly up to 25 members from the football team were involved. You can’t blame the kids, and you can’t blame them for a couple of reasons. One, cheating is something everyone does in college. Two, they watched Peter Warrick do much worse and get away with it.

Of course Peter Warrick was better. And those Seminoles were actually playing for something. Steve Czaban interviews Bobby Bowden every Wednesday morning on XM Radio, and for the first time this fall that conversation will actualy be worth listening.

Oh, and if you’re like me and quickly ran to the nearest booky to bet on Kentucky, don’t bother. The game’s been yanked, and even once they find out who’s been supsended, I can’t imagine them creatively sorting out a point spread.

I don’t pretend to know what bowls feature what conferences — outside of the Rose Bowl and the Peach, which are pretty obvious — so I won’t even attempt to claim some of these bowl projections as my bowl projections. These are the predictions that CBS Sportsline has put out, and I find that CBS is often more accurate than ESPN. To read all of their bowl projections, go here; I’m going to just highlight some of the good ones that I noticed.

-Emerald Bowl, Dec. 28: Georgia Tech vs. Cal

• Most across the nation won’t find this to be too spectacular a game to watch, but I’m a Tech fan, so I couldn’t leave it off the list. And if I’m lucky, Chan Gailey won’t be coaching it.

-Independence Bowl, Dec. 30: Colorado vs. Alabama

• If Saban loses this one, shit may officially hit the fan in Tuscaloosa. They were so snotty and snide about hiring Nick Saban, and were sure that he’s the best coach in the entire nation, but after three straight losses, the wheels appear to be falling off.

-Chick-Fil-A Peach Bowl, Dec. 31: Auburn vs. Clemson

• This one appears to be set in stone, but it’s not quite official yet. Auburn has a pretty good run defense, but had a hard time containing KnowShaun Moreno, which might make it very difficult on them trying to contain James Davis and CJ Spiller, who, to me, is arguably the fastest player in college football. ACC/SEC games are always fun to watch, though, as VT and UGA proved last year.

-Capital One, Jan. 1: Illinois vs. Florida

• If there’s one team Florida doesn’t want to play, it’s Illionis. It’s not that they can’t beat Illinois — because they most certainly can — it’s that they don’t want to play a team that’s good who’s coached by Ron Zook. FireRonZook.com was a pretty big hit during his days as a Gator, and what more humiliating way to end a season than by losing to the guy that you ran out of town who took over a formerly cruddy program? Oh, and this game may also feature this year’s Heisman winner (Tim Tebow), and next year’s Heisman winner (Juice Williams)

-Outback, Jan 1: Tennessee vs. Wisconsin

• Last year’s game between these two was solid, and based on Tennessee’s inability to stop anybody on the road, you’d have to think it’d be a fun shoot-out to watch this year, as well.

-Rose Bowl, Jan. 1: Ohio State vs. USC

• USC hasn’t really been itself this year, and Ohio State, to me, has been vastly overrated. I guess this will give full closure. I hate the Trojans, but I’ll be rooting for them; Ohio State has been the most overrated team for the last two years.

-Orange Bowl, Jan. 3: VT vs. Georgia

• Last year’s Peach Bowl game was great to watch, and it was spiced up even more back in August when VT accused UGA of spying on them during practice. Georgia has a great running offense, and VT has a great running defense. Read earlier what I said about SEC/ACC games — they’re very fun to watch.

-National Championship Game, Jan. 7: Mizzou vs. West Virginia

• West Virginia was the team I called at the beginning of the year, and throughout the season I’ve thought they were the best team. Their defense isn’t the best thing since sliced bread, but that offense quite possibly is. Mizzou looked great against Kansas, but no one really knew how good or bad Kansas was. We all know how good West Virginia is. It’ll be fun, but Pat White and Steve Slaton will be holding the trophy up later on that night.

Not that we didn’t see this coming. It’s hard to justify voting for a team — even if you’re Lloyd Carr — that just lost to an opponent teams only schedule on their opening or homecoming games.

To add to the misery of their last three days, this was the first time since the creation of the AP Poll that a team ranked as high as number 5 lost one game and dropped completely out. So, Lloyd, no pressure or anything.

The Vols dropped to 23 (previously 18), and Clemson, No. 25, and Georgia Tech, No. 21, both moved into the Top 25 after their respective beatings of once respected powerhouses.

I’m not a compulsive gambler, first off. But the title’s an attention grabber, and at times I feel like one.

This weekend went well. I take that back; maybe not well, but it didn’t go bad, and any time you gamble things not going bad can often be considered very good. I was 2-2. My first two games of the weekend I was 2-0, thinking 3-0 all the way, but Tennessee fell way short to Cal and I splurged on Labor Day at a game I wasn’t really sure about (I find I do this when only one game’s on; I won’t know much about either team, but still feel this pressing need to make a bet on it).

All in all, I broke even. Even’s not bad. It’s better than down. It’s not what I shoot for — last year I finished better than 60% — but it’s certainly something I’ll settle for, especially on the first weekend. Because on the first weekend things happen that don’t happen on the last weekend. This is what I learned, good and bad.

-Georgia Tech isn’t as good as the 33-3 score would indicate. I mean that. I’m a Tech fan, and I wish they were that good, but they aren’t. Their defense looked fast and Tashard Choice looked as if he could run around anybody. But Taylor Bennett, who was supposed to end our four years of quarterback disasters, looked more like a high school quarterback than a college QB. We played against a QB who’s got about two snaps of gameday experience, against an offensive line that had three new starters. I wish every game would be as easy as this first one, but it won’t be; partly because there’ll be better teams than Notre Dame, and partly because Georgia Tech isn’t as good as a first week’s score would indicate.

-Tennessee doesn’t know how to tackle. I was half-coherent watching this game (I boozed through the GT game, then drank a bottle of cham-pag-ne after the win), and I think my drunk, stumbling, unathletic body could’ve made better tackles than some of the UT players did. Who would’ve thought a defense that gave up nothing to Cal last year would give up so much this year? Tennessee’s got Army, then Florida, then the rest of the SEC. It’s going to be up hill from here.

-LSU vs. VT is going to be an all-out defensive war. I know LSU had 45 points, which initially makes you think Matt Flynn is awesome and that ground game’s got nothing to worry about, but think again: If it wasn’t for five picks, that game wouldn’t have been the blowout the final scoreboard exhibited. VT struggled with Eastern Carolina, but the defense looked fine. The early nod’s got to be to LSU, but I think this game’s going to come down to the wire.

-FSU isn’t that good anymore. I bet on FSU because I grew up in an age where FSU, even if they didn’t have the greatest scheme or coaching, always had the best athletes. That simply isn’t the case anymore. I watched last night’s game the way through. All along, all I could ask myself was this: “Did these guys really work all month long, and in that time are these really the best offensive linemen they could put on the field?” Going into the game, I was worried about Drew Weatherford; he’s very erratic, and often inaccurate. He didn’t look great in this game, but Peyton Manning would’ve looked less than superhuman if his offensive line blocked as poorly as these guys did.

-I didn’t bet on the game, but I can’t believe Michigan’s really that bad. They better get used to going on the road and seeing a lot of App. State hats and t-shirts.

How I’m Doing:
This Week: 2-1
On The Year: 2-1

It’s not often that I run specials, but this weekend is, well, special: After going 3-0 on Saturday (that pick I had of Tennessee. . . I wasn’t serious; you were supposed to figure that out), I figure I’ll test my run of luck today with a game that used to draw national headlines, and now only gets attention because it’s the only game of the day.

-Florida State (-3) @ Clemson

This will mark the third consecutive game that I’ve taken the road team. But this weekend I was 2-1 (1-1 on the road), and had Tennessee remembered what a tackle was I might have pulled the trifecta.

Clemson returns the best running back tandem in the nation with James Davis and CJ Spiller. According to sources, Davis will be more of a feature back, and they’ll try to get Spiller out in open space to do his thing (which is run really, really fast). The problem is that Clemson starts its third new quarterback in as many years, and this new quarterback doesn’t have Chaunsi Stuckey to throw to.

FSU, on the other hand, has always had the athletes, but unfortunately had daddy’s sons coaching them. Not the case this year. LSU’s offense, even scoring 45 points, looked slow without Jimbo Fischer. And now he’s the guy coaching Drew Weatherford.

The guy coaching the other team? Yeah, that’s daddy’s son. Punt the field goal, ‘Noles cover.