Are you ready for some football?

Ahhh, the first week of the New Year.

A time when football is on television every night for approximately 10 straight days (Ha! Two nights better than the Beatles 'Eight Days a Week!')

Well, needless to say, Rick is one happy camper.

New Years day was spent mostly on the couch watching the Michigan-Florida game, followed by the USC-Illinois game, followed by the Hawai'i-Georgia game. The allegiance to watching each game varied, as Rick likes the Florida colors (reminds him of Cal State Fullerton) but also has an affinity for the Wolverine fight song (Hail to the victors!).

Cheering for USC was easy as Rick is a homer for the Pac-10, he has been to Trojan games with his sister Nicole and brother-in-law John, and he is deeply offended by Illinois mascot (must the Illini always be 'fighting?').

He was split on the Hawai'i-Georgia game, though. Rick's family has ties to Hawai'i, his good friend Rob Chai is Hawaiian, and his grandfather got blown off a toilet when the Pearl Harbor attack happened. But Rick thinks bulldogs are cool. It was a tough game to root against any one team. Luckily, Hawai'i's (that's a lot of apostrophes) lack of an offensive or defensive line made the game a lopsided affair.

And then, over the weekend, the San Diego 'Super' Chargers generously let the Tennessee Titans have an entire half to try to score as many points as possible. The Chargers even told the Titans they would spot them the first half in order to make it a fair fight. Tennessee could only muster 6 points. It was an easy speed bump for the mighty Charger offense to overcome in the second half (even without Superman, I mean tight end Antonio Gates). Now the Chargers must travel to Indianapolis, uh, Indy, and face the Colts this upcoming Sunday.

Also, Sunday morning Rick played flag football in the near-freezing rain (it was snowing at one point) and he re-broke a finger that got jammed two months earlier. At least this time he has set an appointment to see a doctor.

Monday night, Rick was back to watching college football as LSU and Ohio State faced off in the BCS National Championship. Again, Rick was torn. He likes LSU because he likes the color purple and he likes Shaq. But he likes the Buckeyes because his mom is from the state of Ohio (not to be confused with The Ohio State). But the tipping point in his cheering decision comes from the fact the purple and yellow remind him of SAE, so Rick obviously yelled himself hoarse for Ohio State.

Oh well. You can't win them all.

Till next time...