Post-Thanksgiving Post of Randomness!

Well it's the best time of the year once again! You know the time, Thanksgiving through the first week of January. You have the best holidays, the best weather (snow!), and the exciting close of football seasons. My opinions, obviously, but that's how I feel. Probably the most controversial of those three is the end of football season. No not that it's ending; no one likes that! I mean who's good and who's not? Who should play for a title? Of course, we don't have to worry about that in the NFL. There's this little thing called the PLAYOFFS which helps determine who's the best year in and year out. On to the bullets!

• Speaking of a college football playoff, have fun with that whole Big 12 thing. Three teams with identical conference records and an endless cycle of who beat who. Texas beat Oklahoma. Oklahoma beat Texas Tech. Texas Tech beat Texas. Yuck. Who do I think is the best team? Oklahoma appears that way now but I can't shake the fact that they lost to Texas on a neutral field. Yes, I'm dancing around the question. OK, fine! I'll stick with Texas but I wouldn't be too upset with Oklahoma. I'm not gonna fight anyone about it.
• Texas Tech is still a fraud. I don't care if Graham Harrell had smashed fingers, beating Baylor by 7 is unacceptable. How are they still in front of Penn State in the BCS?
• Penn State vs USC in the Rose Bowl. The arrogance of USC (and the LA media) is starting to rear its ugly head...

  "If it's not in the national championship game, yeah, it's a disappointment," Maiava said. "But this is what we do. We win the Pac-10 and then own the Rose Bowl. That's our thing around here."

  -- Kaluka Maiava, USC senior LB
  

  As written here before, Pasadena is a nice place to visit, but the Trojans don't
  want to live there.

  They don't need it for reputation.

  They don't need it for recruiting.

  They needed a Fiesta against a high-scoring Big 12 team, some Sugar against a traditional SEC power, anything that could enhance their national presence and propel them into next season's polls. They don't need another Rose bouquet against another Big Ten vase.

  At this point, I should apologize to those e-mailers from Penn State, who were outraged when I included the Nittany Lions in a list of slow teams from the Midwest. I was wrong.

  They're not really from the Midwest.

-- Bill Plaschke, LA Times columnist

• In other PSU news, Sporting News Today says you can now smell like Penn State football.

  Penn State has an official perfume and cologne, which the developer says captures the essence of the school's blue and white colors, based on "campus flowers and trees."

  The Associated Press reports Masik Collegiate Fragrances of Harrisburg, PA., developed the scent and says the perfume exudes vanilla, lilac, rose and white patchouli. The cologne smells of blue cypress and cracked pepper vapor.

• The Dolphins have officially eclipsed my preseason win prediction of 6. I've been saying they'd go 6-10 (OK 5-11 give or take a win) since July. At 7-5 the Dolphins have not only overachieved in my eyes, they can still make the playoffs and EVEN WIN THE DIVISION. Seriously. Check it out:

  If the Dolphins win out, they'd sit at 11-5. The Patriots, at best, would also be 11-5. And if the Jets won all their games except for their final one against the Dolphins, they would also be 11-5. Onto the tie-breakers.

  #1: Head-to-head - Each team would have split with each other. No winner.
  #2: Division record - All 3 teams would be at 4-2.
  #3: Common games - Other than division games, each team played 8 common games against the teams from the AFC and NFC West. The Dolphins would be 7-1, as would the Patriots. The Jets would only be 5-3. They're out.
  #4: Conference record - Dolphins would be 8-4. Pats 7-5. Dolphins are champs.

  So even after that tough loss at home to the Pats, the Dolphins do indeed control their own destiny. Not bad. A team that won just 1 game a season ago now controls their own destiny with 4 games left.

• Thanksgiving was awesome, thanks for asking. How was yours?

So there's a little round-up of the past week in college football and the NFL. I'll have more on the Dolphins later.