The Sports Monitor

It's been a long college football bowl season, with games starting Dec. 15, but things really get interesting with a trifecta today: the Independence Bowl, the Russell Athletic Bowl and the Meineke Car Care Bowl. The Independence Bowl features Ohio against Louisiana-Monroe, with ULM favored by 6, according to Sportsbetting.ag . Don't let the names fool you, ULM beat then-No. 8 Arkansas and earned a bowl trip. Ohio has a 1,500-yard rusher in Beau Blankenship. Saturday, my favorite game out of the five scheduled is the Pinstripe Bowl, featuring high-powered West Virginia. We get an off day for NFL on Sunday, but the bowl games get better on Monday. New Year's Eve has four prime games, including LSU vs. Clemson in the Chick-fil-A Bowl. On New Year's Day, there are six games to watch, the perfect way to nurse a hangover from partying your way into 2013. I'm looking forward to the Orange Bowl to see if Northern Illinois can hang with Florida State. I also w...

I know I'm on the wrong side of the majority here, but I don't see Alabama as the deserving No. 1 team in the country after Monday's win over LSU in the BCS championship game. Part of that is my belief that Alabama didn't deserve to be in the game in the first place. The Crimson Tide didn't win their division in the SEC and didn't play in the SEC championship game. That enough should have kept them out. But the way the BCS is rigged, deserving teams like Oklahoma State didn't have a chance. And, yes, I did want to see Oklahoma State in the title game. I think the Cowboys would have beaten LSU, especially the conservative one that showed up Monday night at the Superdome. I don't think the Tigers would have been able to slow down Justin Blackmon, which would have given the Cowboys the edge. And I think the LSU offense was overrated, too. They couldn't score a single touchdown in two games and an overtime against Alabama. Rave about the ...