Don't Bet On It!: Week One College Football National Game of Disinterest

College football season begins tomorrow, so I had better wrap up my week one forecasts and get down to the serious business of preparing you for the Georgia Bulldogs’ opening outing between the hedges. I’m almost done after having taken you around the SEC and run down the national games of interest, but there is one game left to address.

As a college football fan, I pride myself on my ability to determine my rooting interests, no matter how intangible or tangential, in any gridiron contest between undergraduate student-athletes. Each week, though, there invariably is one game so lacking in intrigue or import than I can muster nothing but indifference. This game is designated the national game of disinterest.

This week’s national game of disinterest is . . .

How inconsequential is this game? It’s being played on the first night of the 2010 college football season, yet I forgot it even existed when making my preseason forecasts. That’s about as irrelevant as a game can get.

Look, I get that I didn’t exactly do a lot to win friends and influence people when I voiced my opinion on Lane Kiffin, but, other than an erroneous prediction of a bowl-less season for the Tennessee Volunteers in 2009, I was right about Coach Kiffin fils. At best, Lane Kiffin is Tom Cruise in "Risky Business," lucking into success despite doing everything possible to louse up his future; the more likely scenario is that Lane Kiffin is Steve Spurrier’s mouth trapped in Mike Shula’s body. Assuming that Lane Kiffin can’t foul up too badly as long as Monte is around is as safe as assuming that Jeff Bowden couldn’t be too bad an offensive coordinator as long as Bobby was his boss.

As the Men of Troy begin their NCAA- and self-imposed slide into mediocrity, they could select no better opponent to indicate their ride into oblivion than the onetime Rainbow Warriors, who have been neither seen nor heard from since the 2008 Sugar Bowl, in which the Bulldogs beat Hawaii back into territorial status. Call it an East Coast bias if you like, but the sun sets in the west and it’s hard to get much farther west than the middle of the Pacific Ocean. That symbolism should not be lost upon college football fans.

Hawaii wanted its independence yet was met with indifference. USC will be home for the holidays, so the Trojans scheduled a game in the islands to make up for their lack of a bowl game. I haven’t bothered to do the math to figure out what time it will be in Honolulu at kickoff, but, regardless of what the clock says, this game is being played in the twilight of both programs.

Therefore, I’m not picking it because I won’t be able to see the final score when darkness descends. While I wish neither program ill, the participants in this game are so doomed that, 20 years from now, someone will have to author and attach a "Compson Appendix" to SI.com’s postgame writeup.

Coming Soon: Too Much Information.

Go ‘Dawgs!