Are you ready for some football?

College football gets started tomorrow, Thursday, September 2. No. 14-ranked USC, unable to find an opponent on the mainland, will travel to Hawaii to play the Warriors. Prior to the year 2000, the University of Hawaii's men's teams were all referred to as the Rainbow Warriors, complemented by an athletics logo featuring a rainbow. However, in a controversial marketing strategy over which many at the University and throughout Hawaii have misgivings, the school changed its athletics logo to a stylized "H" and allowed each team to pick its own team name. This has led to the current situation, where the basketball, swimming and diving, and tennis teams have retained the team name of "Rainbow Warriors"; the baseball team adopted the name "Rainbows"; and the football, golf, and volleyball teams have adopted the name "Warriors". But I digress....

Also on Thursday the unranked Golden Gophers of Minnesota travel to play the Blue Raiders of powerhouse Middle Tennessee State University of the Sun Belt Conference. (The Blue Raiders of MTSU, located in Murfreesboro, TN, are not to be confused with the Blue Smurfs of Boise State.) Minnesota is picked to be the 11th (last) team in the Big Ten Conference. This is possible only because the conference kept the name "Big Ten" when Penn State was added a few years ago to make an 11-team conference. On Saturday No. 24 Oregon State takes on No. 6 TCU in Dallas, No. 11 Oregon plays unranked New Mexico, Washington plays at BYU, and Washington State plays at Oklahoma State.

Which brings us back to poor ol' USC. A USC football player was bragging to a group of coeds that he finished a jigsaw puzzle in only three months. One girl said, "Three months? You're proud of that?" The Trojan replied, "Yep; on the box it said 4-6 years." [Shamelessly lifted from "The Edge" column in The Oregonian.]

As a public service to the 2 or 3 individuals reading this who may be interested, I've tried to sort out the college athletic conference realignment, which was no easy task. The eleven-member Big Ten conference will add Nebraska to become the Bigger Ten or the New Big Twelve Conference. The Big 12 Conference will lose Nebraska to the Big 10 and Colorado to the Pac-10 to become the New Big 10 or the Little Big 12. The Pac-10 Conference will add Colorado and Utah to become, presumably, the Pac-12. Now here is where it gets interesting; pay attention. The Western Athletic Conference (WAC) will lose Boise State, Fresno State, and Nevada, all of which will join the Mountain West Conference. But the Mountain West will lose Utah to the Pac-10/Pac-12 and will also lose BYU. BYU will play an independent schedule in football but will join the West Coast Conference for basketball and other sports. The West Coast Conference will consist of seven Catholic universities or colleges (Portland, San Francisco, Santa Clara, Gonzaga, Saint Mary's, San Diego, Loyola Marymount), Pepperdine (Church of Christ), and BYU (Mormon). But not for football. So now you know....