Woof. Looks like Penn State has hired Bill O'Brien as the next football coach, making O'Brien the second hire in roughly six hundred years. Hyperbole aside, I've been all around the blogosphere today and I cannot find any positive reactions to the hire. This is troubling for Penn State's football future, both immediately and down the road.

Dave Joyner and the rest of the search committee down there had two choices:

1. Appease the fan base and hire someone with ties to the Penn State program, like Tom Bradley
2. Sever all ties with the past coaching staff and start anew

And Coach O'Brien, this is all you can do right now - please don't try any Josh Groban.

That was one of the wackiest games of college football I've ever seen. Generally the BCS gives us some good games, even though Kirk Herbstreit is an idiot and claims that neither team belonged in the Sugar Bowl. The Sugar Bowl had a tough act to follow, with the premiere games coming Jan. 2 - the Rose Bowl was a great game in which Wisconsin narrowly lost to Oregon despite giving up 600+ yards, and the Fiesta Bowl was an instant classic, seeing Oklahoma State mount an improbable overtime comeback from some pretty bad kicking on Stanford's part.

The game did not disappoint. THE CONTENT YOU CRAVE right after the jump. 2000 words? Aww yee.

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Hey all,

While we're all basking in the glory of Michigan's dramatic win over the Hokies, there's some more victory to be claimed- in the Second Annual Bowls You Care About Pick'em.

Standings won't be public this year, but you can check my math on your own - I'll post the top two, with three games remaining:

If the BYCAPE ended right now:

1. Mark A - 325

2. Tom G - 285

Final standings update coming after the National Championship - probably on Tuesday.

Thanks for playing everyone!

Happy New Year's from Maize n Brew!

While everyone is watching the Lions and taking a break from college football, I thought we'd sit down with the fine folks at Gobbler Country, SBN's VT blog, and serve up a few questions.

So here you go. Take it from the guys that know Va Tech football - and enjoy the next few days! Two days till the Sugar Bowl.

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Tired of listening to us bitch about Michigan's coaching situation? Tired of having to pick between Ohio and Florida International when you didn't even know FIU was D-1? Don't want to hear about Jim Delany ignoring this blog's suggestions? Only care about the Big Ten and the teams you hate?

Then the Maize n Brew Bowls You Care About Pick 'Em is for you. Featuring only the Big Twelveten, Notre Dame, and the New Years' Day/BCS Bowl games. Oh, and the Cotton Bowl, because this blog misses the days of snowy Texas bowl games and will choose to overlook the fact that it isn't even played at the Cotton Bowl anymore.

Rules and prizes (!!!) after the jump.

The Rules

Users must have a Maize n Brew or SB Nation username to participate. E-mail your picks to MnBBowlPickEm@gmail dot com. Your "lock pick" counts double. The Notre Dame game only counts if you pick FSU and FSU wins, and the Ohio State game only counts if you pick Florida and Florida wins. Actually, scratch that. Leave your pick for that game blank or you get NO POINTS. File is at the end of this post.

The Prizes

Winner will receive their choice of either: a) One (1) Brewski Award named in their honour for one (1) calendar year, beginning January 15, or b) the chance to pick the Brewskis for one Michigan game of their choice. What are the Brewskis, you ask? Stay tuned to find out!

The Deadline

E-mail your picks to MnBBowlPickEm at gmail dot com by midnight, December 26th. Late entries will only be counted with proper begging.

The Motivation

Why? Why another bowl pick-em, you ask? Because we here at Maize n Brew love you. The fans. The faithful. As much as we love to disagree with you, the user content on this, and any, blog keeps us up and running. So have at 'em!

Pick Em Sheet (updated)

Click that link.

Did you hear there's no more ice at Ohio State?  The senior who knew the recipes graduated.

-Aristotle

It's finally here.  The game around which most of us plan our entire years is upon us.  The Game.  No adjectives needed.  The best rivalry in college sports.  What differentiates Michigan-TSDS (hereafter referred to as "Ohio" because, well, we've always done that) is that it's not just a sports rivalry - it's a battle between pure, sweet goodness and unmitigated, stinking evil.  Plain and simple.  It's THE MOST IMPORTANT GAME ON THE SCHEDULE.  Don't believe me?  Ask Brady Hoke:

This game defines seasons.  It gets otherwise good coaches fired (John Cooper, you're always welcome in Ann Arbor) and has a history spanning more than a century.  For guys like Woody Hayes, Bo Schembechler, Desmond Howard, and so many other greats in the history of the rivalry, it defined their careers.  The last Saturday in November, The Game, is simply the best day of the year.

This year, the winds of change are a-blowin', and they've started to fumigate the pile of cheating excrement along the banks of the Olentangy River.  Jim Tressel will be watching this game from somewhere other than the Ohio sideline for the first time in the decade after an extensive scandal drove him from his office as ruiner of dreams.  Gone, too, is Terrelle Pryor, the former-Rodriguez-target-turned-narcissistic-prat who tormented Michigan for three years.  In their steads are the remarkably bland Luke Fickell, of whose soul I have not yet uncovered evidence, and a streaky yet annoying combination of another boring human being, Joe Bauserman, and the erratic Braxton Miller.  Returning for The Game after suspensions lasting several games are other key cogs in the Buckeye offense, including shifty-eyed WR DeVier Posey and Boom Herron, a fairly gifted tailback whose moral compass is so completely twisted that it's a wonder he runs the right way.

Michigan, on the other hand, is in the mist of a resurgence, one that only Bo Schembechler himself could have orchestrated from his perch in the heavens, somewhere between the right hand of the Almighty and the rakishly handsome angelic representation of Tom Harmon.  New head coach Brady Hoke has the Wolverines sitting on a 9-2 record, with a signature win over rival Notre Dame and a solid B1G debut bringing his Michigan team within a win of a probable BCS bowl bid.  But who cares about that?  Right now, Hoke just wants to Beat Ohio.

Let's talk football.  Keys to the game after The Jump.

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My brain knows what to make of this. It is cold and rational. It is able to separate the feelings I've had since I first became a college football fan from the harsh, horrifying realities that have recently come to light at Penn State. Objectively, it knows the decision to fire the winningest coach in college football and the president of Pennsylvania State University was the right one. It knows further punishment is warranted. In my brain, there is no debate about that.

But my heart.... my heart feels like it's been ripped apart by a hundred horses thundering in different directions.

The brutal reality of what has occurred has shattered what and who we believed were right and just. Further it has exposed the premise of our ascending evolution as species to be a bald-faced lie. The cruelty of what happened is horrific to everyone, no matter where or what culture you come from anywhere on this planet. The fact that it happened simply reminds us that we might as well have just crawled out of the swamps or out from under a rock a generation ago. Worse, the fact that it happened, and that supposedly good men and women did nothing to stop it shatters any vestige of our remaining illusions.

There are no heroes. There are only victims and survivors. And it's a gift or curse of divine lottery that separates you into one of those categories.

I honestly cannot recall a worse college football off-season and regular season than 2011. The Pony Express doesn't even register on this Richter Scale. Before this I thought the worst thing in college sports was the out of control Barry Switzer Oklahoma teams or the tragedy of the killing of a Baylor Basketball player by one of his teammates or the unnecessary death of Len Bias. They pale in comparison.

So much of what we thought was right, wasn't. No matter your allegiance, the news out of Miami this summer had to make you stomach turn. Then there were the investigations at Auburn and Oregon, the two national title game participants. Of course, the Ohio State fiasco. Now this.

On a personal level, this is harder to deal with. Paterno seemed to be all that was right with college sports. He seemed to be a man of integrity. You don't last as long as he had without doing something right, at least that's what I told myself. I've met the man. I've interviewed him. I've seen him doodle plays on a coffee table. He makes "pisan" jokes at the Big Ten media luncheon about Bo Pelini, and talks with reporters and people alike like they are the only person in the room. He seemed so..... right.

Now this.

College football, for all its flaws, appeared pure between the lines. Once the the clock started and the ball met the kicker's foot, it was simply a pure escape. Now this. I look at it differently. I think of the summer camps that young children are so excited to attend, to play, to make new friends, to learn the sport better so they can excel at it. Now this. Sport was once a pure enterprise. Now the coaches and heroes that we entrusted to teach them, to keep them safe, have done the opposite. And they have used the sports we and our children love as a means to exploit and abuse them.

As the details of the horror story in State College continue to unfold, I become more and more nauseated. It's almost as if some poison has entered my lungs, and my body is convulsing to get it out, certain that if it heaves once more the poison will be gone forever. Sadly it won't. It will hang in the air for the foreseeable future, creeping back into my body with every breath and starting the cycle all over again.

What sickens me further is that no one did anything to stop this. Not the University. Not the graduate student. Not the President. Not the legendary coach. There were no heroes here. The people that knew might as well have never existed. All that existed were monsters and victims.

It galls me that this could happen. And where it happened makes it even worse, at an institution of higher learning, with educated, successful, charitable people looking on, mute to the world around them. But then again it shouldn't surprise me that this happened, when I consider what truly goes on in our world, and what has happened this past year in college football. Nothing is sacred. And nothing made that clearer than the news out of Penn State.

As children we are taught that when the moment arises, you will know what to do. You are taught that if you are a good person, you will do the right thing. Good people will do the right thing. That there will be a hero that stands up for what is just and right. The reality, it turns out, it so much different, and worse, than we could ever have imagined.

Heroes exist only in stories and fairy tales. Sadly, in this wretched story there are no heroes. Only victims and survivors. Pray for both.

(edit: fixed grammar on poll)

I'm going to ignore the fact that Joe Paterno has just been ousted as the Penn State head coach, along with basically the entire administration, just for a second.  I'm going to look inward at what I do for four months of the year.  For the fall, those magical four months of the year, this is my weekly schedule.

Saturday: watch the Michigan game.  Be happy and watch other games if M wins, root against rivals.  If M loses, be sad, generally grouchy toward anyone near me, and sleep/drink early.

Sunday: Watch the Lions game/NFL if Michigan won.  If not, sulk. 

Monday-Tuesday: review coverage of weekend in football.  Begin to either come down from high or come out from low.

Wednesday: Start getting excited about the next weekend of football.

Thursday-Friday: Become increasingly unbearable until only my father and Dave will talk to me about football, or really anything.

And the cycle repeats.  It really isn't healthy, and my roommates and loved ones (except my dad, who takes it harder than I do) often tell me I have a problem.  But I love it.  All I want to do is watch football, and talk about football.  Stuff other than football takes a backseat.  Heaven forbid there's a program-shaking scandal in the middle of the season - I'll glance at it, maybe even write about it, but I just hope it doesn't happen to my program.  The last couple years have been rough as a Michigan fan, and last offseason alternated between anger, denial, sadness, happiness, and Hokeamania.  I'm probably one of millions that felt that way.  The thing is, there are multiple fanbases across the country that have exactly those kind of fans.  Millions of them.  USC.  Ohio State.  Miami.  Florida.  Texas.  Penn State.

My point is, there are people out there, dedicated fans, that might not root for the same team I do, but I get where they're coming from.  They post on blogs like this one, just with colors in orange and black or blue and white.  They have jerseys on their walls with numbers other than 16, 10, and 7.  And right now, I feel really, really bad for those in and around Happy Valley.  No fanbase deserves what is happening to them right now.

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