Monday Afternoon Links

With Week 1 (or 0, depending on your viewpoint) now upon us and actual games coming up in just a few days, there is plenty of college football news to share! Before that, a note on men's basketball recruiting.

By virtue of his own announcement on twitter, uberrecruit Julius Randle of Prestonwood Christian Academy in Plano, Texas announced a final 10 of Texas, Baylor, Duke, Kansas, NC State, Florida, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, UNC, and, of course, Kentucky. Before you ask how Oklahoma State made the list, Randle actually took an unofficial visit to their campus either last weekend or the weekend before, so they could be real players. Florida will entertain Randle on his first scheduled official visit on October 6.

Now to the football. Bowl projections are starting to come down the pipe, with the most-recent entries from SI.com's Stewart Mandel and SBNation's own Jason Kirk. Mandel has Baylor playing Pitt in the Pinstripe Bowl as the Big 12's 7th team selected while Kirk has us traveling to sunny San Diego for the Holiday Bowl against Cal. That would make us the fifth selection. Someone unbelievably, both also have Texas slated for participation in a BCS bowl this season. I guess in the wake of the Michigan-VT Sugar Bowl last season, we've just thrown "competent QB play" out the window as a requirement for consideration for the BCS.

It doesn't include Baylor, but Samuel Chi has a list of the 25 games most likely to impact the national championship hunt this season over on the mothership.

Because this hasn't already been tried without success three million times, Florida announced today that it will rotate QBs in their opener by quarter before deciding at halftime who gets to play the rest of the way. Have they considered a reality show where they can let fans decide for them? Maybe let the two players fight to the death!

Not to be outdone in the "drawing unnecessary attention to yourself" department, Penn State decided that they will no longer allow "Sweet Caroline" to be sung during football games due to the possible connotations of one line in the song. WHY WON'T PEOPLE AT PENN STATE JUST STOP TALKING?

If you want to know what the "experts" at ESPN think about how this CFB season will play out, you can consult their "Fearless predictions for 2012." "Fearless" implies that you're not afraid of something when you probably should be. You're a sports network that employs Skip Bayless; you can't be referring to fear of fan reaction.

Here's a link to the latest odds listed over at VegasInsider. We're still between a 10.5 and 11-point favorite this weekend. A&M, for comparison, is only favored by 7 points over Louisiana Tech.