The always candid Trev Alberts, you either hate him or you love him! I tend to fall with the later. He calls it like he see it and it's not secret I'm a Mark May fan, but Trev used to put Mark in his place. He refutes his critics with facts. It may not always be what you want to hear, but he backs it up and you've got to respect that.

After ESPN, he landed a gig with CSTV (College Sports Television), now CBS College Sports Channel, the rival to the evil four letter's "U". Here he gives his top conference predictions for 2008. As I said before, look for the ACC to consistently get better. Regardless, here is today's "College Football Video of The Day".

The Dr. Tom Robbins and I are proud to present The Bloemer's Chile College Football Roundtable 2008 College Football Preview presented by the the Mercer Financial Group at UBS!

We sat down with Florida State Alum and former Seminole player Todd Helmeck who hosts www.nationalchamps.net and his own weekly college football show on Baltimore's WNST Sportstalk 1570 where you can stream his show.

Nationalchamps.net is the Roundtable's first stop for real college football analysis outside the regular talking heads.  Todd's ability to seperate himself from the regurgitated sound bytes you get from other sources is unparalleled.  Todd holds a Heisman vote and knows his college football.

Click Here to listen to my conversation with Todd and get a look into the 2008 college football season. 

Don't have time to stream the audio?  Check out our podcast page and download the preview to your computer and listen on your time. 

Get your college gameday started off right at 9:00 a.m. starting August 30 right on through January 3rd, 2009 as the Dr. and I set up the college gameday with fight songs, trivia, your calls and everything you need to know before you head off to watch the games!

Slowly by surely we are inching our way back to college football. Now that that freak of aquatics Michael Phelps is no longer on the front page, expect interest to wane.


Not that Usain Bolt isn't just as freakish, but, let’s be honest, he will never get the same love that Phelps did. This, I think is unjustified. I love track & field. I watch the Olympic qualifiers each time. Track and field athletes are just as much an athlete as the swimmers, if not more. Speaking of Usian Bolt, I have no problem with this cat strutting his stuff. Some have called it unsportsmanlike, wrong, out of place at the Olympics, etc….whatever. When you’re the fastest man in the world, you’ve earned the right to strut anyway you want.

That said, aren’t we all grown adults here? Reminds me of the whole Charles Barkley “I’m not a role model for your kids”. He was right. Since when did we become the “moral police”? Bottom line is this dude (in time), like every other great runner before won’t be able to run the way he is now and he’ll look pretty stupid. But in a culture where we continue to tolerate “ocho cinco” it seems a bit hypocritical to come down on the Bolt.


Watching two of the world’s most storied national soccer teams Brazil and Argentina for the right to play Nigeria for gold and Argentina is simply throwing the down the hammer on Brrraaaa-zzzzzz-illlll, just now going up 3-“nill”. Unbelievable!!

BTW…watching these two world powers go at it in such a big game, you realize just how commercially corporate the Super Bowl has become. I’ll admit I don’t watch a whole lot of soccer outside the Olympics, but this game has more urgency than any Super Bowl I’ve watched in recent years. Yes, to include last year’s game. Sorry gang…call me un-American, but if the NFL were a cookie it would be a ‘Nilla Wafer…tastes good at the time, but when it’s all said and done they’re pretty much the same…unless of course you’re fantasy nerd.

I mentioned earlier that I had a chance to finally watch a little college football, catching one of my TIVO’d College Football Live shows. Unfortunately it was the finals of the “helmet competition”. WOW! I thought I cringed pretty hard over the Team USA Softball “Prettiest Girl” spot. This was truly an all time low for the evil four letter’s college football coverage.

I’ve been railing this thing since the get go and I’m a Michigan fan (one of the best looking helmets)…but a “helmet bracket’ was a bit too fantasy nerd for me. So Florida State wins this thing and the have they whole team sitting around with Bobby Bowden (in uniform) like they were “on the bubble” and just got picked for the field of 64. It was so obvious that neither the coach nor players wanted to be there and evil four letter honk was doing all he could to stretch out the segment.

Like I said it was a new low. I get it’s pre-season and there’s not a whole lot to talk about, but you can tell they were reaching to fill time. They had an interview with Knowshaun Moreno following the big helmet announcement and after the obligatory “how are you” it sounded like every other coach/player interview. That of course was followed by Trevor Matich’s incessant babbling about whatever. After I was done fast forwarding though the jibberish, I watched the whole 30 minute show in about 9 minutes. BTW, who knew Trevor Mattich had his own website????

Give me a ½ hour with Mark May, Kirk Herbstriet and Rece Davis and I’ll show you 30 minutes of quality college football programming.

As we get ready to close out the Olympics, here are the top ten events I paid the most attention to:

- Women’s Gymnastics (the women far outclassed the men who gave us “that’s how we roll” after settling for the bronze medal)
- Soccer (see above)
- Swimming (Who didn’t???)
- Women’s Synchronized Diving (just can’t seem to get into the men doing this)
- Volleyball (no…not beach volleyball...see below)
- Basketball (again, don’t watch a whole lot during the regular season…re: NBA (see above NFL post), but international competition makes it much more interesting.)
- Track and Field (WAR the US taking home gold in women’s discus)
- Weightlifting (watching some cat hoist 430lbs is un-flippin-believable)
- Tennis (James Blake bouncing Federer was all that)
- Boxing (what can I say? I get amateur boxing is on a decline, but it’s a classic sport and with Teddy Atlas, Bob Pappa and Jim Gray doing the audio, how can you not win?)

That said, call me the “ugly American”, but here are the top ten nine events I paid the least attention to:
- Table Tennis (seriously…)
- Badminton (see ‘Table Tennis’)
- Beach Volleyball (C’mon…put dudes in the same speedos chicks wear and see what happens. Imagine dude pulling a wedge out of his butt in a speedo…that’s what I thought. What makes it hot when a chick does it?)
- Synchronized Swimming (there’s a reason I don’t go to the ballet)
- Handball (make up your mind…hockey or basketball)
- Canoe/Kayak (drop that thing in a real river and maybe…just maybe)
- Sailing (…and you’re getting rid of baseball in the next summer games???)
- Marathon (no offense to you runners, big tip of the hat to anyone that can run 26 miles, but to watch (other than when they enter the stadium) is painfully boring)
- That horse thing where they walk down the line (I say again…you’re getting rid of baseball???)

Every time I watch men’s trampoline I think of when I was a kid and used to love jumping on my bed, then feel bad because I yell at my son for doing the same thing.

Top five Six Olympic announcers worth TIVOing:
- Teddy Atlas/Bob Papa/Jim Gray – Boxing. Put either in a steel cage with Costas and Costas loses everytime.
- Rowdy Gains – Swimming….”ARE YOU KIDDING ME???????” This guy is the Keith Jackson of swimming!

- Shane Hamman – Weightlifting – Dude sounds like a weightlifter, looks like a weightlifter. He’s to weightlifting what Dick Vitale is to college basketball only Hamman doesn’t have to go over-the-top making himself sound good. Best line…”couple of big slabs of beef on that bar”…”it’s like lifting the entire women’s gymnastics team over your head”
- JP Dellacamera – Soccer. This cat is so smooth!!! He makes every game sound like the World Cup Championship! NICE!!!

Top five Olympic announcers worth turning the TV down:
- Ato Boldin – Track and Field – It’s impossible for this cat to talk about anyone “currently” in the Olympics without make some sort of reference to himself.
- Andrea Joyce – Swimming – time has certainly passed her by. “But I don’t wanna be an elf, I wanna be a dentist”.
- Brandi Chastain – Women’s Soccer – Great player, but get’s a bit too personal when doing the US Women’s games. When Melissa Stark called her out to make a prediction on the US V. Brazil, she cowered and wouldn’t say either way.
- Bob Costas – these are not the “Bob Costas Games” they are the Olympic Games. Not everything has to be about Bob. He tries his best to have fun, but let’s face it, he’s just not funny and when he tries to add drama he goes so far out of his way he looks like he’s trying win an Oscar.
- Mary Carillo – It’s like she’s stuck somewhere between PBS, The Food Network and the Travel Channel. Her bit on acupuncture (what I saw of it) was awful….zzzzzzzzzzzzz. I have to admit that I don’t find myself running home to set the TIVO so I can catch Mary Carillo’s gig. She’s no Samantha Brown.

That’s just about it for today! I’ve got to get back to this Russia/China Volleyball game!