My friends, it’s been a long and wearisome journey this summer.
    From clawing my brain raw for something to write about to making predictions on worthless events around the world.
    Were you not entertained!
    Anyhoo, now we get down the nitty-gritty, as one of my favorite football coach’s might say. From college to pro, with a little baseball, hockey and basketball thrown in for good measure, time to thoroughly embarrass myself.
    The record stands at 19-25. Time to climb back towards .500.

Eagles vs. Poultry School to the North
    I’ll be charging a dollar this week for every time I’m asked how Georgia Southern will do Saturday in Athens. You can save your money by reading the following.
    This isn’t 2004 or 2000. This isn’t the great equalizer triple option against a middle-of-the-pack SEC team. This isn’t your perennial power, national title contender Eagles against your Outback Bowl bound Bulldogs.
    This game will be different.
    These are two strikingly different teams. One has hopes of being one of the greatest teams in college football history. And I mean that. If Georgia can get through its schedule and win a “national championship,” there’ll be no debating how impressive a feat that truly is.
    On the other side, Southern is still in rebuilding mode. After being torn down by the One Who Shall Not Be Named, Chris Hatcher has only just begun to install his type of program. His 2008 squad is half freshman folks. Think about that for a minute. Half.
    Georgia wins handily, but Eagles do enough to make it interesting: 52-20.
Champions Bowl
    There’s some App State fans out there that think the Mountaineers have enough to make this weekend’s opener against LSU interesting — I’m looking in your direction Natalie Sayewich.
    Well I’m here to nip that little fantasy in the bud.
    Bengals ambush Armanti: 62-7.

PJ’s opener
    The option is back after all, it’s just up the road a little bit in the A-Town.
    A lot of fair-weather Techies won’t hop on the bandwagon until Paul Johnson proves his offense can work at the FBS level.
    He’ll get off to a good start this week.
    Fightin’ Paulies 46, Jacksonville State (it’s in Alabama) 13

Tide v. Tigers
    If I don’t pick Clemson to win, my boss, a CU alumnus, will fire me. So looks like I’m taking the orange and purple, despite Alabama being a trendy upset under the second-year of Saban.
    Still, I’ll go with ‘S’ stands for chivalry, ‘O’ stands for honor and ‘N’ stands for knowledge by two touchdowns.

Illinois (don’t pronounce the S!) vs. Miss you
    For those of you that actually enjoy watching football outside of the South, there’ll be a pretty good game out there in Farmland USA.
    It’s the Juice vs. the Chase, and I’ll pick this one based on one of our favorite sayings around here. Saturday morning, Illinois will wake up, look itself and the mirror and realize, “Hey, I’m still Illinois.”
    Mizzou rolls, 37-14.