HURRIED FALSEHOODS YOU SHOULD NOT BELIEVE FROM THE LOS ANGELES AREA
1. This is not beautiful. It's not. It's Southern California, and it's about 60 degrees or so and brilliantly sunny, and this is not what anyone wants at all. No, no, no, stop, we're being quite serious. Football is a game that should be endured, not pleasantly observed in temperatures that coddle human beings like cruelty-free eggs. It should be witnessed in grim concrete canyons stuffed with bundled penguin-beings who earn that view of a game-winning field goal, and not sitting in full sight of the San Gabriel Mountains, crackling ever-so-slightly with the glow of a sun indistinguishable from a loving, all-embracing god. Nope. That's not what football should be at all, and sunshine is bad and degrades your character. Brr. Grr.
2. Florida State really hasn't played anyone. No, they really haven't, and you can just keep repeating that to yourself as you scan quarter after quarter of pure slaughter. We just finished Unbroken, the story of Louis Zamperini, an Olympic miler who suffered a plane crash, survived for 47 days at sea, and then started the real fun: almost two years of constant beating and starvation at the hands of the Japanese. The most savage of his tormentors was Mutsuhiro Watanabe, aka "the Bird," who spent the better part of 16 hour days delivering near-constant beatings with unwavering intensity. This was against starved competition, sure, and with the overwhelming force of armed guards behind him, but sure, you'd want to mess with him. Even with the weakened schedule, you still want to mess with the dude who does nothing all day but hit the room screaming NANDA! NANDA! before leveling everything in sight. You're just itching to get to that terrifying, blood-caked maniac who totally hasn't played anyone.
3. Auburn is a team of destiny, and not of skill. There is not reason to believe FSU's undersized linebackers will have any problems with Auburn's interior run game, because they most definitely did not dismantle the best defensive line in the SEC against Mizzou in the SEC Championship Game, and will not use arc blocks and whatever other smart-primitive weirdness Gus Malzahn will find buried in the football fossil record, unearth and clone, and unleash on the FSU defense. There is no reason to suspect Nick Marshall will be able to make a single pass on FSU, even though he's been asked to make like nine passes a game at most, and has done well enough on those nine opportunities a game. This is not the closest thing to the Oklahoma wishbone under Switzer to be found in modern football, and Florida State will have no problems with it thanks to the 450 NFL draft picks currently residing on their defensive depth chart.
4. You can't do a podcast in a hot tub.
5. You have a number that predicts all of this. Auburn stands a good chance of winning thanks to the four other BCS games all going to the underdog--in some cases the massively overmatched underdog, according to the numbers--and that this number matters. There is also almost every other number, which favors FSU, the most efficiently brutal team in the nation in a thousand categories. You can run to the number you like. In the light of uncertainty, they're all just fine until annihilated by reality.
6. The Rose Bowl is not the perfect college football finale. Nope. Not at all. Stop. You're wrong, and not hearing Keith Jackson's baritone on the brain every time you look at it.