Say hello to your next National Champions, the Oregon Ducks.

After a tumultuous offseason of scandals, sanctions and pink slips, the college football season finally (and mercifully) gets under away this weekend—and not a moment too soon.  It’s great to be able to push all the nefarious off-field activity aside and talk about what should be a wide open college football season.  So without further ado, here are my 2011 predictions.

Big Ten
The historic addition of Nebraska to the Big Ten will prove to the smartest move commissioner Jim Delany and his cronies have made to date, although the bar has been set rather low considering the conference division names they chose.  While I can’t stand Nebraska or it’s fans, I also can’t deny their honored place in college football history and the gravitas they bring to an already legendary (sorry, bad pun) conference.  However, it will take time for the Huskers to establish themselves in a tough conference and division.  Wisconsin and their dynamic new QB, Russell Wilson will steamroll their way through the Hayes Division and win the inaugural Big Ten Football Championship Game in Indianapolis.

Southeastern Conference
With eight teams ranked in most pre-season polls’ top 25, the SEC will be a bloodbath as usual. Perennial power Alabama and their duplicitous coach Prick Saban will emerge atop the pile of corpses when all the smoke clears, though they will have at least one loss.

PAC-12
Adding Utah and Colorado will bring a little more panache to the conference, but Oregon is still light years ahead of their competition and will roll unscathed through conference play on their way to their second BCS title game in as many years—even if they lose to LSU tonight.

Big 12 (or 10, 9, 8, 7, 6….)
This dying conference could’ve saved themselves some numeric embarrassment and reflected reality more accurately if they had simply called themselves the Big 2 from the beginning as it always comes down to Red River rivals, Texas and Oklahoma.  This year will be no different as Oklahoma will run the table to take the posible final conference title as it may no longer exist after this season.

Atlantic Coast Conference
Another down year for the once-proud ACC will prove to be an easy road to an undefeated season for Virginia Tech who may not face a ranked opponent until the conference championship game.  However, that same weak schedule will cost them a chance for the national title as an undefeated Oklahoma squad, a one-loss SEC champ, and/or one-loss Oregon squad would still garner more votes in the ridiculous popularity contest we are forced to endure to settle our national championship (but that’s the subject of another blog post coming soon…).

Big East
Who really cares?  The fact that the Big East is considered a BCS conference is testimony to how corrupt and unjust the whole system is.  The MAC has nearly equivalent credentials, but are left outside of the big party.  West Virginia will represent the chronically mediocre conference in an increasingly irrelevant Orange Bowl. Yawn.

BCS Championship Game
I see five teams with legitimate shots at the title game but Wisconsin, Va Tech and Alabama will be on the outside looking in when the computers finally work their evil magic.  Oregon will face Oklahoma at the at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans on January 9th with the Ducks and their hideous uniforms prevailing. QUACK!!!