The Blue Workhorse

The college football season officially starts tonight. North Carolina State will be taking on The Old Ball Coach Steve Spurrier and his South Carolina Gamecocks; Oregon State opens with Pac-10 conference for Stanford; and the first ranked team, Wake Forest, will play as well.

But before the season gets under way, we give you the official Top 25 from The Blue Workhorse, and later, we will give you our predictions for conference champions, the Heisman trophy winner, and maybe even a surprise team or two that may be flying under the radar now only to be clearly on the BCS scene at the end of the season.

Just as the ESPN or USA Today polls are compiled, we’ve polled our 4 top college football writers and given each vote a point value (#1 ranking = 25 points, #2 ranking = 24 points ….. #24 ranking = 2 points, #25 ranking = 1 point). We then tallied all of the points and tabulated the top 25 teams.

We’ve got the national powerhouses, the contenders, the possible BCS spoilers, and 25 teams that each want to hoist the glass football at the end of the season, so welcome to the first edition of The Blue Workhorse’s weekly NCAA football rankings.

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Contest to Win Free DVD

Have you ever watched those Sports Illustrated commercials after every single championship when they have all of those championship related bonus items to give away to you if you become a new subscriber? Ever actually wanted one of those “free” gifts?

Probably not, unless it was actually one of your favorite teams. Well, if you are a fan of the Kansas Jayhawks or just college basketball in general, here’s a chance for you to get a DVD that’s even better than the SI’s video — Rock Chalk Championship DVD (retail $19.95). This DVD has every shot and every critical game from the Jayhawks’ season, including Mario Chalmers’ clutch trifecta to send the championship game into overtime.

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It took some rough free throw shooting by Memphis and a miraculous 3-point shot by Mario Chalmers to send the game into overtime before the Jayhawks outscored the John Calipari’s Tigers 12-5 in overtime to take home the national championship.

To continue our ‘Workhorse candidates’ series that we’ve been compiling after each round of the NCAA men’s basketball national tournament, we’re going to go ahead and hand over the NCAA ‘Championship Workhorse’ award to Chalmers, even though Darrell Arthur did have a hell of a game as well (20 points on 9-13 FG, 10 rebounds, assist, steal).

North Carolina head coach Roy Williams has to console Wayne Ellington after the guard finds out he’s not on a candidate for the ‘Final Four Workhorse.’ (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
And then there were two…
Two teams remain after Kansas assaulted former coach Roy Williams and his North Carolina Tar Heels and Memphis steamrolled past the UCLA Bruins. [...]

The weak were weeded out. What once was a field of 65 is now down to 4.

Everyone thought all four #1 seeds wouldn’t make it to the Final Four, but they proved the naysayers wrong. UCLA, North Carolina, Memphis, and Kansas each punched their tickets to the Final Four. Each will head to San Antonio with thoughts of national championship, and it is only thanks to some great individual performances throughout the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.

But who had the most outstanding individual performance in the Elite Eight? Who has earned the right to be named the ‘Elite Eight Workhorse?’ In honor of the elite eight, here are the eight candidates:

The NCAA men’s basketball tournament is traditionally about great and, often improbable, team runs spurred by uncanny individual performances, and this year’s tournament has been no different. There have been upsets and a lot of near upsets as any of the four #2 seeds could tell you after their second round contests as they each had to battle down to the wire against three #7 seeds and a Goliath-slaying #10 seed in Davidson. Those contests each had their own outstanding performances.

But who had the most outstanding performance to make them worthy of the distinction of being named the ‘2nd Round Workhorse?’ Here are our candidates (in alphabetical order):