Off to Sin City for a few days, one brief pause before the upcoming sprint that is college football.

I'll leave you with several things to do.

• Punditry

Be sure and continue to stop by HeismanPundit, the best in the biz.  He'll soon be opening CollegeFootballPundit.com, sure to be a necessary stop.

If you're new to HP, read and re-read and read again the Heismandments and then check out his Preseason Top 10 Heisman candidate list to see the killer consistency.

We'll be publishing our Heisman top 10 very soon here at CFR.

• Countdown

The 2005-2006 college football season is almost here.  We've had a running countdown on here for nearly 100 days, and its all but run its course.

Check out our "Countdown Kiss":

• Skepticism

One of the more prominent CFB bloggers, Brian at MGoBlog got innovative and created a BlogPoll to counteract the often misguided AP, Coaches and BCS polls, pulling together disparate but seemingly informed CFB bloggers to create a weekly poll.

Well, his preseason poll is out and sadly, it looks remarkably similar to all the other preseason polls out there.  Not good.  One would presume that Louisville, Boise State, and a few other outsiders might get a deserving look at being ranked high.  Guess not.  The BlogPoll is a great idea, but it's starting off pretty poorly in my eyes.  Many many many points go to Brian though for thinking of it, organizing it, and putting the thing together.  That's a lot of work.

Hopefully the castigation of those who actually tried to make a dent with his poll ceases, otherwise it fails part of its original mission to be different from all those clonelike poll voters out there who control the polls that do count in college football.

• Self Promotion

Be sure and peruse CFR's myriad links and blog entries whether you're new or old to us.  There's always something new for those curious about the game.  In theory the resources we have available on here should help you win quite a few college football bar bets.  We're worth the bookmark.

The entire CFB blogosphere is bristling and lined up against us right now for having the audacity to choose Boise State over UGA this year, and for not falling in line in regards to SEC worship and respect for vanillaball offenses.  Talent ain't everything, sorry.

We're also a bit peeved with a Des Moines Register columnist who went after CFB bloggers collectively in a recent article.  What, exactly did CFR say about Steve Alford?  Right...

The archives here are always fun.  Check out entries like political football and see just how red college football really is.  The blue crowd will be happy to know the championship the last two seasons has been awarded to the team from a cool blue state.

• Other Plugs

Buy the Phil Steele college football preview magazine if you haven't, and read RammerJammerYellowHammer from CFR friend Warren St. John, who runs the FanOpticon blog.