When I decided a little over a year about to commit myself to writing about sports, I had no idea what to expect. Would anyone read? Would anyone care? Would I be living in a cardboard box under the train tracks within six months?

While I’m happy to report that I am in fact not living under the train tracks, I have learned a lot over these past 13 months. And one thing that’s surprised me more than anything, is just how much people love to gamble on sports.

Everyone. Young and old. Rich and poor. Degenerates and regular dudes. Basically from what I can gauge, if you’re somewhere between the ages of 18-55, and know what a first down is, you’ve wagered on football sometime in the last calendar year.

Last season, my most responded to articles were my weekly college football picks columns (first one coming in two weeks!). Everybody had an opinion. Why they liked my picks. Why they hated them. Why the pick I made was absolutely, positively the dumbest one they’d ever seen.  Until that team covered the following weekend.

Well this year, rather than being caught off guard by all the gambling talk, I’m going to be at the forefront of it. With BetUS.com releasing all sorts of fun college football betting options already, I’ve gone ahead and looked at some of the Over/Under futures bets, and picked out a few that I like, and a few that I don’t.
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Of course, by sharing my picks, that almost certainly means I’ll be struck by lightning, or even worse, lose all my money, and end up living under the train tracks. If that happens, it was fun knowing you guys, although I guess I saw it coming.

And finally, as always, feel free to tell me why you agree with my picks, disagree with them, or just think I’m an idiot. It definitely won’t be the first, or last time I’ve heard it.

Either way, let’s get to the picks:

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Yesterday, I revealed the first part of my "Way Too Early," College Football Preseason Top 25. We laughed, we cried, and luckily, remained injury free through all 3,000 words. To read the preview click here.

Today it's time for the second part, where I reveal 15 more teams, and end with the revelation of my preseason No. 1 (I'm sure you'll all be real shocked who I take at No. 1. Kidding.). Two quick notes before we start:

1. This is a very, VERY long article, even by my standards. You probably won't read it all in one sitting, and that's ok. Take your time, soak it in, swish it around in your mouth, like a glass of fine wine. Come back two or three times if you need to. And if you don't want to do that, just print it out and read it on your commute home, in bed while ignoring your wife, or wherever else you do your reading (I don't want to know where that might be). Just make sure to block off a fair amount of time.

2. After finishing yesterday's countdown at No. 15 Miami, we are starting... back at No. 15. Why, you ask? Well because I'm an idiot and actually ranked 26 teams instead of 25. I guess that hypothetically makes Notre Dame No. 26 in this poll, not No. 25, but I'm keeping them there anyway. Whatever. Like I said, I'm an idiot. Clearly, math was never my strong suit.

Anyway, let's get back to the list...
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I've got to be honest: I wasn't planning on writing this article until next week. But I just couldn't wait.

That's right, camps are opening nationwide, and Joe Schad has appeared from his summer hibernation, seen his shadow, and is now on my TV more than Lindsay Lohan jail news. Which can mean only one thing: College football season is right around the corner!!

With that, here is my preseason Top 25.

Sure, I probably should have waited a few weeks to post it, and yes my opinions will probably change 100 times between now and September 2nd. Then again, why bother waiting for boring stuff like "position battles," to play themselves out, when I can just make broad, sweeping generalizations, without having the facts to back them up!! At the very least, it sure beats another baseball article, right?

Let's start today with teams No. 25-15, as well as a few teams that missed the cut. Then, be sure to check back tomorrow for team's No. 14-1. As always, feedback is welcome, even if (More likely than not), you think I'm an idiot.

Enjoy.

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When news broke a few weeks ago that former Oregon quarterback Jeremiah Masoli might end up playing at Ole Miss,

I half-heartedly joked on Twitter:

“Can’t lie: On the 1-10 Excitement Scale, I’m at about a 347 thinking about Jeremiah Masoli playing QB in the SEC at Ole Miss.”

Looking back though, that really might have been an understatement.

Last year Masoli turned Chip Kelly’s offense on its head at Oregon. The guy didn’t just run a no-huddle, read option attack, he was playing fast-break football. He was must see TV. When it came to the “eye test,” Masoli passed with flying colors: He was easily one of the 2-3 most exciting players in college football.

So to say that I was a 347 on the excitement scale, doesn’t really do justice to how I was feeling a few weeks ago. It was more than that.

It was the cast of Jersey Shore at an open bar level of excitement. It was a puppy off the leash in the backyard level of excitement. It was a Brett Favre’s Vikings teammates when he shows up at camp in two weeks, level of excitement. Masoli against Alabama, LSU or Auburn? Forget must-see TV, Ole Miss could charge $49.95 to watch their games on TV and I’d be the first one in line with my credit card.

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Is it just me, or is anybody else ready for some college football?

Between the teams, the packed stadiums, the prety coeds, Ryan Mallett's right arm and Jim Tressel's sweater vest, there are a million reasons to be excited about the start of the upcoming season. But here at AaronTorres-Sports.com, I'm about to give you one more: The opportunity to win a free copy of Blue Ribbon's College Football Yearbook, which, let me tell ya, is the ultimate preview guide in all of college football (I know it sounds like I'm trying to sell you a Juicer on a 2 a.m. infomercial right now, but believe me, this thing is legit. I got a PDF copy over the weekend, and I didn't see sunlight for two days. Seriously.).

Anyway, Blue Ribbon has given me one free copy to give out to one of my readers, and here's all you have to do to enter to win the magazine: Tell me the best college football experience that you've ever had. Easy enough, right?

I don't care what the experience was: A game you attended, a tailgate you were overserved at, meeting your favorite player or coach, taking a trip with your buddies to a big road game, spending a Saturday in front of the TV with your dog (Like me), even if you've never stepped foot inside a stadium, it doesn't matter. All I want is the details on an experience that you'll never forget, that somehow has to do with college football. That's it.

To enter, just post that experience in the comments section of this post, e-mail me at ATorres00@gmail, send me a message at Facebook.com/AaronTorresSports, get to me on Twitter @Aaron_Torres, again I don't care. Just get me your story, and get it to me ASAP. A one man panel of me will determine who has the best story, and the best story wins the yearbook.

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(Aaron's Note: I'm headed on vacation tomorrow (Yes, even I need a vacation every once in awhile), so this will be the last article I post until at least next Tuesday. Either way, be sure to check back next week, as I've got some cool things planned in preparation for the NBA Draft. Also, for those hoping for my thoughts on Game 7 of the NBA Finals, as far as I'm concerned it isn't happening. The season is going to end in a draw. Although I am bummed out that I won't get to write the requisite "The Celtics Won As A Team," piece that I've been planning since Game 5 of the Cleveland series. Guess you'll have to read that same angle in one of 15,000 other places.)

Over the past few weeks, college football has flipped on its head and back again.

There was truth, rumor, pomp and circumstance. There was a guy named Chip Brown who became this century’s Woodward and Bernstein (Coined by Colin Cowherd, not me). There were 16 team mega-conferences that never were and 10 team conferences that ended up losing members and gaining leverage. Every writer in America with a column, blog or chalk and a sidewalk weighed in with their opinion, including me, in a scathing piece I wrote on the subject last week, called "College Football Expansion: It's All About The Benjamins."

But finally, after a month of going around on the college football carousel, we all came off a little queasy and dizzy, but nobody lost their lunch. And in the end, we’re all better because of it. For the most part conferences have stayed intact, bridges haven’t been burned, and the sport isn’t any worse for the wear than it was a month ago.

And it’s all because of Texas. The Longhorns weren’t the main power broker in this whole thing, they were the only one (Especially after Notre Dame stepped away from the big boy table).

Before we go ahead and label the Longhorns the saviors of college football though, let’s dig a little deeper. Because while their decision to stay saved the Big XII and re-directed the course of college football history as we know it, Texas’ actions weren’t just about being a good guy, helping others in their conference or keeping college football from becoming more exclusionary than it already it. Texas' actions were strictly about one thing. What was best for Texas.

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(Aaron's note: I know, I know, I'm four days late and a dollar short on USC, and the sanctions handed down to them by the NCAA last Thursday. Originally I was planning on commenting about them in my piece on Friday about college football expansion, but that article ran a little long and I decided against it. So my apologies if you've already read 4,217 takes on USC football and don't feel like reading one more. If you're sick of the USC talk, go ahead, skip this article and come back later in the week. I won't hold it against ya. Promise.)

It happened three days later than anticipated, but I finally got around to reading the NCAA's report on the USC Athletic Department this morning. I've got five thoughts and five thoughts only one what I read.

1. I want an hour of my life back.

2. I've always liked Reggie Bush, and he strikes me as an intelligent and aware guy. For someone so young, he does a lot of great charity work. But after reading these documents it turns out that he and his family are about as corrupt as the North Korean government. I still respect Bush, but my opinion on him has definitely changed.

3. For anyone who is pointing the finger at Pete Carroll in all this, go ahead and actually read the document. His name doesn't show up nearly as much as the mainstream media makes you think it does.

4. O.J. Mayo is who we thought he was, and nothing in this document disproved that. Because of it, we're going for the most part to skip his role and focus on Bush and the football program. This article is already going to end up somewhere around 25,000 words, and I'm doing my best to keep it from becoming 40,000. For your sake of course.

5. Look up the term, "Lack of Institutional Control," in Webster's and you'll see USC Athletic Director Mike Garrett's face there. The fact that he is still gainfully employed is not only an embarrassment to the university, but also to the school's alumni, the Pac-10, college athletics, the city of Los Angeles, the state of California, and the colors cardinal and gold as well.

Now, let's get to the fun stuff.
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These are supposed to be nice, easy, painless times for college sports fans and the people who cover them.

While the fall is about trying to figure out how Les Miles is going to stop Florida's offense, and the winter about trying to figure out how Coach K keeps his hair so darn black, summer is supposed to be for sitting on the beach and relaxing. For watching the palm trees sway and drinking fruity drinks with umbrellas in them. For checking out girls in bikinis.

But not this year. Not the summer of 2010.

As we stand in the middle of the offseason, this summer is unlike any we've ever seen in college sports. Gone is the easy, breezy nature of June and July, and its place is a bunch of backroom mingling, hand-shaking and back-stabbing. The result is the sneaky, slimy, stomach-turning conference expansion that's blown up your TV's and radio's over the past few days.

I've tried hard to avoid writing about this subject as long as I can. But with so much changing minute-by-minute and second-by-second (For example: In between the rough draft and final draft of this piece, Boise State joined the Mountain West) I've got no choice.

College sports is evolving right before our eyes, and is set to change forever. And in time, we'll look at the summer of 2010 as the reason why.

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For the record, college football is my favorite sport. I like college basketball, baseball, the NBA and NFL. But I love, love, love college football.

I love everything about it. The urgency of every Saturday. The larger than life coaching personalities. The, umm, how do I say this nicely...passionate fan-bases. Yeh, passionate!

I love the tailgates. And the cheerleaders. And Kirk Herbstreit. And Mark May. Well, maybe not Mark May. But I love everything else.

So when Darrell Owenby of SECRivals.com asked me sit in on the SEC coaches conference call on Thursday, I was excited. Like, off-the-wall, Tiger Woods in a VIP room excited. At least until I realized exactly what I'd gotten myself into. Yes, I was excited, but also anxious, because I got word about the call just hours before the conference was set to begin, and didn't feel totally prepared. Then again, these were the SEC coaches. Saban, and Spurrier and Miles...Oh my! No way I was missing out on this.

So while I didn't end up asking any questions, I still called in, and simply listened. Listened, while other reporters asked all kinds of questions. Smart ones and dumb ones. Insightful ones and repetitive ones. And some that really had much to do about nothing.

While I may not have jumped in with any questions of my own, that doesn't mean that I didn't learn anything. As a matter of fact, here are 10 Things I Learned, While Sitting On The Post-Spring, SEC Coaches Conference Call.

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Last Thursday, we looked at No.’s 10-6 on the 10 Most Important Questions of Spring Football 2010. Included in the list, were how coaching changes at Notre Dame, Tennesee and USC will effect this upcoming season, and whether or not Garrett Gilbert is ready to hop under center at Texas.

After a long wait (And my apologies, technical delays kept this from running on Friday as planned), we are here to look at questions 5 through 1, including whether or not the Alabama Crimson can defend their title…
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