I just thought of something. What happens if (heaven forbid) fUCLA beats USC, Colorado beats Texas, Georgia beats LSU, and Florida State beats Virginia Tech next Saturday? The Nittany Lions, currently #3 in the BCS behind the Trojans and Longhorns, would go to the Rose Bowl, but who would they play? #4 LSU and #5 Virginia Tech would drop out of the picture. #6 Ohio State is next in line. Could it be an all-Big Ten title game in Pasadena between the Lions and the Buckeyes, a rematch of October’s memorable “white out” game?

Probably not. I suspect, in such a scenario, the voters would not drop either USC or Texas — who would, after all, have only one loss — behind two-loss Ohio State, which lost to Texas in September. It’s harder to predict what the computers would do; they do like the Buckeyes a lot. But then again, Texas’s undefeated status is part of the reason OSU’s computer ranking is so high. More likely than not, it would be #1 Penn State vs. #2 USC for the title. Sorry, Buckeye fans. [UPDATE: I punched this scenario into the Colley Matrix, which allows you to add hypothetical games. The result is exactly as I expected: #1 Penn State, #2 Texas, #3 USC, #4 Ohio State. I suspect most of the computers would come up with a similar result… but the Trojans would stay ahead of Texas in the human polls, unless they got totally creamed by fUCLA or something, and thus would be #2 in the BCS.]

In such a scenario, the Orange Bowl would have first pick, and would choose Notre Dame to face Florida State. The Fiesta Bowl, stuck with Colorado, would be left to choose between West Virginia and either Texas or Ohio State to face the Buffaloes. (Either Texas or Ohio State — whoever is ranked higher — would have an automatic at-large berth under the “Kansas State rule,” since they’d be in the Top 4.) If the choice is between Texas and West Virginia, the Fiesta would take the Mountaineers in order to avoid a rematch of the Big 12 title game (itself a rematch of a regular-season game). That would leave the Sugar Bowl with an unexpectedly attractive Georgia-Texas matchup. On the other hand, if the Fiesta’s choice is between Ohio State and West Virginia, obviously they would take the Buckeyes to face the Buffaloes, and the Sugar Bowl would have Georgia-West Virginia.

(On the other hand, if either Texas or Ohio State were to finish ahead of USC and earn a spot in the Rose Bowl, the Fiesta would get Colorado vs. USC, the Orange would be forced to take either Texas or OSU — whichever one isn’t in the Rose Bowl — and Notre Dame would be left out entirely, as explained above.)

But of course, that’s a freakin’ nutty scenario. What about the slightly more plausible scenario — emphasis on slightly — which requires only one of those upsets to occur: fUCLA over USC. Assuming Texas beats Colorado, and assuming the Trojans drop behind Penn State in the BCS (which I think they would), it’d be Longhorns vs. Lions in the Rose Bowl… and USC, which has already clinched the Pac-10 championship via tiebreaker, would automatically head to the Fiesta Bowl. (In years when the Rose Bowl hosts the title game, the Fiesta Bowl becomes the Pac-10’s “host” bowl.)

But who would the Trojans play? fUCLA grad Mike Tran posed this question to me via e-mail earlier, and here’s what I came up with:

The Fiesta still gets first pick, and they can choose whoever they want to play against USC. Penn State is out (because they’re in the Rose Bowl) so the choices are Ohio State, Oregon, Notre Dame, Miami, Auburn, West Virginia (if it beats South Florida), UCLA, and maybe LSU and/or Virginia Tech (if they lose their conference championship games but stay in the BCS Top 12) or maybe TCU and/or Alabama (if LSU and/or Virginia Tech lose and fall out of the Top 12, or if West Virginia loses).

Obviously Oregon and UCLA are not going to be chosen to play USC in a bowl game.

And obviously, West Virginia and TCU are not going to be chosen because they are way lame.

That leaves Ohio State, Notre Dame, Miami, Auburn, LSU (maybe), Virginia Tech (maybe), and Alabama (maybe) as options for USC’s opponent in the Fiesta Bowl.

LSU, Virginia Tech and Alabama would all be coming off a loss (two losses, in Alabama’s case), so even if they’re available, I seriously doubt they get chosen. Although, an LSU-USC Fiesta Bowl would appeal to LSU fans who hold a grudge from two years ago… but I still doubt the Fiesta Bowl picks them off a loss, to play a USC team that’s also coming off a loss.

So… Ohio State, Notre Dame, Miami or Auburn?

Ohio State-USC is an early preview of a 2008-2009 home-and-home series, and it’s a Big 10 vs. Pac 10 game, albeit not in the Rose Bowl. Two big-name teams with big-name players and large fan bases that will travel well. A pretty damn good matchup.

Notre Dame-USC is a rematch of one of the greatest games in college football history. It would be a HUGELY hyped game. Charlie Weis vs. Pete Carroll, part two. Its ratings might exceed the national championship game. Again, both teams would travel well. A very attractive matchup.

Miami-USC is a matchup between the Team of the ’90s and the Team of the 2000s… although that storyline would be somewhat less attractive given that USC would seem slightly less like a “dynasty” immediately after the loss to UCLA ended the winning streak. Still, another good matchup.

Auburn-USC would be great for the Auburn fans who hold a grudge over getting left out last year. And unlike Miami, the Fiesta Bowl has been actively considering Auburn anyway. Plus, Auburn has been on a roll. A lot of people think they’re the best team in the SEC right now. On the other hand, the Tigers and Trojans did play twice recently (in 2002 and 2003)… but I don’t see that having too much effect on the decision. This is another very attractive matchup.

All four matchups would be attractive to the Fiesta Bowl, it seems to me. It’s hard to predict what they would do… but I bet they go with Notre Dame-USC. Like I said, that game would rival the national championship game in terms of hype and ratings. Usually, having a “rematch” in a bowl matchup is a bad thing, but not this time, says I.

Can you even imagine how freakin’ intense my wedding would be? LOL! Irish and Trojan fans mingling, three days before the USC-ND rematch 30 miles away in Tempe? I would predict a major food fight! Hehe.

Another scenario to consider: what if USC and Texas both lose, but LSU wins? Presumably the Trojans and Longhorns fall out of the top 2, and it’s Penn State vs. LSU in the Rose Bowl. The Fiesta Bowl is set: USC vs. Colorado. This is the nightmare scenario for Notre Dame, as the Sugar Bowl — having lost the SEC champion Tigers to the title game — would get first pick, and would undoubtedly snap up the Irish. Then the Orange Bowl would pick Texas (or perhaps Ohio State, Oregon or Auburn, if Texas falls out of the top 4) to play Virginia Tech (or Florida State), leaving Notre Dame to play in a thrilling showdown with… yup… West Virginia.

On the other hand, if USC, Texas and LSU all lose, but Virginia Tech wins, I wonder if the Hokies, currently #5, would manage to move ahead of the Trojans and Longhorns to claim the #2 spot in the BCS? If so, it’s Penn State vs. Virginia Tech in the Rose Bowl, and the Orange Bowl gets the first two picks, which you’d think would mean it can set up whatever damn matchup it wants… but most likely, Texas would stay in the BCS top 4 and would be guaranteed an at-large bid… so the Orange Bowl, if it wants Notre Dame (which of course it does), would be “forced” to stage a Brady Quinn vs. Vince Young showdown. Heh. You think anyone would tune in to watch that game?

Of course, this is all purely academic, because USC is going to crush fUCLA this Saturday. Indeed, Tran and I are working out the details of our bet right now. BEAT THE BRUINS!!!

Incidentally, if Texas loses but USC wins, it’s a USC-Penn State Rose Bowl, and the Orange Bowl gets first pick — so the Irish go to Miami to face Virginia Tech (or Florida State). What happens next depends on whether Texas stays in the top 4. If they do, the end of the bowl selection process plays out much like the crazy everybody-loses scenario at the top of this post: the Fiesta hosts Colorado vs. West Virginia and the Sugar hosts LSU (or Georgia) vs. Texas. If, on the other hand, the Longhorns fall out of the top 4 (behind USC, Penn State, LSU and Virginia Tech), the Fiesta Bowl would choose a more attractive opponent for Colorado, like Ohio State, Oregon or Auburn, sending West Virginia to the Sugar Bowl and leaving Texas out of the BCS entirely. Hello, Cotton Bowl!

Andrew sends along this link to an awesome Reggie Bush highlight video (direct WMV link), and also this NYT article, which features some of Bush’s high-school highlights.

It’s a 35-35 tie at halftime as North Carolina hosts Illinois in a rematch of last year’s national championship game.

The Tar Heels-Illini battle is also part of the ACC/Big Ten Challenge, which the ACC leads thus far, 2-1, thanks to Florida State’s 40-point win over Purdue. Yikes.

UPDATE: Illinois wins, avenging their title-game loss (which I was in Champaign for). I-L-L! I-N-I!

Good news:

Running back LenDale White’s bruised left shoulder isn’t expected to sideline him Saturday when top-ranked Southern California faces UCLA at the Los Angeles Coliseum.

White has rushed for 1,024 yards and a team-leading 19 touchdowns this season.

“The doctors think he shouldn’t have trouble playing,” USC coach Pete Carroll said after practice Monday. “He had an MRI this afternoon, so he missed being out here today. I’d say he won’t practice Tuesday and we’ll see how he’s doing Wednesday. We’ll take it one day at a time.”

White, a junior who has carried 163 times, was in obvious pain after being hit while carrying the ball during a team drill early in Sunday’s practice. He was later carted to the locker room. After having his shoulder iced, he said he felt better.

A newly published letter reveals that C.S. Lewis vehemently opposed making movies of The Chronicles of Narnia — or at least, he opposed making live-action TV shows, and we can probably extrapolate that he would have opposed live-action movies as well.

“Anthropomorphic animals, when taken out of narrative into actual visibility, always turn into buffoonery or nightmare. At least, with photography,” he wrote in 1959. “Cartoons…would be another matter. A human, pantomime, Aslan would be to me blasphemy.” (Letter here.)

This isn’t exactly shocking. J.R.R. Tolkien also opposed turning The Lord of the Rings into a movie (or movies), believing that it couldn’t be done in a way that would do justice to the books. And yet, Peter Jackson’s movies literally elevated the cinematic artform, creating an epic trilogy that will be revered by audiences and film nerds for generations. From one work of fiction, two artistic masterpieces in two artistic genres were born. Perhaps Tolkien still would have opposed creating the movies (and he surely would have taken issue with some of Jackson’s decisions, like cutting out the scouring of the Shire), but there can be little doubt that his assessment of what a LOTR movie would look like was based on a now-outdated impression of what movies are capable of.

Similarly here, Lewis’s distinction between cartoons and non-cartoons seems rather outdated in this age of CGI effects. Perhaps 10 or 20 years ago, and certainly 50 years ago, it was true that a movie Aslan would inevitably “turn into buffoonery or nightmare.” But, in light of what is now possible with computer graphics, this seems an unfair statement today. Certainly, Aslan will not be “human, pantomime,” nor will he be primarily an object of “photography” — he’ll basically be a very realistic-looking cartoon.

Tolkien thought it was impossible to create a reasonable movie rendition of Treebeard, and he probably had his doubts about Gollum too, but look what Peter Jackson managed to accomplish! The real question is whether the people who made The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe — which comes out next Friday — are up to the task. A movie epic with the artistic quality of Lord of the Rings doesn’t come along every day. But I’m not convinced the movie is doomed to suck merely because the books’ author was protective of his work and didn’t believe that anyone would be able to do it justice. Artists are like that. :)

(Hat tip: Briandot.)

Here’s a great op-ed by Joe Lieberman explaining why a premature troop withdrawal from Iraq would be such a mistake. Money quote:

I am convinced [that] almost all of the progress in Iraq and throughout the Middle East will be lost if those forces are withdrawn faster than the Iraqi military is capable of securing the country.

The leaders of Iraq’s duly elected government understand this, and they asked me for reassurance about America’s commitment. The question is whether the American people and enough of their representatives in Congress from both parties understand this. I am disappointed by Democrats who are more focused on how President Bush took America into the war in Iraq almost three years ago, and by Republicans who are more worried about whether the war will bring them down in next November’s elections, than they are concerned about how we continue the progress in Iraq in the months and years ahead.

Here is an ironic finding I brought back from Iraq. While U.S. public opinion polls show serious declines in support for the war and increasing pessimism about how it will end, polls conducted by Iraqis for Iraqi universities show increasing optimism. Two-thirds say they are better off than they were under Saddam, and a resounding 82% are confident their lives in Iraq will be better a year from now than they are today. What a colossal mistake it would be for America’s bipartisan political leadership to choose this moment in history to lose its will and, in the famous phrase, to seize defeat from the jaws of the coming victory.

Lieberman adds that “mistakes, some of them big, were made after Saddam was removed, and no one who supports the war should hesitate to admit that; but we have learned from those mistakes and, in characteristic American fashion, from what has worked and not worked on the ground.” He also catalogues examples of the tangible progress that has been made, some of which will probably come as news to those who believe everything they see on TV (and who, more importantly, believe they’re getting the whole picture from TV).

Read the whole thing, please, before you bash it. (Hat tip: Adam Russ.)

On the second-to-last day of the Atlantic hurricane season, Tropical Storm Epsilon has formed!

Epsilon is the 26th tropical storm of what the NHC calls “the apparently never ending 2005 Atlantic hurricane season.” (Recall that the previous single-season record was 21. We haven’t just broken it, we’ve smashed it.) It is also the third storm in the usually quiet month of November. Thankfully, it’s out over the open Atlantic, no threat to any land at this time.

The storm is expected to reach near-hurricane strength before becoming extratropical, according to the discussion:

EPSILON IS LOCATED OVER 25C SSTS… WHICH IS SUFFICIENTLY WARM ENOUGH TO SUPPORT AT LEAST MINIMAL HURRICANE INTENSITY. ALTHOUGH A BANDING EYE-LIKE FEATURE DURING THE PAST COUPLE OF HOURS… THE LOW-LEVEL PRESSURE AND WIND FIELDS APPEAR TO MORE REPRESENTATIVE OF SLOW DEVELOPING SUBTROPICAL CYCLONES. AS SUCH… INTENSIFICATION IS EXPECTED TO BE SLOWER THAN USUAL. HOWEVER… IF THE DEEP CONVECTION CONTINUES TO RAPIDLY INCREASE AROUND THE CENTER… THEN MORE AND EARLIER STRENGTHENING COULD OCCUR THAN WHAT IS FORECAST. THE OFFICIAL INTENSITY FORECAST CLOSELY FOLLOWS THE SHIPS MODEL AND IS HIGHER THAN THE GFDL MODEL.

Ree-markable. The Storm Track has more, including satellite images.

Meanwhile, the remnants of Tropical Storm Delta have killed at least seven people on the Canary Islands:

A wind gust blew a 63-year-old man off the roof he was repairing on Fuerteventura Island, killing him overnight.

Six African illegal immigrants drowned after winds caused their boat to capsize while attempting to reach Gran Canaria. Twelve of the immigrants remained missing while 32 were rescued on Monday.

The storm also caused injuries to several people.

The storm left the islands of La Palma, El Hierro, Gomera and part of Tenerife practically isolated. Hundreds of thousands remained without electricity, including more than 200,000 on Tenerife, 2,000 on Lanzarote, nearly 1,000 on Fuerteventura and hundreds on La Palma.