Let there be football! Also, happy 38th anniversary Mom and Dad

Thank goodness we finally get the college football season started tonight. South Carolina at NC State should be an interesting game. The Wolfpack have a gigantic issue in the secondary, but no one knows if the Gamecocks have a good enough passing game to take advantage. SC's depending on lots of newcomers with talent to be able to play big on the road in their debuts. If this comes down to field goals, SC's in trouble. In the end, I'll give their superior talent the edge over NC State but it's a really tough game to get a good read on. Right after that it's Boise hosting Oregon, in another game that's tough to evaluate. Chip Kelly makes his head coaching debut in this game for the Ducks. What effect will that change have on their approach? The Broncos have been extremely tough to beat at home too. Should be a fun night of watching football.

Curt Schilling says he's been approached to run for the Massachusetts US Senate seat which opened as a result of Teddy Kennedy's death. That's an awful idea. There are plenty of experienced Massachusetts politicians who share Schilling's conservative political views, but they know Kennedy's seat isn't likely to wind up in the hands of a regular GOP candidate. Naturally the hope is that voters are such dopes that they'll elect Schilling just because they're grateful Red Sox fans regardless of whether he agrees with them politically. Check with Lynn Swann about how that kind of cynical campaign approach works out. Hopefully Schilling's smart enough not to tarnish his connection with Red Sox fans by taking on the role of an unlikely to succeed political gimmick.

A new study prominently plays up its conclusion that forty percent of sportswriters bet on sports. Once you look past that headline, a couple of things stand out to me. According to the study, five percent of the surveyed sportswriters admitted to betting on the sport they covered. That means the other 35 percent of that headline figure's 40 are doing something else. If the guys who cover the Yankees are in an NCAA basketball or football pool, does that really matter? The study also makes reference to 45 percent of reporters believing that accepting free tickets or meals from a team they cover would not affect their objectivity. I've never heard of a school or team offering reporters free tickets. As for the food, if there's actually a reporter out there unwilling to honestly cover a football team for fear of losing out on chicken fingers or hot dogs in the press box then I feel sorry for them. No one I've come across meets that description.

If you ever wind up feeling less than satisfied with your romantic relationship, remind yourself that at least you're not Anthony Miller. The 39 year old is serving a three to six year sentence for bank robbery after intentionally getting caught while holding up a bank with a BB gun. Why did he do that? Because he wanted to leave his wife and she'd threatened to kill herself if he did. When your marriage is so bad an actual prison sentence seems like an appealing option, things have probably gotten past the "let's go to counseling" phase of the relationship.