I'm looking at the Top 25 overview on SI.com's CFB page this morning, and a snippet of a headline catches my eye. I follow the link and sure enough, the headline reads: "Jon Wilner: Stanford Cardinal will upset Pac-10-leading Oregon Ducks"

I don't know if anyone is familiar with Mr. Wilner, but his voting for the AP poll could be charitably described as 'suspect'. The guy doesn't seem to have a friggin' clue about fundamentals of football, and is prone to chase whatever flavor of the week happens to be the hottest. This, however, crosses the line into blatant homerism and outright idiocy.

If you followed the second link above, you may note that Mr. Wilner gave Oregon second place in his AP poll ballot. Conveniently, five days later, he pens a column where he predicts that Stanford will upset the vaunted Ducks. In case you hadn't noticed- JON WILNER WRITES FOR STANFORD'S HOMETOWN PAPER. It's kind of like making a straw man argument, except that in this case, you're creating a strong team out of straw only to have the locals knock it down. I always thought Wilner was a wee bit off in his opinions, but when the reasoning behind them becomes so transparent, I can only take comfort in the fact that at the end of the day, the AP poll counts for nothing.

The host of one of my preferred tailgates is taking a page out of Curley's playbook and doing theme weeks this season. As fate would have it, the theme for the Iowa game is going to be 'All Things Bacon'. We already have plans for taking hot potato salad, but I wanted to extend the wonder of bacon into dessert.

The first idea that came to me was to make chocolate peanut clusters, and replace 1/4 to 1/3 of the peanuts with well-done bacon. That seems a little weak to me, though, and I was wondering if anyone here has any practical experience with a bacon dessert. Basically I need to come up with something that's tailgate-friendly, and as focused on bacon as possible.

Thanks, Coach. I'll hang up and listen.