Bet your pants: this will be a dandy.

Get your bagged ice by Friday and make sure the cooler is well stocked in plenty of time. By Border War gametime next Saturday, Rhodes101 will be out of everything you need.

If you haven't called your pastor and told him you'll be missing out on the Saturday 5 o'clock service, "I'll see you Sunday." If you haven't got your pantry well stocked with the always delicious Triscuit crackers, whatever you have left of your Esicar sausage supply, and two blocks of Colby Jack. If you haven't looked your significant other in the eye and said, "Honey, I need this. You have to let me." If you haven't done all of that...you're simply crazy.

Crazier than Pauly Shore at a house party on a Saturday night. Crazier than Britney Spears in a bind. You'd be even crazier than the actual fact of the matter: The University of Missouri and the University of Kansas each have football teams in the BCS's Top Five. And they'll decide their national title hopes in a town near you.

Can you imagine what it will be like on those campus's this week? I'm assuming the anxiety on the MU campus will rival the week preceding the MU-KU hoop fest the season the Tigers were ranked #2. There was a petition, signed by 23,000+ students, sent to President Bush requesting a troop withdrawal from Iraq and a new focus on bombing the **** out of Kansas.

I'm assuming things will be the same. And the campus in Lawrence will be no more innocent in their exotic hateful attitude towards MU.

It's not far-fetched to say that this is the most exciting weekend in sports history for these two campus'.

Make sure all you're TV cables are well connected, you're not going to want to miss this.

****

It's hard to take this KU football team seriously. I mean, football at Kansas? I know Missouri isn't the biggest football school either, but people have always known that MU had a football team. Before this season, you heard so little about the Rock Chalks. We used to laugh at them in college. Now they're supposedly better than us? And we're #5 in the nation. Soon to be #4 when the new rankings come out and Oregon drops.

That's pretty nuts. I haven't seen them play this year and I'd love to hear what you think about them if you have. Maybe they are the real deal.

I don't think it's all alumni-bias but I certainly get the tinkling sensation that the Tigers will run the Jayhawks right out of Kansas City. For some reason I think this one is a no-doubter. Maybe it's all those jokes on KU I've been used to. I don't know. But I'm taking the Tigers by 17 or more.

***

One other side note. I know it's already been talking about a lot on this website, but I wanted to congratulate the Notre Dame Bulldogs on their state run last weekend. I was lucky enough to be in town for it and they were a privilege to watch.

I can honestly say, not as an ND alum, but simply as a fan of sports that their team was one of the most fun teams I have ever seen. Everybody that asks me about it, I tell them all the same thing: "I've never seen a team with such great composure." You can talk all you want about talent level and a great senior class, but this team won because of composure.

Any athlete has played in games of major magnitude and we all know how easy it is to get frustrated, angry, and therefor be distracted from playing your best game. In the two games I saw, I didn't see one single player ANYTIME OR ANYWHERE ever show a negative emotion. They couldn't be broken. They played so confidently in each other that there was never any doubt in their minds that they were going to be State Champions.

While the other two teams were consistently kicking the ball away after whistles, pushing and shoving and taking cheap shots, and running their mouths to the refs, Notre Dame never got distracted and never stopped playing soccer.

So my congratulations to that team. They were well deserving of that ring. And most importantly, they won the right way. One of the most inspiring team sports performances I've ever seen. Way to go, Dogs.