Now that the college football season has ended it is onto the bowl season. Dec. 4, the teams were announced that will compete in the Bowl Championship series. Besides the Southern California Trojans and the Texas Longhorns meeting in the college football national title game which this year happens to be the Rose Bowl Jan. 4, another good BCS bowl game is going to be the Fiesta Bowl Jan. 2 which pits Notre Dame against Ohio State in matchup of two stories programs.

A major story line to this game will be the battle of the two quarterbacks, Brady Quinn of Notre Dame versus Troy Smith of Ohio State. Ohio State will return to the site of their 2002 National Championship season when they played the Miami Hurricanes.

A key player to watch in this game for Notre Dame will be wide receiver Jeff Samardzija. He has a great season so far this season with his 15 touchdown catches for the Fighting Irish. Samardzija is also a star pitcher for Notre Dame and has a chance to play professionally in both the NFL and MLB.

A surprise to the BCS picture this season will be the Penn State Nittany Lions led by legendary coach Joe Paterno. The Nittany Lions will meet the Florida State Seminoles in the Orange Bowl Jan. 3. The Nittany Lions rebounded from several down years to a 10-1 record this season.

Their only blemish on their record is a 27-25 loss back on Oct. 15 to the Michigan Wolverines. This game came down to a last second touchdown that Michigan scored with no time remaining. This will be the first time that the Nittany Lions will participate in a BCS bowl since the BCS was created back in 1996. Joe Paterno will be mtached up against another legendary coach, Bobby Bowden of the Florida State Seminoes.

It will be interesting to see if Texas quarterback Vince Young can give the Trojans a run for their money and stop their streak of winning national title games.

The Heisman trophy competition will take place this Saturday Dec. 10. The top three canididates for the trophy are Trojans’ quaterback Matt Leinart and running back Reggie Bush, and Young.

My pick to win the Heisman is Bush becasuse his talent is superior to the rest of these players. There have been games this season where it has been like he defeated an opponent all by himself. A good example of this is when USC played Fresno State Nov. 19. The Trojans won 50-43 and Bush rushed for 294 yards in the game.

ESPN college football analyst has stated that Bush is the best player to come out of college in the past 20 years. It will be interesting to see if he take the success he hs had in college onto the NFL.