In case you missed it, three state colleges hosted their football media days this past week.

With just days away until season kickoff – and Sioux City’s Brennan Cougill at Iowa this year – anticipation is high among college pigskin fans.

Get a sneak peek at the talent in these photo galleries from Iowa, Iowa State and Nebraska.

The University of South Dakota is using appearances on the fields of Big 10 football opponents as a way to gain some national publicity. Today USD, which in 2008 finished 6-5 in the transition from Division II to Division I Football Championship Subdivision (formerly I-AA),  announced a third game with a Big 10 school in the next few years.

The 2012 opponent announced today was Northwestern University, which plays in a stadium roughly six times the size of the DakotaDome.  That game is on top of the 2010 game to be played at Minneapolis with the Minnesota Golden Gophers and the 2011 tilt with the Wisconsin Badgers.

Will those be slaughters that will give the USD athletic department some plump funding for playing the road games? Probably the three Big 10 games won’t be wins, but Coyote coach Ed Meierkort is enthused. He’s a Chicago native who says it’s good to be playing a top flight conference foe, while athletic director Joel Nielsen noted USD will nab exposure in one of the biggest media markets by playing in the Chicago metro area vs. Northwestern.

Can a USD-Iowa Hawkeye game in Iowa City be far behind? There’s no way it would ever be a home-and-home arrangement, since Iowa has never agreed to travel two hours north to play UNI in Cedar Falls, even though they play each other about every three years.

As all sports fans in the world know, tonight is the 2009 NCAA men’s basketball championship. Here in early April, March Madness ends with a North Carolina-Michigan State matchup. Who do you like to take the title?

I filled out a bracket this year, and had two of the Final Four teams correct, while picking Michigan State to win it all. So I’ll be rooting to get that selection right. When I chose Michigan State, it was simply for the fact that the final was in Detroit, so I figured a lot of Michigan fans packed into Ford Field would be able to push them over the top.

While I hadn’t thought of it at the time of picking the field, I also now like the symmetry of Michigan St. (31-6)winning the title exactly 30 years after Magic Johnson led the team to the 1979 title. That was the first NCAA national championship I ever watched.

Of course, North Carolina (33-4) is the favorite in Vegas odds. Some want the storyline of senior Tyler Hansbrough leading the way to a title after bypassing the NBA for another shot at a championship. If North Carolina wins, it will be a fifth championship for the Tar Heels; if Michigan State wins, a third title for the Spartans.

If you’re jazzed about the men’s Final Four that plays out beginning tomorrow, you likely love the notion that 65 teams have a chance to run the table through a national tournament and determine a champion that no one disputes or quibbles about. If it can happen in D-I basketball, why not D-I NCAA football?

The folks at humor mag The Onion hit on that topic in a story here. The lead graph posits how much the BCS officials/cronies/hacks (pick your word) hate that March Madness firmly settles the question of “who’s best?”

Here’s the beginning: Claiming that determining an unquestioned national champion through a playoff system “went against the very idea of sporting competition,” and that the sheer exuberance of college basketball fans was “a shocking and nauseating display of everything wrong with collegiate athletics,” top BCS officials roundly condemned the NCAA Tournament Monday.

And this “quote” — ”The elegant logic of actually having teams play one another instead of having a council of their betters select which team is superior to which—that is not what sports is all about.”

Oh, those Onion wags. This one definitely bears reading, for the truth seeps through the sarcasm.

Plain and simple, I’m not liking this new plan for naming All-Americans in NAIA football.

I guess it escaped my notice last year, but the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics has turned the selection process over to something called the AFCA — the American Football Coaches Association.

And, the AFCA has fumbled the ball.

The NAIA is certainly entitled to hand off responsibilities like these to someone else. After all, the NCAA doesn’t name All-America teams in any particular sport. Honor teams in major college football, for example, are selected by several different sources, notably the Associated Press.

The problem in the NAIA ranks is this: The AFCA has  jumped on this project with the enthusiasm of a 12-year-old taking out the trash.

If you didn’t get beyond the headline in today’s sports section, you wouldn’t have noticed that the NAIA All-America team as selected by the AFCA consists of only 25 athletes — basically one team rather than the three or four that were previously honored when these teams were compiled by the NAIA. Worse yet, the AFCA’s limited glimpse at the talent pool has been further skewed by a silly rule limiting member schools to just one nominee.

Sorry, coaches, but the University of Sioux Falls, which attempts to defend its NAIA national title on Saturday, probably has more than one All-American. Ditto for Carroll, the perennial title contender from Montana. And, if this one-per-customer, 25-man team is the best you can do to pay tribute to all the colleges that play football at this level, perhaps you shouldn’t bother.

Small consolation, but a guy named Jason Dannelly, an NAIA super-fan, produces his own All-America teams under the banner of something called the “Victory Sports Network.” Those selections, we’re told, will be released in a few weeks.

I can’t fault the sports department at the Gainesville Sun for wondering who will win the 73rd annual Heisman Memorial Trophy Award.

The winner, it seems, will be sophomore quarterback Tim Tebow from the University of Florida, which is pretty big news in Gainesville. So, the sports department at The Sun was working the phones, surveying voters to cut down on the suspense. And, since most of us are in the same business as these folks, their curiosity comes as no surprise.

I’m just a little bit honored every year the priority mail pouch shows up on my desk. And, if my privelege to vote hinged on keeping my vote a secret, I wouldn’t even tell my wife.  Unless she asked. Which she wouldn’t.

There is no confidentiality agreement, however. So, we have all the surveys. And, the mystery, quite frankly, is just about gone.

The ballot asks for three names — a first, second and third choice for “the most outstanding college football player in the United States for 2007.” That’s not really so difficult to determine; not even this year, when the parity in college football fairly screams out for a playoff system like never before.

Call it a rubber stamp, but my first pick was Tebow, who will be the first sophomore ever to win the Heisman. My second choice was Arkansas running back Darren McFadden, who’ll almost certainly be the runner-up for a second year in a row. Third on my ballot was Hawaii quarterback Colt Brennan, who would probably be the frontrunner if more voters (me included, I guess) could set aside their bias toward the Western Athletic Conference.

Some believe the award should go to LSU defensive tackle Glenn Dorsey, who certainly helped land Bo Pelini the head coaching job at Nebraska. I agree with fans who think the Heisman is too much about quarterbacks and running backs. However, there are plenty of trophies and awards to go around and Dorsey is a finalist for no fewer than five honors — the Nagurski, Lombari, Outland, Lott and Bednarik awards, which carry a variety of meanings. And, while most college athletes are attending classes this week, he’ll be in Charlotte, Houston, Orlando and Los Angeles, strapping on the feed bag.

Poor guy.