Monday stream-of-consciousness

I'm not the first person to point this out in print this weekend, but I'll parrot it. For all the offseason shenanigans in college football, the games can be pretty good, can't they?

Saturday's Iowa-Iowa State triple-overtime game goes into the vault with the most-interesting, most-entertaining games I've covered. The night before, I stayed up until the end of the Missouri-Arizona State game that ASU won in OT. That had plenty of good, bad, and crazy, too.

Saturday night, it was Notre Dame-Michigan. Three quarters of Irish dominance, one quarter of Michigan magic. I didn't see much of it, but South Carolina's 45-42 win over Georgia must have been a grabber, too.

The week before, we had that wonderful TCU-Baylor game that the Bears won by the improbable score of 50-48.

This week it's Oklahoma at Florida State, Michigan State at Notre Dame, Ohio State at Miami. The Thursday night ESPN game is excellent, LSU at Mississippi State. On Friday, Boise

State is at Toledo, a team that came oh-so-close to winning at Ohio State last Saturday.

Monday, I have Friday on my mind. And Thursday and Saturday.

How weird it must be for New England Patriots linebacker A.J. Edds, with his team starting the season at the Miami Dolphins tonight. Edds was a Dolphin until last week.

Iowa State is 114th out of 120 FBS teams in turnover margin. That's not good. Iowa is tied for 18th. That's good. You'd probably take 114th and a 2-0 record over 18th and 1-1, though.

For Iowa fans, Sunday's Minnesota-San Diego NFL game was truly a mixed bag.

It was good seeing Bob Sanders back and running amok. In his Chargers debut, Sanders was in on six tackles. Minnesota passed for a measly 39 yards against the Chargers.

But it was sure hard seeing kicker Nate Kaeding tear his ACL on the first play of the year, when Kaeding was trying to make a tackle after his kickoff that Percy Harvin returned for a touchdown.

I know how hard Kaeding works on his craft in the offseason. Now, he's out for the season. I know, I know. It's not like he's unemployed and living from paycheck to paycheck. But he's a prideful, driven person. Being forced to do nothing but rehab while the games go on ... tough stuff.

Welcome to the NFL, Adrian Clayborn. (see the photo atop this story). The Tampa Bay rookie defensive end from Iowa will have better days than his first game. A lot of them, no doubt.

On the other side of the field in Tampa Sunday, Detroit second-year safety Amari Spievey of Iowa had seven tackles in his team's 27-20 win over the Buccaneers. The Lions did well when they drafted him.

I used to get such good reviews at Pollstalker for my AP Top 25 football ballots. No more. I'm getting shredded, and this link proves it. You can go there and pile on if you wish.

The series-finale of "Entourage" couldn't have been much more ridiculous. What made less sense than anything was the cameo appearance of former Wisconsin football coach Barry Alvarez. Did most of the "Entourage" camp followers have any idea who Alvarez even was when he stood next to Mike Ditka in Ari Gold's office? Alvarez had a speaking part, for crying out loud.

Now that the series is over, we'll never get to see Ari scheme to try to become Kirk Ferentz's new agent. Or better yet, Hawkeye wrestling coaches Tom and Terry Brands trying to instill some discipline into Turtle and Johnny Drama.

Finally, what is this?