I don’t blog about it often, but I enjoy myself some good football.

Growing up, my Mom always watched the Dallas Cowboys and I never really got into it. Yelling at a television was just weird, and I didn’t really understand the rules well enough to care who won or lost.

But then I attended Texas A&M University and my whole perspective on the sport changed. Texas A&M is not a place where you can easily ignore the football team. It is Texas, afterall, where football is almost a religion.

For anyone who’s a fan of college football like myself, this first week of the year marks the week of bowl games leading up to the BCS National Championship game.

I brought in the bowl season watching the Aggies lose to Penn State (how do you beat someone who was around when football was invented?).

I then watched Oklahoma embarass themselves against an under-rated West Virginia team.

What’s up next? Kansas versus Virginia Tech.

Notice a pattern? All three games include a Big 12 team, the conference in which A&M is a part.

A couple of years ago, the University of Texas played for the National Championship against #1 ranked USC. I invited a couple of friends over (literally) and my Aggie friend was rooting for USC the entire way.

Afterall, her time at Texas A&M had taught her that UT was bad. They are the arch-rival of the Texas Aggies, and we should always want them to lose – always.

But I disagree with her, and this arrives at my point — Concentric Loyalty.

I have a levels of loyalty which let me easily determine who my favorite team is for any given game. It’s moderately complex, but perfectly navigable. With over 120+ teams to sift through, it’s absolutely imperative that one have such a system.

The way I see it, any team close to Texas A&M should always win unless they’re playing Texas A&M. Why you ask?

Let’s take the scenario where Texas A&M loses to Team A. I then root for Team A in any match-ups. If Team A wins, then that means they’re a good team and it’s not so bad that Texas A&M lost to them.

In the reverse, let’s say Texas A&M wins against Team A. I still root for Team A to win, because if Team A wins, then A&M must have beaten a pretty good team. See how that works?

Basically, I follow this simple concentric set of rules:

• Texas A&M
• Texas teams
• Big 12 South
• Big 12
• Any team that has played anyone in the Big 12 that A&M has played

It gets complicated there at the end. It’s not always obvious which team is the one to root for in a given match-up, and it requires some real Kevin Bacon style work to figure it out sometimes. It’s not always direct. Perhaps Team A beat Team B who beat Team C who played A&M.

Likewise, there are inevitable match-ups that conflict with my concentric rings of loyalty. What do I do when Texas Tech plays UT? They’re both Texas teams and they’re both in the Big 12 South!

In such cases, the tie-breaker usually depends on the season. More often than not, I’ll root for the underdog in the match-up when I need to decide between two teams that live in the same ring of loyalty.

And then there are strange exceptions. One of those exceptions is Virginia Tech. Because I now live in Virginia, and Virginia Tech shares so much in common with Texas A&M, I tend to root for them in any match-up that doesn’t directly affect the Aggies.

That makes the next match-up between Kansas and VA Tech quite interesting.

So there you have it. A strange look into the concentric loyalty that is my college football fandom. Just one more thing for you to read that you don’t care about brought to you by Lykaon.com.

Beauty & the Geek is one of those shows that’s really on my second tier.

I don’t talk about it much, I don’t watch it when it plays live, and I don’t generally search the internet for information about it.

Nonetheless, it’s really an enjoyable show [as far as reality shows go].

This season has been the best season the show has ever seen in my humble opinion.

Not only did they have some really great contestants this go ‘around, but the twist of a male beauty (Sam) and a girl geek (Nicole) was tons of fun.

I’m not sure it was really fair. I mean, Sam had the advantage when the beauty challenge was to pick up bugs… or build seltzer rockets.

He dominated challenges because even the ‘beautiest’ guy has to have done some guy-like things in his life.

But I don’t really care if it was fair. I have to admit that I developed a temporary, fleeting man crush on Sam. I mean, the guy was super macho but also extremely open to all the geeks in the house.

When they first announced this twist to the show, my first thought was how difficult it would be to find a ‘macho’ man who didn’t treat every geek in the house like dirt.

Sam is that guy. He treated everyone with respect, was extremely accepting, and really was a stand-up guy all the way around.

Perhaps he was a better influence for the geeks than any of the other beauties could be. He was the epitome of what they could be.

At the end of the day, Sam & Nicole failed to win the show but they still helped make this season of Beauty & the Geek the best to date.

Here’s hoping that they find more ‘Sams’ for future installments of the show.

I was supposed to write a Heroes review earlier this week. I didn’t. I could do that now, but instead I’m going to write about Survivor. Sorry, Hemisphire.

So we’re down to six in Survivor: China. Last night saw the exit of James, the workhorse gravedigger who had 2 (TWO!) immunity idols in his possession.

Nonetheless, James was a bit too gullible and trusting for his own good and was blindsided by his ‘friends.’

Word to the wise: never trust a gay Mormon.

So we’re left with:

• Todd (the gay mormon)
• Courtney (the anorexic blonde)
• Amanda (Queen Butt Blur)
• Denise (the stereotypical lunch lady)
• Erik (wait, is he even there?)
• Peih-Gee (the most manic survivor ever)

It’s actually a pretty good final six. All of them mostly deserve to be where they are either by pure strategy or key immunity wins.

I think 3 of them definitely deserve to win, while 3 of them definitely don’t. The three that should have a fair claim at the million are Todd, Courtney, and Amanda — oh look, the first three in my list.

Todd has worked hard to manipulate the game whenever he could. He fancies himself more of a conniver than he’s really turned out to be, but overall he’s earned his keep.

I’ve decided that Amanda is really the brains of the operation. Oh sure, Todd may think he is, but it’s always Amanda who has to talk him down from crazy harebrained schemes. Yet when Amanda says to vote out James, Todd does it.

Then there’s Courtney. I didn’t really like her at first, but she’s grown on me. She’s a little Winona Ryder, and a little bit 5-years old all at the same time.

She’s playing a very strange game of Survivor, but it seems to be working. She’s managed to remain true to her alliance while making them question her loyalty at the same time. Whether intentional or accidental, it’s a ploy that has worked well for her.

Then there’s the last three. Denise hasn’t displayed one iota of independent thought, Erik is a non-entity, and Peih-Gee is borderline psychotic and pretty mean to boot. So none of them should win unless they can get in the final two with each other.

My prediction?

I’m going to go with a dream I had last night. That’s right. I had a dream about Survivor. Yes, it’s a little bit embarassing.

At any rate, my dream was about Courtney. I dreamed that she was actually the daughter of one of the families I go to church with and thus was going to church with me.

The dream wasn’t really any more than that (though I vaguely remember football being involved), but it was enough for me to go ahead and predict Courtney as the winner of Survivor: China.

Todd and Amanda just may cannibalize each other, while Courtney waltzes right into the top spot and wins one million dollars.

As always, you can read my review of the latest episode of Chuck over at Strahotski.com.

This week’s episode was entitled “Chuck Versus the Truth.”

For my money, this one was the best so far, so be sure to check it out. And if you haven’t already started watching Chuck yet — shame on you.

So this is the one where one of our Heroes goes into the future, gets all freaked out and then goes back to the past intent on making sure that future doesn’t happen.

What?! They’re re-airing Season 1?

No, no my dear reader. This is called rehashing. The writers may have just officially gone on strike, but it seems that the Heroes writing squad checked out a while ago.

In the future, the ‘Shanti’ virus has wiped out most of the world. Big surprise.

Caitlin gets captured, Peter whines a little bit, and then he gets caught in the same poor time-travel theory that whips him back into present day without his Irish Setter. Oh the shame.

We also learn that Parkman is much more than meets the eye.

No, he’s not a transforming semi-truck (though that would be awesome). Instead, it turns out that it’s not just reading minds — he has the same mind-bending powers as his daddy.

This is actually played out to pretty nice effect with a nice symbolic battle at the end where Matt tells his dad to go to hell.

That’s cool and all, but I can’t help but feel a little bit annoyed because I don’t know if Matt really did that or if Matt’s dad just made Matt think he did that. I mean, trapping Matt in a happy thought of saving Molly would be a pretty good way to make him not want to wake up.

And yes, any good sci-fi fan will have seen all that before. Being inventive is soooo last season.

There are a couple of other little sideplots of no interest.

West has turned back into a stalker, but at least he got the bejeebus scared out of him when HRG showed back up. That’ll teach West to be a creepy stalker.

Also, did Claire’s mom not get the memo from HRG about no boys? I guess not. That family has some serious communication issues.

Turns out Hiro is Kensei or some such nonsense. Predictable. Yawn.

I know Hiro can be a little bit naive. I know that’s part of the charm of his character. But did he really think he could blow up someone who can heal themselves instantly? He needs to keep up with the plot better.

And then the biggest reveal of all — our little British friend from Feudal Japan is still alive and well and close friends with Peter. If only Peter could remember that part.

Looks like Kensei’s real name is Adam and he founded ‘The Company.’ But now he wants to destroy it. Okay. Sounds fun.

I guess if I was alive for millennia I’d probably get bored enough to just wreak havoc for fun too.

On a happy note, the actor who plays DL got a bit part. I’m glad to see he’s not going hungry.

Next week we get to find out what we should have found out in the first episode of season 2. Yay!