FBS: Louisiana State
FCS: Appalachian State
Soccer: Wake Forest
Water Polo: California
Cross Country: Oregon

LSU is 20-1 on the futures market to retain the BCS championship. Appalachian State’s football team is in a much stronger position to defend; the Mountaineers have collected three titles in a row, and the FCS (formerly Division I-A) uses a playoff system to determine its champion. There is some turnover, though, on this year’s Appalachian State squad.

Wake Forest is the preseason No. 1 in soccer, boasting nine returnees from the team that went 22-2-2 last year. Cal, the top-ranked preseason water polo program, is looking for a three-peat. The Ducks are Cross Country kings for the first time since the early 1970s; they’ll get a good challenge from Wisconsin. I’ll take the Demon Deacons in this fivesome.

Football is easily the most popular sport in America. So you’d think with all the attention it gets, people would have figured out by now how important the offensive and defensive lines are to a team – especially in college.

Nope. The casual fan is still fixated on the “skill” players – the quarterback, running backs, wide receivers and those tight ends who catch the football on a regular basis. This opens up a wide lane for handicappers to swoop in, get an information advantage on the competition, and make some cash.

A star quarterback with a lousy offensive line is going to underperform. Over in the Pac-10, one of the few question marks with this year’s USC Trojans is whether the O-line is stout enough. Meanwhile, the less famous Oregon Ducks have a fearsome front four that should make QB Nate Costa’s job a lot easier. The Ducks are flying under the betting radar and well worth investigating.

But this is more than just a college thing. Studies show that college athletes drink more heavily than non-athletes. And this relationship extends to sports fans, as well. One speculated cause: advertising.

Despite a push among concerned groups, including prominent athletic directors and coaches, the NCAA will not stop showing advertisements for alcohol. This is despite the fact that the NCAA has already put rules in place that limit the ads to products containing six percent alcohol or less. Conveniently enough, beer is the beverage of choice on campuses across the globe.

Here’s a crazy idea: Lower the legal drinking age. It’s 18 just about everywhere else in the world. To paraphrase Mojo Nixon, if you’re old enough to die for your country, you’re old enough to buy a beer.

The critics have spoken, and the Arizona State Sun Devils are this year’s top college sports program. Sports Illustrated put together a Top 25 last month that praised ASU for its strength in baseball, golf and track. The Stanford Cardinal were second, followed by the UCLA Bruins. That’s three Pacific-10 teams in a row.

We’re used to seeing strong Pac-10 teams on the football field. But the USC Trojans are only tied for seventh on this list. Meanwhile, here’s what’s expected on the gridiron from the SI top three:

Arizona State: 8.5 wins (-145 under)
UCLA: 6.0 wins (-170 under)
Stanford: OFF

Those are low expectations. If the futures market plays out, only the Sun Devils will make it to a bowl game this year. Stanford was off the board at press time but is generally considered the worst football team in the conference. Yes, but they have one hell of a golf program.

You won’t find too many people saddened by the end of Billy Packer’s 34-year run as color commentator for the Final Four at the men’s college basketball Tournament. For all his hoops credentials, as both an analyst and a former guard at Wake Forest, Packer was considered a grouch behind the microphone.

Packer has a long history of rubbing people the wrong way. When asked to show his press pass at Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadium in 2000, Packer shot back, “Since when do we let women control who gets into a men’s basketball game?” He also made this comment during a Charlie Rose interview. Not good.

In the end, Packer will probably be remembered most for his animosity toward the smaller programs in the NCAA. He was critical of St. Joseph’s getting a No. 1 seed in the 2004 Tournament, and he was even angrier two years later when the MVC and CAA got six bids between them. Two words in parting: George Mason.

Brandon Jennings (above photo) is boldly going where no basketball prodigy has gone before: straight to Europe, bypassing the Arizona Wildcats to sign a pro contract with Virtus Roma of Italy’s Serie A.

Is this the end for college basketball? Jacob Leibenluft pondered that question for Slate; in his view, a lot will depend on how well Jennings performs in his new environment. Other youngsters should keep their fingers crossed. As basketball spreads across the globe, opportunities open up for skilled players - opportunities that don’t involve taking sham college courses and not getting paid.

College basketball will continue to flourish even if the top high school and AAU players go elsewhere, as Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett and LeBron James were allowed to do before the NBA put restrictions on its draft. Ultimately, fans of college sports are rooting for laundry. But maybe the Jennings experiment will give young players the chance to make a powerful fashion statement.

Is making the USC Trojans the preseason college football favorites just a case of inertia? They had to settle for the Rose Bowl again last year after going 10-2 (6-6 against the spread). Now they’re changing starting quarterbacks – again – and yet they were 3-1 favorites earlier this summer to win the 2009 BCS Championship game.

Perhaps those odds will change before long; the NCAAF futures market was down at press time. Pete Carroll’s USC program is fantastic, don’t get me wrong, but the Trojans aren’t getting as much attention this preseason as teams like the Georgia Bulldogs and Ohio State Buckeyes, both of whom were 6-1 before the odds came off the board.

My pick out of what promises to be a very tough field: OSU. The Buckeyes saw their Big Ten rivals crumble around them last year; we’ll see roughly the same in 2008 as Ohio State plows its way to another one-loss season and a championship.

We’ll learn next month who will go into the 2008 college football season with the No. 1 ranking in the polls. USC was a near-unanimous choice last year, and the Trojans could find themselves right back up top – they’re the 3-1 favorites to win the BCS championship.

The Georgia Bulldogs are getting lots of love from commentators at 6-1, tied with Florida, Ohio State, and Oklahoma in what promises to be a wild season. But the Bulldogs are having some trouble on the disciplinary front. Seven players have been arrested thus far, for everything from aggravated battery to rubbing the belly of a pregnant woman.

Most of the Bulldogs players involved are linemen, including potential starters Jeremy Lomax on defense and Clint Boling on offense. Add the foot injury that will keep starting fullback Brannan Southerland on the shelf for five games, and Georgia’s betting value takes a bath in the insanely rough SEC waters.

This is the quintessential underdog story. Fresno State went into the 64-team tournament as a No. 4 seed in their region. No previous fourth seed had won the College World Series, or any other NCAA championship. The Bulldogs went 6-0 in elimination games, pulling out two of those victories after losing the opening game of the CWS Finals to Georgia.

Even more impressively, Fresno State right fielder Steve Detwiler went 4-for-4 and drove in all six runs in last week’s title-clincher, all while playing with a completely torn ligament in his left thumb. Detwiler has earned his summer vacation.

The NCAA has a checkered history when it comes to cranking out student-athletes. According to this year’s Academic Progress Rate report, 36 member schools face penalties after their football programs failed to meet minimum standards. That jumps to 53 for men’s basketball, although there are also many more member institutions with basketball programs: 1,026 across all three divisions, compared to 627 for football.

Based purely on those numbers, you could draw the conclusion that basketball players are smarter. But it’s common knowledge now that the student part of the student-athlete’s college experience is a secondary consideration. Even Steve Nash skated by as a sociology major at Santa Clara.