If three-martini lunches and unlimited expense accounts are your thing, then the 21 Club in Manhattan is your kind of place. But for one day at least, football took over from Fendi as the topic of conversation.

New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning was the star attraction last week at the 21. He was there to promote the launch of the National Football Foundation’s “Gridiron Club of New York,” designed to pump up interest in college football in a town where the NFL is king. Some 100 guests including former mayor Rudy Giuliani were there to press the flesh.

Manning’s father, Archie, is the chairman of the NFF and has been on the board for nearly 20 years. The group was founded in 1947 by the powerhouse trio of General Douglas MacArthur, Army coach Earl “Red” Blaik and legendary sports writer Grantland Rice. Imagine talking football over caviar and blini with those distinguished gentlemen.

Gators coach Urban Meyer

One of the quickest ways to find value in college football is to look at the teams with new coaches for 2008. Some of these coaches will be working in the national spotlight for the first time, after climbing the ranks from the lower majors up to the big time – think Urban Meyer and the Florida Gators.

All eyes are on Paul Johnson after he left a very successful run at Navy to join the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. Tech is 100-1 odds to win the 2009 BCS title game; the main question is whether Johnson’s triple option will work against major-conference competition. At these odds, there’s lots of room for optimism.

Bill Stewart doesn’t have the same cachet as Johnson, as he moves up from assistant to head coach at West Virginia (25-1). But the Mountaineers still have much of that talent Rich Rodriguez left behind, and Stewart was at the helm for their 48-28 Fiesta Bowl win over Oklahoma.

Bears hibernate. Football fans estivate – the summer equivalent of taking a long nap in the snow. But instead of shutting their systems down during the offseason, sharp handicappers are learning about what’s on tap for 2008.

You can’t throw a virtual brick without hitting a web page dedicated to college football. Even conventional sources like ESPN and FOX provide their readers with useful content – it might be buried under headline stories about the crazy things that happen in dorms, but the Web leaves plenty of room for those niche stories about what’s happening on the field.

We’ve just been through a very informative glut of spring practices. Players and prospective players from across Division I took to the gridiron in April; their progress was documented more heavily this year than ever before, driven in part by the handicapper’s thirst for information. By studying this information now, a sharp capper will start the 2008 college football season with a sizeable knowledge gap over the betting public.

Western Kentucky University’s Big Red goes HD

The sports revolution will be televised in glorious high-definition. The folks at The Eye have announced the arrival of CBS College Sports Network HD. The stuff on the network right now isn’t pure HD yet, but they’re going to be shooting some of their college football broadcasts in hi-def this year.

This is one of the benefits stemming from the CBS takeover and re-branding of College Sports Television in 2003. That takeover reached its natural conclusion last month with the total absorption of CSTV into the CBS Sports department. Their resources are now being used to provide thousands of hours of coverage across 35 different college sports.

And now we’re going to get it in HD. It’s a lot easier on the eyes, and when you’re a handicapper spending hours in front of the television, you really appreciate the difference in quality. Even Big Red looks good in HD.

Finishing off the regular season in the No. 1 spot on most of the polls, Miami was selected as the top seed in the NCAA Division I Baseball Tournament. But being No. 1 doesn’t guarantee a championship at the College World Series; the only No. 1 seed to do so since the tournament expanded to 64 teams was the 1999 Hurricanes.

“There was a lot of discussion about who the No. 1 seed should be, and quite frankly, North Carolina and Arizona State all got a strong look at that position,” Division I selection committee chairman Larry Templeton said. “At the end of the night, Miami’s play toward the end of the season, particularly winning the tournament — and we were watching that tournament as the selection process was going through — probably convinced the committee.”

The NCAA Baseball Tournament starts Friday with the eight winners of the super regionals competing in the College World Series, which starts on June 14th.

Although nowhere near as popular as the NCAA Division I Basketball Tournament, the NCAA Division I Baseball Tournament offers plenty of great hits. Here’s how the teams in the 2008 NCAA Baseball Tournament will pair up and play out.

Whether betting on MLB baseball or NCAA baseball, you can get all your baseball lines and futures at Bodog Sportsbook.

Because it’s never too early to start thinking about the 2008-09 college football season, here’s the upcoming College Football Bowl Season Schedule:

San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl
Dec. 23 / 8 p.m. ET, San Diego, ESPN

Congressional Bowl
Dec. 20 / 9 p.m. ET, Washington, D.C.

Pioneer Las Vegas Bowl
Dec. 20 / 8 p.m. ET, Las Vegas, ESPN

St. Petersburg Bowl
TBD Dec. 21 to 23 / 9 p.m. ET, St. Petersburg, Fla.

R&L Carriers New Orleans Bowl
Dec. 21 / 8 p.m. ET, New Orleans, ESPN

Sheraton Hawaii Bowl
Dec. 24 / 8 p.m. ET, Honolulu, Hawaii, ESPN

Motor City Bowl
Dec. 26 / 7:30 p.m. ET, Detroit, ESPN

Champs Sports Bowl
Dec. 27 / 4:30 p.m. ET, Orlando, Fla., ESPN

Emerald Bowl
Dec. 27 / 8:30 p.m. ET, San Francisco, ESPN

Meineke Car Care Bowl
Dec. 27 / 1 p.m. ET, Charlotte, N.C., ESPN

Texas Bowl
Dec. 28 / 8 p.m. ET, Houston, NFL Network

PapaJohn’s.com Bowl
Dec. 29 / 3 p.m. ET, Birmingham, Ala., ESPN2

New Mexico Bowl
TBA, Albuquerque, N.M., ESPN

PetroSun Independence Bowl
Dec. 28 / 8 p.m. ET, Shreveport, La., ESPN
Alamo Bowl
Dec. 29 / 8 p.m. ET, San Antonio, ESPN

Pacific Life Holiday Bowl
Dec. 30 / 8 p.m. ET, San Diego, ESPN

Roady’s Humanitarian Bowl
TBA, Boise, Idaho, ESPN2

Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl
Dec. 31 / 12 p.m. ET, Fort Worth, Texas, ESPN

Sun Bowl
Dec. 31 / 2 p.m. ET, El Paso, Texas, CBS

Gaylord Hotels Music City Bowl
Dec. 31 / 3:30 p.m. ET, Nashville, Tenn., ESPN

Chick-fil-A Bowl
Dec. 31 / 7:30 p.m. ET, Atlanta, ESPN

Insight Bowl
Dec. 31 / 5:30 ET, Tempe, Ariz., NFL Network

Outback Bowl
Jan. 1 / 11 a.m. ET, Tampa, Fla., ESPN

Konica Minolta Gator Bowl
Jan. 1 / 1 p.m. ET, Jacksonville, Fla., CBS

Capital One Bowl
Jan. 1 / 1 p.m. ET, Orlando, Fla., ABC

AutoZone Liberty Bowl
Jan. 2 / 5:00 p.m. ET, Memphis, Tenn., ESPN

AT&T Cotton Bowl
Jan. 2 / 2 p.m. ET, Dallas, FOX

International Bowl
Jan. 3 / 12 p.m. ET, Toronto, Canada, ESPN2

GMAC Bowl
Jan. 6 / 8 p.m. ET, Mobile, Ala., ESPN

And just for the fun of it, the early odds on winning the 2009 BCS Championship: USC 3/1, Ohio State 6/1, Oklahoma State 6/1, Florida 6/1, Missouri at 14/1, and your longshots are…too many to list.

Grumbling about college football’s refusal to go to a tournament format to decide its champion? Be thankful we even have college football – Teddy Roosevelt threatened to end the sport in 1906 because it was killing people.

With T.R. in mind, here are the Top 10 changes that have made college sports what they are today:

The NCAA: Roosevelt got the presidents of Harvard, Yale and Princeton together, giving birth to the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States, forerunner to the NCAA.

Title IX: There are more women athletes and administrators than ever before.

The BCS: Ten years of tweaks haven’t stemmed the complaints.

March Madness: A major hit since its 1939 debut.

The Death Penalty: The 1951 point-shaving scandal led to the first NCAA rules committee and the cancellation of Kentucky’s 1952-53 basketball season.

The championship: The NCAA’s first national title went to Illinois in 1921, for track and field.

The forward pass: Instituted with the first set of IAAUS football rules in 1906.

Overtime football: This 1996 rule change helped LSU win the 2008 title.

Divisions: D-I, D-II and D-III were created in 1973.

The first game: The inaugural Harvard-Yale Regatta in 1852 (won by Harvard).

Trojans coach Pete Carroll is probably working on his tan during the offseason. NOT.

Sharper college football handicappers are well aware how much work there is to do after the national championship has been decided. The media saturation isn’t quite as thick as it is during the NFL offseason, but the wires are still humming with news about draft eligibility, spring practices and the unstoppable coaching carousel.

Let’s take the USC Trojans as an example of how to do things right. They lose quality players to the NFL every spring, because Pete Carroll keeps bringing quality players to campus. This year’s exodus includes seven men taken in the first two rounds, led by defensive tackle Sedrick Ellis to New Orleans at No. 7.

Carroll’s stud-filled 2008 recruiting class to the rescue. Parade All-American Tyron Smith leads the way at offensive tackle; he’s a gifted player coming out of Rancho Verde H.S. in California, but even at this “non-skill” position, Smith will be hitting the playbooks as hard as the tackling dummies this offseason.

Odds on the USC Trojans to win the 2009 BCS Championship? 3/1.

Coach Billy Gillispie over at the University of Kentucky is eager to secure a successful future for his basketball program. Last week the men’s basketball coach offered a scholarship to an eight-grader, and then he did it again with a ninth-grader. Despite criticism from several prominent university presidents, Gillispie says there’s no cause for alarm; he’s simply thinking ahead and trying to get a jump on other colleges who may be planning on making similar offers.

“I don’t think it will become commonplace for eighth-graders to commit to schools, but I think there are certain exceptions,” Gillispie says. “There are certain players, certain students, certain musicians where they know what they want at a very early age. But I understand there are people who see negatives as well.”

“I find the practice appalling, quite frankly,” said Brit Kirwan, chancellor of the University of Maryland system and co-chair of the Knight Commission, which urges reform in college athletics. “I certainly hope the NCAA will step in and put a stop to it. I certainly will voice my objection to (NCAA President) Myles Brand and others at the NCAA.”

Steve Mallonee, the NCAA director of membership services for Division I and a liaison to the Division I Basketball Issues Committee, says there isn’t anything legislatively wrong with what Gillispie is doing, but adds the issue will be on the agenda at the next meeting of the issues committee in June.

(As an aside, Kentucky is listed at 35/1 odds to win the 2009 NCAA Mens Basketball Championship.)

It’s May, which means it’s time for what has become an annual tradition: naming the USC Trojans the favorites to win college football’s national championship. They’re 3-1 on the futures market, clear of four powerful teams tied with 6-1 odds. The Florida Gators may be the best of the foursome with returning Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow at quarterback. Georgia, Ohio State and Oklahoma will all agree to disagree about playing second fiddle to Florida or USC.

The Trojans get the nod after finishing in the top four in the polls every year since 2002, as Pete Carroll’s program continually cranks out NFL-quality talent. But 3-1 might be overdoing the expectations a bit. The Buckeyes are at least as qualified as USC to be national champions at twice the payout. These two teams will meet on Sept. 13 at the L.A. Coliseum with the winner en route to an undefeated 2008 campaign.