Written by Rich Swerbinsky

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It's finally here! College football season starts this Thursday. And with it, so does the Swerb's Blurbs College Football Click Em & Pick Em Challenge. Inside, we've announced the $300 prize package that our winner will walk away with. It costs nothing to enter, just log on each week and make your selections. All the details are inside.

It's finally here.  College football season.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge NFL fan.  But to me, there's nothing quite like a college football Saturday in the fall.  Maybe it has something to do with still having another day off work (and a full NFL slate) to follow before having to rejoin the daily grind of the Monday through Friday work week.  Maybe it's the tradition, the pageantry, the sound of the Buckeye battle cry as they charge onto the field ... and the goosebumps that illicits.  Whatever it is, I love it.  For the next four to five months, every weekend morning I'll be waking up to the thought of football on the television, and that makes me a happy camper.

I have a routine.  Wake up early.  Fire up the coffeepot.  Rifle through the sports page.  Find some type of pregame show on one of the cable sports channels to lead me into ESPN Gameday.  Spend a couple hours online researching the games, setting my college fantasy football team lineup, making all my picks for the day, and lastly ... jotting down a TV schedule for the day that will help me navigate my way through twelve hours of college ball ... with as many as twenty games on the tube when you factor in my enhanced cable sports TV package.

Making the start of the NCAA Football season even more exciting for me this year is the launching of my NCAA Football Click Em & Pick Em contest this year.

Absolutely free to enter.  And with a pretty nice prize package ...

~$100 cash
~$75 gift certificate to Ohio Connect
~A one hour massage gift certificate from the Buckeye Chiropractic Clinic ($65 value)
~A Swerb's Blurbs t-shirt or coffee mug from our online store

All told, it's almost a $300 prize package.  And no strings attached.  Ohio Connect is the company that built this website, and they do incredible, efficient, and affordable work.  I cannot reccommend them highly enough to any of you out there that may need to construct a website for your business, or for any other need.  The massage was donated by Chris Stankus, a friend out at the Buckeye Clinic.  Either gift certificate can be used as a gift for a friend, family memeber, or loved one if you are not in need of a website or a massage.

Just log on each week and make your picks.  It's that simple.  You have until five minutes before the start of each game.  For week one, we have 20 games listed.  Going forward, it will be the top 15 games each week.  Just pick the winners, without pointspreads.

In this age of nothing good ever being for free without some kind of catch, I feel the need to keep repeating myself on the Pick Em module we built, and the contests we will be running on it.  There truly is no catch.  It is simply an enhancement I've wanted to add to the site for some time, that will hopefully help add visitors.  All of our contests will be free to enter, with substantial prize packages for which I will come out of pocket for, and work with sponsors to help supplement and add to them.

The rules are simple, just pick the winners!  However, to avoid someone starting out 13-2 and then not picking the rest of the year, some ground rules for the contest are necessary.  The winner must pick 75% of the total games at years end, and must pick every game during the final three weeks of the season to be eligible for the grand prize.  The winner, and prize recipient will be the entrant that has the highest winning percentage, while also meeting the aforementioned criteria.

We will also be having a contest for the NFL season, which starts one week from this Thursday.  We're still finalizing the prize package for that contest, and all the final details will be released by next Monday.  In addition, we will also be hosting a contest for the MLB Playoffs, which begin in early October.  We've also been posting all the American League regular season baseball games for the last couple weeks to help people get acclimated with the Pick Em module, which is pretty slick.

There's three Thursday games included in the opening week contests we have to choose from, so sign up now!  Also, if you already signed up and made your picks, check back again, as I added a couple of games this morning to get us to a total of 20 games for the opening week.  Again, going forward, with 70-80 Division I college football games a week ... we will just have the 15 best matchups per week listed.

Here's the games we have up this week.  Several intriguing matchups for what should be an exciting opening week!

Thursday, August 31st

Boston College at Central Michigan (6 PM, ESPN2)
South Carolina at Mississippi State (8 PM ESPN)
Northwestern at Miami Ohio 

Friday, September 1st

Nevada at Fresno State (8 PM, ESPN)

Saturday, September 2nd

Vanderbilt at #14 Michigan (12 PM, ESPN)
Northern Illinois at #1 Ohio State (3:30 PM, ABC)
Marshall at #5 West Virginia
Stanford at #21 Oregon (3:30 PM, ABC)
#9 California at #23 Tennessee (5:30 PM, ESPN)
Southern Miss at #7 Florida
Wisconsin vs Bowling Green at Cleveland Browns Stadium
Alabama Birmingham at #10 Oklahoma
Virginia at Pittsburgh
Utah at UCLA
Washington State at #4 Auburn (7:45, ESPN2)
#2 Notre Dame at Georgia Tech (8 PM, ABC)
#6 USC at Arkansas (8:45 PM, ESPN)

Sunday, September 3rd

Memphis at Ole Miss (4:30 PM, ESPN)
Kentucky at Louisville (8 PM, ESPN)

Monday, September 4th

#11 Florida State at #12 Miami of Florida (8 PM, ESPN)