By JOHN TUCKER, New Hampshire Union Leader

Whether playing it back over a single weekend or an entire season, deja vu rules college football like the house rules Vegas.

Flash back to Week 8, 2007, when some real unusual suspects occupied lofty spots in the Top 10 of that season's first BCS standings: South Florida, South Carolina, Kentucky and Arizona State, at Nos. 2, 6, 7 and 8 respectively.

By now, Ohio State fans must be wishing they had a football coach with some panache.

Maybe not quite as much as Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis, but at least enough to go for a touchdown on fourth-and-goal from the one-yard line, with the game tied at 7. When 100,000 screaming Buckeye fans have your back, it doesn't take a heck of a lot of courage. Just a bit of spirited confidence.

Could the Urban Irony of another BCS-mired college football season be a precursor to the Barack Playoff System?
With President-elect Obama still beating the drum for an eight-team national championship playoff even after Thursday's Bowl Championship Series title game ...

BCS snake oil salesmen have seen their stock plummet to an all-time low in the wake of yet another Bowl Championship Sham.
That's what happens when you peddle poisonous propaganda that sickens a nation of college football fans.

Isn't it a shame the mighty Trojans of Southern Cal have to play Rose Bowl bully again and beat up another Big 10 weakling?
They must be feeling like Muhammad Ali did back in 1972, when he got into the ring with Jerry Quarry a second time.

Anybody who thinks the BCS title game between Florida and Oklahoma is the only bowl that really matters is sorely mistaken.
OK, so the winner of college football's "national championship" Jan. 8 in Miami gets to take home a beautiful crystal football, and the notion it's the best team in the land. It's just that, a notion -- nothing more

It's not hard to make a case for Oklahoma deserving a spot in the Big 12 championship game. It's just easier to make one for Texas -- about as easy as it is for the BCS to mess things up.

Notre Dame's football power brokers must be doing an awful lot of soul searching these days. Sometimes arrogance and omnipotence, unchecked, come at a sinful price.
In Notre Dame's case, $40 million -- for a football savior? Charlie Weis has spearheaded the most embarrassing, demoralizing two-year campaign (9-14) in Irish history.

From college football's observation tower, the national title picture is coming into focus.No. 1 Alabama and No. 2 Texas Tech control their destinies. Yet plenty of pundits believe neither of the unbeatens will play for it, much less win it.