Despite being a bit down in the chips a month ago, Todd has kept a blistering pace over the past month and pulled to within a paltry 12 films of actually watching a thousand movies in a year.

Stop by 1000 Movies and urge him on. Go Todd Go!

Name: The Insight Bowl

Motto: “College Football Like You’ve Never Seen It!” Despite the unnecessary exclamation mark, they’re right on this one–we’ve never seen Rutgers play in a bowl game before, so touche’, Insightsters.

Intrusive Corporate Sponsor: Insight Enterprises, who dropped the “.com” from their name when the bubble went ploof! and having the suffix instantly decreased your company’s share value by half. The resulting, .com-less bowl name is among college football’s most reflective and philosophical-sounding; watch as blissed-out audience members stroke their beards and thoughtfully pat their body-painted chests after each score tonight.

Tradition rating: Going just one year further than today’s other bowl game, the Insight Bowl roared into the world in 1989 under the moniker of “The Copper Bowl” before adopting its more modern-sounding corporate name. (The move from bowls named after commodities to ones bearing corporate names has to have a anthro-economical thesis waiting somewhere in there, right?) 1989 was memorable for a number of reasons, but none sticks in our brains more so than watching the news on Chrismas Day and seeing Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu shot live on television along with his wife. It taught us two valuable lessons: one, if you’re an asshole, people will go as far as killing you live on tv; and two, don’t ever piss off a Romanian.

Tradition rating: Dead Ceausescu.

Setup: Pac-10 vs. Big East

Location: Tempe, Arizona. An underrated college town with easy access to bars. We once crowd-surfed at a reggae show there before being dumped at the feet of a Gigantor-sized biker there, who promptly threw us back up onto the crowd without so much as a grunt of effort. You may be saying: crowd surfing at a reggae show? See, there’s plenty of fun to be had in Tempe.

Matchup quality: 2 Wyckked. The e’er mercurial Arizona State Sun Devils don’t even leave home to face the amped-up Rutgers Scarlet Knights, playing in their first bowl game since the Garden State Bowl in 1978. ASU’s a letdown team with better talent going up against a Rutgers squad that couldn’t be more frickin’ excited about being here, man. Frickin’ awesome.

What to watch for: ASU tossing it all over the place on their home field, loads of hardass running by Rutgers, and playing “Pro/Con” when the cameras pan the stands and the jarring contrasts between the pillow-pale Jersey girls and the bronzed, already weathered looking ladies of the desert. We think the CFN boyz are off their nutter for calling a Rutgers victory, so ASU by 10 in a game that’s closer than it should be.

BOWL PREVIEWS: EXPRESS-O EDITION! Shit, there’s one starting at five o’clock, so let’s roll this fast. Today’s slate starts to get into the good stuff–at least matchup wise–with this pre-New Year’s games picking up a little more in the way of wattage and notoriety. We say this despite the fact that the most entertaining game we’ve watched yet was the Sheraton Hawaii Bowl, a nail-biting shootout that ended with a cruel missed PAT downing UCF and Coach of the Year George O’Leary 49-48 to Nevada. And they had many gratuitous shots of hot ass walking down Waikiki, which should be a priority for every bowl broadcast: more hot ass. Basta! Mush, dogs, mush!

Name: Champs Sports Bowl
Motto: “Something’s Got To Give!” Sorry, just kidding there. the Champs Sports bowl has no motto. Well, it did, but Gary Barnett put it in a foot locker along with thirty five grand in unmarked bills and “put it away for safe keeping” in the CU locker room.

Intrusive Corporate Sponsor: Champs Sports, where the nation goes to try on shoes they will later buy off the internet for half-price.

Tradition rating: The Champs Sports Bowl boasts a long history extending all the way back to 1990, when the n00b bowl somehow nabbed Florida State and Penn State for their inaugural matchup. We remember it most for Bell Biv Devoe’s “Poison,” which taught our young souls that we should never trust a big butt and a smile. (Oh, but we did, boys, we did. Would that we had listened! Shakes angry fist at sky) Therefore, we give the Champs Sports Bowl a rating of “Bell Biv Devoe.”

Tradition rating: me and the crue used to do her.

Setup: Big 12 vs. ACC

Location: Orlando, which could be a fun place, we guess, if you didn’t mind strollers hitting you in the Achilles’ tendon every three seconds. (We actually wouldn’t be surprised to see that in the IR on gameday. “C. Stuckey, achilles bruise, doubtful.) To be fair, in addition to the well-worn Disney/Universal circuit of tomfoolery (anyone willing to place wagers on one of Colorado’s players re-enacting Bobby Brown’s masterwork of getting arrested at Discovery Pleasure Island, Disney’s “adult entertainment center”?) Orlando’s got loads of bars and cheap hotels set up to keep even the most sun-poisoned vacationer reaching happily for the funnel. The downtown district in particular could leave significant wiggle room for subtle recruiting violations, so keep an eye on the Buffs boosters stuffing Benjamins into the garnishes of bucket-sized Mai-Tais belonging to suspiciously naive-looking young men.

Matchup quality: Poor like Laos. Poor like cracker sandwiches. Brokeass eating sawdust poor. Walker Evans is taking pictures of you poor. Poor. One team finished relatively strong with a victory over its bitter archrival and a bareass humiliation of Florida State. The other lost its last three games by a score of 8370-3, including a loss by three thousand points to Texas in the Big 12 Championship game. (All scores are approximate-ed.) Your head coach is gone, you’ve gotten your ass kicked, and someone just gave you a new Ipod and packed you off to…Orlando, Florida? We quote a more knowledgeable source on performing at all under these conditions:

Former LB Channing Crowder on the 2004 Outback Bowl: “They (Iowa) were playing like they weren’t partying all week. They wanted to prove a point and we were like, ‘Well, forget it. Our season is already a mess.’”

Colorado’s season is mess as mess gets. Clemson will hammer them.

Matchup quality: “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men” poor.

What to watch for: One or two jackass trick plays Tommie Bowden will pull in the bowl game. That’s a technical term, by the way, coined when we watched the Peach Bowl a few years ago as Clemson actually ran the “fumblerooskie” on Tennessee for a TD and watched the words “jackass” cross Phil Fulmer’s lips in response. He’s got some good ones, and with an eye for the theatrical should call them appropriately. Also watch as a hell-for-leather tough Joel Klatt suffers with dignity through an unjustly miserable finale to his career at Colorado.

Texas has been given the unenviable task of finding someone to play Reggie Bush on the scout team; fortunately for him, EDSBS is presenting him with our belated Christmas gift of three nominees to help Mack Brown and the boys find just the right sim to play the ungodly fast USC back in practice.

1. Bones Jackson, Mutant League RB. When we saw Reggie for the first time, squirting free on a slant pass out of the slot and blowing through the flailing defense, we instantly thought of the Mutant League’s finest all-purpose threat, the intimitable Bones Jackson. Jackson shared Bush’s speed but also had something Bush doesn’t–an ability to literally slice through defenses, often causing unsightly forfeits in the middle of the third quarter due to mounting casualties. Coach Ace Bricka said he was the finest man to ever run Nasty Audible C, the trademark play of Mutant League Football, and opponents say that they often leapt into pits of open flame or tossed themselves on landmines rather than attempt a tackle on the intimidating back. Pros: Jackson never suffers muscle tears because he doesn’t have any. Cons: may actually dismember important members of your starting eleven in practice.

Bones Jackson: may cause dismemberment.

2. Nightcrawler. The original now you see him, now you don’t threat, Wagner gave ample evidence of his athletic skills playing on the German national team in the ‘66 World Cup before suffering a career ending concussion when George Best clocked him in the head with a bottle of Jameson’s in their epic showdown with England. Pros: Teleporting abilities best approximate Bush’s darting, dodging style, and give defenders a good understanding of what it’s like to try and tackle a mutant. Sulfurous gases left over from multiple teleports may also give defenders a feel for one of Matt Leinart’s less celebrated intangibles. Cons: Teutonic mood swings may result in a sullen scout back tossing the ball away and sulking off the field while digging in his pocket for his dogeared copy of The Sorrows of Young Werther.

BAMF!!! Nightcrawler would give Texas the right idea.

3. The Ghost of Ol’ Dirty Bastard. Unrivalled in terms of sheer elusiveness and the best the spirit world could offer in comparison to the flesh and bones specter of Reggie Bush, Old Dirty’s best resume for being the scout back for Bush came in 2000, when the already peripatetic father of 13 (verified) began a month-long end-run around the law. This excerpt from AllMusic’s bio samples the pinnacle of ODB’s escapability:

ODB turned up in a very public fashion at the November record-release party for the new Wu-Tang Clan album, The W (which had been dedicated to him, and featured his vocals on one track, “Conditioner”; other contributions had been deemed too bizarre for release). He took the stage in the Hammerstein Ballroom in front of hundreds of incredulous, wildly cheering fans, and only added to his mystique by managing to leave the facility without getting arrested, despite the large police presence outside.

That’s Reggie-Bush-elusive right there! (Read the whole bio in order to understand the vast reserves of “Ain’tgivafuck” ODB really had inside him. Did you know he was kicked out of a hotel in Germany for sunbathing nude on his balcony? Now you do. You’re welcome, by the way. )

Pros: proven track record of being elusive in tight situations.

Cons: dead.

Elusive, and unfortunately, dead.

We make no judgment on the veracity, but for those who want to judge the x rated shots themselves which look alot like a naked Lauren Bowden click here.