Somebody's Getting Left Out:

There are 79 bowl eligible teams and 78 bowl slots available.  Next week it's likely another couple teams will make bowl eligibility as well, including Florida State.  This means some deserving teams are going to have to sit out the postseason.  But which?

Bowl Tie-in contracts mean that each conference is mandated to have a certain quota, so even though it seems sensible to kick out a Conference USA team and put in a Big 12 team instead, that's not possible because the bowls agreed to invite Conference USA teams so long as they were bowl eligible.

The conference with a noticeable lack of contracted bowl tie-ins is the MAC, with only 4.  The MAC has 7 bowl eligible teams.  So my prediction is 3 MAC teams will be left on the cutting floor, to make room for the likes of big name programs like Texas Tech and Florida State.

The three worst MAC qualifiers are Buffalo, Western Michigan, and Ohio (Akron, as the division winner, is guaranteed a bowl slot.)  So despite these teams' heroic efforts, they're not going to be rewarded this time around.

It's too bad for these teams, but what it does mean is bowl season will feature an unusually good slate of games, as everyone will have respectable records coming in to the games and the Power 5 conferences with higher strength of schedules will be well represented.

Meanwhile, Alabama might be on the outside looking in, when it comes to the College Football Playoff.  The Auburn/Georgia winner is in.  The Wisconsin/Ohio State winner is in.  The Clemson/Miami winner is in.  And if Oklahoma wins it's in.  So the only possible scenario for Alabama to get in is if TCU beats Oklahoma.  And even then an argument can be made for TCU, USC or somebody else ahead of Alabama.  Conference Championships are heavily weighted in the selection process and Alabama won't have one, unlike everyone else involved.  It's simply a devastating loss.

Meanwhile, Bjork's newest album, Utopia, didn't have any good songs.  There's no point even investigating her releases anymore, she hasn't made anything worthwhile in ages, just like Tori Amos.

Meanwhile, To Love ru's ova has been subtitled, which ups 2017's year in anime to 33 great franchises with new or additional content.  I made an eerily prescient prediction on January 3rd:

http://diamed-the-road-less-traveled.blogspot.com/2017/01/nine-of-top-ten-greatest-anime-will.html

"2016 ended up with 43 different great franchises with something new to celebrate over, of which only 11 had never appeared on my chronology list before.  We're looking at something similar for 2017, though probably smaller overall.  So instead of 11 new series in 2017, we can expect 6.  And instead of 32 old works in 2016, we can only expect 30 in 2017.  Still, that's a very large list, that's very heavily leaning on the past."

I predicted only six new great franchises entering the rankings, and lo and behold, only 6 did appear (Youjo Senki, BanG Dream, Eromanga Sensei, Suka Suka, Kemono Friends and Princess Principal).  I predicted 30 old franchises to show up and so far 27 have, with the possibility of Yama no Susume and No Game No Life getting translated in the next month, which would make my prediction off by just one entry.  That's just crazy accurate forecasting.

Marvel's Runaways isn't terrible so far, but I can't say it's very impressive either.  The CW Crossover event starts this week so for once Supergirl and Flash will also be worth watching.  Punisher underperformed expectations, but at least it was worth watching.

Rurouni Kenshin's author, who had just recently resumed the series, one of the most popular manga and anime of all time, is under arrest for looking at softcore child porn (pictures of young naked girls not doing anything untoward).  In our crusade to protect children we're now wasting the talents of our best and brightest men.  You can sell 80 million manga volumes and still end up in jail for a harmless hobby.  If it were me, Nobuhiro Watsuki could burn down an entire village, raping, murdering and pillaging the whole way, and I wouldn't care so long as he kept writing more Rurouni Kenshin.  Kenshin is worth more than random innocent villagers.  Villagers come and go, they're a dime a dozen, there are billions of them, but there's only one Rurouni Kenshin.  If softcore child porn is what it takes to inspire his art, then why not just leave him to it?  The hundreds of millions of people who have enjoyed Kenshin across the years more than balance out any harm he could have possibly done to random kids.  Why are we jailing people who have given us net positive utility?  Shouldn't we be rewarding him with virgin girls instead?  If that's what he wants, just give it to him.  He's damn well earned it.