Thank the heavens, football season is upon us. Saturday and Sunday afternoons will still be spent beating hangovers and dodging homework.

Now, instead of waking up to ABC’s Wide World of Sports where the blase Tour de France is the headline feature, we can watch college and pro teams duke it out.

Nothing is more relaxing than vegetating on the couch all afternoon and rooting your favorite team on.

So here are my predictions.

For college football, it will come down, as always, to the last week of the season to decide which two teams will play for the national title at the Orange Bowl.

Nebraska is the pre-season No. 1 in both the Associated Press and USA Today/ESPN Top 25 coaches poll.

But the Cornhuskers will not, and cannot, win the national championship.

It seems that half of SLU is from Omaha, and I don’t care to see the rowdy Nebraskans gloat!

They gather around the TV in the Griesedieck lobby each Saturday in their Nebraska jerseys and have shrines to the legendary Coach Tom Osborne in their rooms.

The Nebraska football program produces more Creatine than their state produces corn.

They bask in the fruits of victory and have fits of rage in defeat. On September 9, in South Bend, nothing would be greater than for Notre Dame, with Touchdown Jesus at its back, to pull off a huge upset and ruin Nebraska’s title hopes.

Florida State looks tough as usual. Boosters have been told to pay the players more this season, so team members won’t have to shoplift at Dillard’s and risk being suspended or getting kicked off the team like the two idiots last year. If they can get by Florida the last week of the season, I still look for them in the Orange Bowl.

Alabama should have a strong team. Most of their starters return, but they still have to get through a tough Southeastern Conference Schedule.

Wisconsin and Michigan have two very strong squads, but the Big Ten is the toughest conference in the land. As many as nine Big Ten teams have the potential to go to bowl games this year.

So right now, I have the national championship game as Florida State versus anyone but Nebraska.

The St. Louis Rams will not repeat as Super Bowl champions. In fact, they won’t even make it to the National Football Conference title game.

So who will win Super Bowl XXXV? My sentimental favorite, the Green Bay Packers, simply don’t have the talent. Their defense looks about as sketchy as Bill and Hillary sharing the same bed.

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers don’t have a proven quarterback, neither does Minnesota. Plus, I despise the Vikings even more than Nebraska. Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder has bought a Super Bowl title with lavish off-season spending.

With rookie studs LaVar Arrington and Chris Samuels joining free agent additions Deion Sanders, Bruce Smith and Jeff George, the Redskins have the most talented roster on paper in all of football. If they can live up to their expectations, they should win it all.

So at last, fall football is here. Whether its college or the NFL, weekends for us sports fans will never be dull. Cheers to an exciting fall and a college title game without Nebraska!