Is the most important game of the college football season about to take place in early November? Under the current BCS format, that’s very likely the case. How could the NCAA approach the season differently? Would a playoff format keep early matchups like this one from upstaging the season finale in January?

It wasn’t long ago when Turner Gill was one of the most talked about coaching names in college football. Coming off a series of impressive years with the University at Buffalo, Gill had seemingly established himself as one of the game’s hottest commodities. Just three years later, however, the coach’s stock is anything but hot.

Virtually every single aspect of the world has changed since the 1960s, but throughout Vietnam, Watergate, the Iranian revolution, the fall of the Soviet Union, the first and second Gulf Wars, and the death of Osama bin Laden, there has been one immutable constant in sports: Joe Paterno and the Penn State Nittany Lions.

The Oklahoma State Cowboys haven’t always been top-level contenders in college football, but there’s no denying their emergence as a BCS threat in recent years. Much of OSU’s new-found success can be credited to the generous contributions of megabooster T. Boone Pickens. TheGP Football explores Pickens’ role with the program and how such relationships may impact the NCAA.

The Buffalo Bills have been here before; as recently as 2008 they managed to start an NFL campaign with a 4-1 record, backed by the solid play of overachieving running backs and a quarterback who wasn’t exactly internationally known. We all know how that ended. This time around, with Ryan Fitzpatrick leading the charge, can we expect something different?

The quarterback situation with the Denver Broncos this season has been discussed ad nauseum, and it will continue to dominate the headlines for as long as there remains a debate over who should fill the starter’s role. The most recent shift – away from Kyle Orton and towards Tim Tebow – has one of football’s most anticipated projects at the center of it.

Andrew Luck has seen no shortage of attention – what with being the projected top pick in the 2012 NFL Draft and all – but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t been faced with the same questions and challenges the rest of his Stanford Cardinal team faces with regards to their success on the field. Is it possible for a college to balance both academic and athletic achievement for any legitimate period of time?

Robert Griffin III is one of the most dominant players in college football, yet his chances of legitimately contending for one of the NCAA’s top honors – the Heisman Trophy – are next to none. What is it that appears to have thrown Griffin off track? We’ll give you one hint, it’s through no fault of his own.

Whether you love him or hate him, Al Davis stands out among our generation of football fans for his tenure as the owner the Oakland Raiders. Somehow forgotten amid the 45 years he spent with his organization, he also managed to drastically impact the NFL we watch today. TheGP Football breaks down his role with both the American Football League and, specifically, the NFL-AFL merger.

The Big Ten is a conference of tradition, a timeless source of the magic we have come to associate with good old American college football. While those around them realign and readjust, the inaccurately-named conference has stood pat since welcoming Nebraska in 2010, opting instead to focus on the charms that have long made it a national classic.