ESPN College Football

Posted by ESPN.com's Tim Griffin

Happy New Year to everyone. There are five games today. It's not nearly as many as in the golden era of college football's past, but still enough to keep you occupied.

Have an extra bowl of black-eyed peas for your lunch and add these links for your nourishment to get ready for a new year.

• Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione tells Joseph De Avila of the Wall Street Journal that he doesn't think that college football is recession-proof.
• The Des Moines Register reports that athletic director Jamie Pollard and three Iowa State coaches -- football coach Paul Rhoads, men's basketball coach Greg McDermott and women's basketball coach Bill Fennelly -- will take one-week furloughs to help the university save money. The action will result in about $50,000 in savings.
• Ohio State has contacted former Oklahoma State defensive coordinator Tim Beckman for tips on defending Texas' passing attack. The Cleveland Plain-Dealer's Doug Lesmerises writes that Beckman, a former Buckeye staff member now the head coach at Toledo, had the best success in the Big 12 against the Longhorns this season.
• Tulsa World columnist John Klein writes that Oklahoma State has not arrived as a big-time football power, but is clearly making progress on getting there. And the Oklahoman's Scott Wright said two huge decisions will impact the Cowboys in the next several weeks -- whether offensive lineman Russell Okung declares for the draft and who Mike Gundy chooses as his next defensive coordinator.
• Don Williams of the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal writes of Friday's bittersweet AT&T Cotton Bowl between Texas Tech and Mississippi -- a game that will smash all of the bowl game's attendance records but will be the last to be played at the historic venue in Fair Park in Dallas.
• Chuck Carlton of the Dallas Morning News details the five steps that sent Texas crashing from the BCS National Championship Game to the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl.