Ali Maki brings you his picks for the coming college football season. See if your team is in the hunt with this in-depth commentary.

Sports have the ability to move figurative mountains. Its effect extends to more than just the sphere of family life; it has the power to connect a nation under one banner. The best examples take place every four years.

The problem lies in the fact that agents are not willing to take on entire rosters of programs, rather they are only interested in the elite athletes who are slated to be first round picks. Yet these comprise only a small percentage of college rosters, with no more than four to five at major powers such as USC, Texas and Alabama. It is the responsibility of coaches around the country to put in extra effort to look after their elite players so that shady happenings with agents cannot occur.

it's always been fun to make predictions of how things will turn out and then come back later on to see how many turned out to be true. When it comes to March Madness or World Cup brackets, my picks are usually disastrous – but I usually have better luck with the NFL.

Fans have a tendency to be completely turned off by a sport when work stoppages occur. A recent example is the NHL. The NHL was in such a bad position after their lockout that even ESPN wouldn't broadcast it.

All along we had the suspicion that he would be joining Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami, but Lebron keep doing things to distract us from that conclusion and keep the spotlight on him as long as humanly possible.

Many players are expecting that the 2011-2012 season may be shortened if not completely lost. The NBA has been down this road nearly twelve years ago in which the season was shortened to fifty games, and it took nearly five years for the NBA to recover financially.

Recently we are starting to see a trend of coaches bolting programs that are to be sanctioned by the NCAA for violations. Problem is, the programs are being punished, not the coaches.

With the Big Ten's plans for expansion, it forced other conferences to look into expanding for financial reasons. Expanding meant tapping into bigger media markets, which in return means bigger bucks for conferences.

Not only do the Lakers currently have the best player in the world, they also have home court advantage. This series is so evenly matched up that if the Celtics had home court advantage, they would probably win the series.