This week's college football picks: Big Ten showdown in 'The Horseshoe'

"The minute you think you've got it made, disaster is just around the corner." -- Joe Paterno.

The 81-year-old living legend has the Nittany Lions playing at an extremely high level and facing Ohio State in the game of the day.

The winner is in the driver's seat toward the Big Ten title and an automatic place in a Bowl Championship Series game.

The loser likely loses out on a BCS bowl bid.

The stakes are high, and so is the hype. As our friends at CollegeFootballNews.com write, "the world revolves around Penn State and Ohio State, and for the BCS and the national title chase, this will be a key piece of the puzzle."

Ohio State has dominated this series of late -- winning five of the last six showdowns -- and with this game being played in the "old horseshoe," it's hard to imagine that trend changing, regardless of Penn State's start this season.

Let's get on with it and pick some college football winners ...

No. 1 Texas over No. 7 Oklahoma State
No. 2 Wisconsin-Whitewater over Wisconsin-Stevens Point
No. 9 Georgia over No. 11 LSU
No. 10 Ohio State over No. 3 Penn State
No. 19 Kansas over No. 8 Texas Tech

Upset pick of the week: Arizona over No. 6 USC. The Trojans opened at No. 5 in the first BCS standings, and could very easily be playing in the national title game as a one-loss team by default because the competition in the Pac-10 is so weak and teams from much stronger conferences -- Big 12, SEC -- face much tougher competition, thus opening those teams up more for defeat. Arizona poses as one of the most serious threats to that goal for Troy, and we're rooting for them to pull off that upset simply because a Pac-10 team doesn't deserve to be playing for the national title.

And our totally random college football pick of the week: When in doubt, go see who the Colorado School of Mines -- one of our favorite small-college teams -- has this weekend, and they have a doozy against Chadron State. We have the host -- Chadron State -- sitting at 6-0 in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference and the Orediggers sitting at 5-1 in the RMAC. Still, for sentimental reasons, we have to go with the Colorado School of Mines in a slight upset.

Last week's record: 5-2
Overall record: 40-17