The sounds of marching bands and shouts from cheerleaders are becoming louder and louder as the college football season winds down. Soon bowl bids will be out, everyone and their brother will be arguing about the validity of the BCS ranking system and half the country will be rooting for whoever plays Notre Dame.

The "quiet guy" at the game.

It's an exciting time of year for college football fans — ourselves included. Each pass, every run sends fans into adrenaline-induced comas (or back for another beer in the cooler). This week ECommerce Guide celebrates pigskin pandemonium on college campuses across the nation and we find some fan favorite items on — where else — eBay!

For those of you who are too scrawny to try out for the team, what's the next best thing? Owning your suitemates in a video game, of course! That's easy this time of year when you're laying the smack down on Dirk from across the quad while playing NCAA Football 2005 on your Playstation 2.

"Experience realistic stadium atmospheres where you can pump up the crowd to build up your home field advantage; track the crowds impact and see if your players have enough composure to withstand the pressure; build your teams stadium atmosphere to rank among the elite stadiums in the country; celebrate in style with team-specific fan celebrations; the enhanced dynasty mode allows you to monitor discipline levels and grades while recruiting the next superstar out of high school; choose from new custom playbooks, offensive schemes and defensive schemes," says the item description.

Translation: if you want to burn through mom and dad's tuition money really quickly, play this game all day, every day.

Representing Tri Lambs at Miami!

Painting your beer gut with your school's colors is so 1990. You can now be the cool, crazy guy who gets on TV next Saturday with this whacky football fan head mask.

"This football mask is just the right Football Fanatical Fan Accessory. It is a new Soft Vinyl Mask that fits great over any Adult head. It has large eye cutouts, a nose and a mustache; so it covers the face down to the upper lip. You've maybe seen a picture of some fan wearing something similar, but have probably had a hard time ever finding one for yourself or football fan friend. This is a very comfortable mask as it is made of very pliable soft vinyl and just comes down to the top of your upper lip so you can still eat your stadium hot dogs, popcorn, and have a beer while wearing the mask comfortably," the seller says.

Phew! What would a college game be without eight cups of beer and four greasy hot dogs?

Do nerds go to college football games? Well, apparently in Miami they do. How do we know? Well, considering this snazzy tie we found on eBay this week, we have all the evidence we need!

The seller says this about the tie: "The tie [is] sharply detailed, very attractive and colorful. The picture does not do it justice, very nice!!!"

We're going to go out on a limb and say the picture probably does this thing enough justice.

What college football experience would be complete without the beloved JoePa? You know, coach Joe Paterno, guru of Penn State football? Well, since you might be nursing a hangover on Sunday after a day or two of tailgating, we figure a strong, hot cup of Joe will perk you right up. No, really. A Cup of Joe. Get it?

Have a cup of Joe...Pa.

Finally, no college football game experience can be without the marching band. If you happen to be stuck home with the dog watching the game on TV, sulking you aren't screaming your school song in the parking lot at the stadium with 10,000 other drunk fans, we found something that may offer some solace: 41 Great College Victory Songs performed by the University of Michigan Marching Band. (Kind of a sad irony this year ain't it, Wolverine fans?)

This two-CD set includes fight songs from all the top colleges in the nation from Harvard to Ohio State to Iowa and USC. For only $20, bring some cheer back in your life!

In eBay News This Week
eBay has jumped on the RSS bandwagon this week and finally added RSS feeds to its Stores. According to Arturo Zacarias, Senior Product Manager, Platform and New Technologies, "eBay Stores sellers are now able to set up a 'feed' that will send out a regularly updated summary of the most recently-listed items in their Store to people who subscribe to it. This can be a great way for your customers to keep informed about your new listings."

eBay is also adding a treasure trove of information for buyers and sellers with its new Marketplace Research Overview.

Fight, team! Fight!

"Marketplace Research enables buyers and sellers to gather critical intelligence on buying and selling trends in the eBay marketplace. View and analyze top searches, average start prices, average sold prices and much more. This easy-to-use product makes getting to the data you need quick and efficient," says eBay.

Among the features are: the ability to analyze key information like the average sale prices, average start prices, and average Buy It Now prices of items; the ability to explore the top keyword searches on eBay by category and by related keywords; charts to help you see buying and selling trends in the eBay marketplace; and access to completed items data going back up to 90 days.

eBay Marketplace Research is a subscription-based service, offered in three levels -- Fast Pass, Basic, and Pro, says the company. This looks exactly like the service TeraPeak has provided for quite some time. Nothing like nudging a solutions partner out of business, eh?

Devin Comiskey is the Managing Editor of Ecommerce-Guide.com. WE ARE…PENN STATE!!