Know before you go; more Designated Reads

And we’re back! Items of interest you may have missed whilst holidaying:

• Start ‘em early. The Palm Beach Post‘s Jason Lieser works to instill a proper reverence for prep work in our nation’s youth:

We made some flashcards to teach our 1-year-old about our upcoming trip to the Sugar Bowl. twitter.com/PBPjasonlieser…

— Jason Lieser (@PBPjasonlieser) December 24, 2012

• Roster blotter. And now, a whole bunch of players who are being held out of bowl games for assorted reasons: Stanford’s Terrence Stephens (secondary NCAA violation), Oregon’s Nick Cody and Axel McQuaw (academics), Minnesota’s Andre McDonald (the ever-popular-and-mysterious Violation Of Team Rules), Texas Tech’s Cornelius Douglas, Chris Payne and Leon Mackey (VOTR), UCLA’s Tevin McDonald (VOTR), Syracuse’s Adonis Ameen-Moore and Max Beaulieu (VOTR) and Marquis Spruill and Steven Rene (partial suspensions only) … Illinois’ Akeem Spence has declared for the draft …  Duron Carter has dropped out of FAU … Cody Vaz will start at quarterback in the Alamo Bowl … Oklahoma’s Stacy McGee was arrested Monday.

• Coach-hirin’ follies. Still no official confirmation on whatever’s going to happen at FIU, currently the only coaching vacancy in FBS ball, but another new coordinator for 2013 is locked in: Dave Aranda will follow Gary Andersen to Wisconsin.

• Condolences. Please keep Arizona State’s Marion Grice and his family in your thoughts. The Sun Devils will be dedicating their bowl game to the memory of Grice’s brother, who was shot and killed in Houston last week.

• Tweets of the day. More strong performance from our favorite postseason Twitter feed:

Special props to the dude digging in the $4.99 DVD bin. That’s the West Coast offense of Best Buy gift card strategies.

— RussellAthleticBowl (@RussellAthBowl) December 24, 2012

Seven players in the home appliance section right now. That’s a credit to Coach Beamer: focus on fundamentals all day, every day. — RussellAthleticBowl (@RussellAthBowl) December 24, 2012

• Misc. How Navy’s Brye French staged a marriage proposal at the Army-Navy game … Miami’s new anti-agent policy is a stingy one … “College football has a menacing half-friend, half-foe and it lives in the office of new Clemson athletic director Dan Radakovich” … and TNIAAM asks the tough questions; namely, “What Terrible Bowl Game Are Notre Dame & USC Playing In Die Hard?”