Today it is Rice’s turn to try and catch Cody Getz. Have fun with that. (AP)

The 2012 Armed Forces Bowl is just hours away. We’re sure you have so many questions. We’re here to help. (For an X’s and O’s breakdown, click through to R.J. Rico’s game preview.)

• What’s all this, then? Not to be confused with the Military Bowl. This is the one sponsored by helicopters.

• Where will this game be played? After a two-year hiatus in SMU’s stadium, necessitated by renovations projects, the Armed Forces Bowl returns to Amon G. Carter Stadium in Fort Worth, home of the TCU Horned Frogs.

• When is it on television? Coverage begins at the unfortunate hour of 11:45 a.m., making for a 10:45 local kickoff. The game will be televised on ESPN, featuring the vocal stylings of Beth Mowins, Joey Galloway and Lewis Johnson, and streamed on WatchESPN.

• Whom does it feature? A rotating cast of tie-ins, including Conference USA, the Mountain West, Army and Navy.

• What about this year? At least one Armed Force! The Air Force Falcons (6-6) will face Rice’s 6-6 Owls. This will be the Falcons’ fourth appearance in the Armed Forces Bowl. Does Air Force enjoy a natural advantage in a bowl sponsored by giant flying machines? Not so: The Falcons are 1-2 in this game.

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Jordan Lynch, pinballer of the year. (AP)

Our weekly highlight show of lesser FBS luminaries. Non-AQs and independents, be welcome. WE HAVE MUCH TO DISCUSS.

• On teams about to move themselves outside our purview. Like we said this morning, we had no sooner finished updating our magnificent work of college football realignment art than word came down we might need to add Middle Tennessee State to it. And right as we were wrapping up this here column, Florida Atlantic joins the fray, chasing FIU to Conference USA. Consider this another plea for a dead period in conference realignment, for the sake of everyone’s collective multitasking abilities, at least until the bowls are over. What on earth else are we going to talk about in February if we get all this conference-hopping sorted out before Christmas?

And what to do with some of these teams going forward? We have a while to figure it out, obviously, but how to cover this ballooning middle class created by the sinking of the Big East? Will the Blue Raiders graduate from Profiterole-dom as Temple did last year? We’ll probably dedicate way more thought to this than we should; but, again, best to save that for the offseason when we have nothing better to do.

• Conference races drawing to a close. Where we’re at heading into that weird hybrid weekend of regular and postseason games: Kent State and Northern Illinois meet Friday night in Detroit for the MAC title game. Tulsa hosts Central Florida this Saturday for the C-USA championship. The Mountain West remains deadlocked in that wacky three-way tie between San Diego State, Fresno State and Boise State, with only the Broncos’ Saturday date with Nevada standing any chance of breaking it. The top two teams in the Sun Belt, Arkansas State and Middle Tennessee, play a final regular-season game Saturday that may as well be the conference title game. Utah State has clinched the WAC title outright with last week’s victory over Idaho. And Army and Navy will meet a week from Saturday for the right to hoist the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy, with Air Force out of the race entirely for the first time since 2005.

• Bowltyme! Stewart Mandel’s latest postseason projections can be found here, along with a freshly-updated chart listing every accepted bowl invitation. Profiteroles playing this holiday season include Nevada in the New Mexico Bowl, Utah State in the Potato, San Diego State and BYU in the Poinsettia, Louisiana in the New Orleans, SMU in the Hawaii, Air Force in the Armed Forces and Navy in the Fight Hunger.

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De’Anthony Thomas torched Oregon State for 122 rushing yards and three scores. (Jonathan Ferrey/Getty Images)

Snap Judgments from the Week 13 midday flight. For more, check out Friday’s Snaps, Saturday’s early Snaps, Saturday’s late Snaps, our recaps of Michigan-Ohio State, Florida-Florida State and Notre Dame-USC and our complete Top 25 review.

• No. 5 Oregon 48, No. 16 Oregon State 24. Despite the typically gaudy final score for the Ducks, this game was close well into the third quarter. Two De’Anthony Thomas touchdowns in just more than two minutes, separated by a Beavers fumble on a kickoff return, put the game out of reach. And Oregon being Oregon, the Ducks piled on just a bit, with Kenjon Barner and Marcus Mariota adding another pair of touchdowns around a second-down Sean Mannion interception. Turnovers completely hamstrung Oregon State this afternoon; the Beavers committed six in all, including three interceptions that killed off three of their four final drives.

While the Ducks’ most memorable defensive plays occurred in the air, their offensive attack was confined largely to the ground. Mariota completed 17-of-24 attempts for 139 yards and a touchdown and rushed for an additional 85 yards and a score. The best of these: a 42-yard touchdown run just more than two minutes into the first quarter. Ahead of him in rushing: Barner, with 221 yards and two scores on 29 carries, and Thomas, with 122 yards and three scores on 17 attempts.

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LOLZ Air Force has AIR in the name but never puts the ball in the AIR! Amirite, Connor Dietz? (AP)

A couple selections of college football-like substances are on offer this evening in prime time viewing hours. We’re sure you have so many questions. 

Florida International at Florida Atlantic

• What information do I, the discerning sports fan, require in order to consume this game? The Owls and Golden Panthers are scheduled to kick off at 8 p.m. ET in Boca Raton. The game will be televised on ESPNU and streamed on WatchESPN.

• What’s at stake here? Florida-based Sun Belt program bragging rights and little else. Both teams are out of postseason contention and occupy two of the three bottom slots in the SBC standings.

• Wasn’t Florida International supposed to be good this year? We certainly thought so! But instead of contending for top honors in a very deep Sun Belt, the Panthers have only just notched their first conference win of 2012, a 28-20 defeat of transitional South Alabama on November 3.

• Is this the stadium with the Schnellenberger statue? It absolutely is. We wait with breathless anticipation to see how it will be outfitted with a perma-puffing pipe and Santa hat for the upcoming holiday season. Schnelly Claus!

Hawaii at Air Force

• What information do I, the discerning sports fan, require in order to consume this game? The Warriors and Falcons are scheduled to kick off at 9:30 p.m. ET in Colorado Springs. The game will be televised on ESPN2 and streamed on WatchESPN.

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What glories yet await Cory Dorris and the Golden Hurricane as Conference USA play continues? (AP)

Our weekly highlight show of lesser FBS luminaries. Non-AQs and independents, be welcome.

Tis the season for car commercials with big-ass bows and conference math. We attempted to explain, in bewildering detail, how the MAC races could shake out from here in our Wednesday night MACtion preview. We are here to inform you (with some glee, as we adore late-season chaos) that the MAC has far from the most convoluted conference race situation at the moment. Very quickly, the current states of the remaining non-AQ conference races, as teams not named Navy or BYU begin to prettify themselves for postseason suitors:

• Conference USA: Two teams with perfect 6-0 league play records top the two divisions: Central Florida in the East and Tulsa in the West. After Saturday, one squad’s record will bear some blemish when the two clash in Tulsa, but don’t expect that to affect the race. The Knights have only UAB to clear after that in the regular season, and hold a head-to-head advantage over East Carolina, the only other team in the division with fewer than three conference losses. Tulsa’s championship game aspirations could still be spoiled with a loss tonight and another at SMU November 24, assuming the Mustangs (4-2 in league play) beat Rice in the meantime.

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Eyes on the prize, Colby Cameron. (AP)

Our weekly highlight show of lesser FBS luminaries. Non-AQs and independents, be welcome.

• Broncos and Bulldogs and bustin’. If you follow our pre- and midseason Crystal Ball projections, you know how hilariously bad we are at predicting which teams will land in which bowl games. But after a second loss, even Boise State’s new-money brand-name recognition won’t keep the Broncos afloat in the polls. So what does this mean for our early-season busting favorites, the Louisiana Tech Bulldogs? Quoth our designated postseason prognosticator, Stewart Mandel: “Louisiana Tech, No. 20 in the standings this week, may be that group’s lone hope, but the Bulldogs need to beat 8-2 Utah State in two weeks, climb at least four spots and hope BCS No. 16 Nebraska loses so that Tech finishes ahead of an AQ champ.” Same as it ever was when it comes to non-AQs with aspirations of crashing the party: Win big, and hope bigger. A perfect run through November won’t be easy for LaTech. Texas State should pose no problem in Week 11, but neither Utah State nor San Jose State are any kind of pushover.

Sonny Dykes, as ever, prefers to marvel at where he’s gotten this team once he gets there, and only then: “If we go and do not play well Saturday, Texas State will beat us and that will end all of the discussion. We have to worry about playing well this week, and like I said, when it is all over with, we will kind of look up and say, ‘Wow, here we are.’”

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Kansas State’s Collin Klein is no stranger to reaching the end zone against Oklahoma State. (AP)

Assorted Week 10 football contests that you get to watch and we, for the most part, do not. Enjoy?

• Games we will miss the most while participating in a wedding ceremony taking place in a state that is very far away from any of these games: In descending order: Oregon-USC (7:00 p.m. ET), Alabama-LSU (8:00) and Oklahoma State-Kansas State (8:00). Let our plight serve as a dire warning: Friends don’t let friends go to art school and go out into the world thinking it’s socially acceptable to plan November weddings.

• Team of the week that Maryland will either beat or embarrass or both with its 19th-string quarterback: Is it terribly foolish of us to like the Terps’ chances against Georgia Tech? We’ll find out at 12:30 in College Park. Maryland’s defense has been its strength this season, and Tech’s doesn’t seem particularly inclined to stop teams that do have quarterbacks, so …

• Most Americanest football contest of Week 10: Air Force and Army run the next leg of the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy race at noon.

• Saddest event we still technically have to call a football contest: Auburn and New Mexico State, with a combined record of 2-14, meet on the Plains at 12:30.

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Fresno State’s offense gets plenty of attention, but Phillip Thomas would have you know the Bulldogs are also ranked seventh nationally in pass efficiency defense. (Courtesy of Fresno State Athletics/Cary Edmondson)

Our weekly highlight show of lesser FBS luminaries. Non-AQs and independents, be welcome.

Profile in Ownage: Phillip Thomas, SS, Fresno State

It’s nine weeks into the first season of the Tim DeRuyter era at Fresno State, and if your thoughts turn to the Bulldogs, they probably turn to quarterback Derek Carr, the younger brother of David currently putting up more than 300 yards of offense a game, or Robbie “Mighty Mouse” Rouse, the diminutive back who scored four touchdowns in a quarter against Colorado. But as the season winds down, we’d suggest familiarizing yourselves with the body of work being assembled by senior strong safety Phillip Thomas. The Bakersfield, Calif., native has recorded an FBS-leading seven interceptions through two months of play, three of which he returned for touchdowns, and one fumble recovery. He’s also forced three fumbles, made seven tackles for loss and collected three sacks.

“This 3-4 defense that we run, we learned it from Dick LeBeau and the Steelers, and Phillip’s our Troy Polamalu,” DeRuyter told SI.com. “Where you’ve gotta have a guy who’s gonna be a difference-maker, you can blitz him, you can have him in pass coverage, you can have him as a run-force player, he can play man coverage and he can disguise everything? That guy, for us, is Phillip.”

Thomas is keying a major defensive turnaround. A team that ranked 116th nationally in turnover margin last season is up to 11th in 2012, thanks in large part to a player who spent most of his junior year watching from the sidelines on one good leg.

“I know we’ve had a reputation here offensively,” said DeRuyter. “When you’ve got players like Derek and Robbie, it’s deservedly so.

“What I think people don’t know is Phillip didn’t play a year ago.”

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This is your regular reminder that Cincinnati’s quarterback is named “Munchie Legaux.” (AP)

You have a choice when it comes to how you spend your Friday nights. Choose wisely. Choose college football. We’re here to help. 

Cincinnati at No. 16 Louisville

• What information do I, the discerning consumer, require in order to consume this game? The Bearcats and Cardinals kick off Friday at 8 p.m. ET in Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium. The game will be televised on ESPN and streamed on WatchESPN. Tonight’s contest also marks the 52nd installment of the Keg of Nails rivalry, which stretches all the way back to 1929.

• Is there anything crueler in sports than not being allowed to bring outside food into a stadium named after Papa John’s Pizza? Being at Legion Field for the PapaJohns.com Bowl (RIP) when they ran out of pizza, maybe.

• Please explain this “Keg of Nails” thing. From Cincinnati’s sports information department, some illuminating facts: “The winner of Saturday’s game gets the keg of nails, one of the more unique rivalry trophies with a somewhat vague origin. The trophy is a replica of a keg used to ship nails.” How can you argue with that? You cannot.

• What’s at stake here? Cincinnati currently holds a four-game winning streak in the series, which you may reasonably suspect might come to an end tonight. But as with most weeknight football, you never can tell. Neither squad has a conference loss; the 7-0 Cardinals have a regular-season edge over the 5-1 Bearcats. Whichever team emerges victorious this evening will stay with Rutgers as one of the last two unbeatens in Big East conference play. For more on tonight’s football happenings, please see our full preview.

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Just because Troy Calhoun communicates in a series of airplane noises doesn’t mean you get to call him “Flyboy,” Dave Christensen. (AP)

• So some Mountain West officials walk into an internet café … Dave Christensen getting away with a reprimand for what he said to Troy Calhoun made a lot more sense last week before YouTube video of what Dave Christensen actually said (warning: explicit language) got around. Now that it’s a thing, Christensen will serve a one-week suspension and pay a $50,000 fine. The game he’ll miss will feature his 1-6 Cowboys hosting the 6-1 Boise State Broncos.

• Also double-secret probated. The ACC issued a blanket release covering the various disciplinary actions to be leveled against North Carolina freshman linebacker Shakeel Rashad, two officials from the UNC-Duke game and the entire crew from the FSU-Miami matchup.

• Mark Richt has lost control of … hey, WAIT A MINUTE. Sorry, we just never get to use that joke in real life, and then when we do it feels really weird.

• Bowl projections include forecasts of unceasing sadness. There’s not much we like better than a set of imaginary bowl matchups that includes the phrase “NO ELIGIBLE TEAMS.”

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