• Sailors would guide entire journeys by it, but the joke was on them. Are we ever so happy as when another school comes out with a football-themed rap video? We really think not:

The best part of this particular contribution to the field of college football-themed music videos is that it’s school-sanctioned, and cannot therefore be written off as the actions of a mere fringe group. We like to think the bewildered-looking girl functions as a kind of silent Greek chorus here. We’re right with you, honey.

• Western Kentucky 31, Troy 26. The Hilltoppers remain undefeated in conference play in a deep Sun Belt, along with the Warhawks and Ragin’ Cajuns. [BOX | RECAP]

• Tulsa 33, UTEP 11. Filed under “Thing UTEP Did This Week:” Achieved the elusive scoreboard elevener! [BOX | RECAP]

• Arizona State 51, Colorado 17. A 17-point second quarter for the Buffs had us feeling pretty bad about our predicted Sun Devils blowout win. That feeling did not last too long. [BOX | RECAP]

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The Hilltoppers rightfully expect big plays from Jonathan Dowling, who has pulled in four interceptions in 2012. (AP)

Finally, that blessed time of year where Thursdays fill up with college football. We’re sure you have so many questions. And we’re here to help, sort of. Kickoff times and TV listings for tonight’s action are as follows:

Western Kentucky @ Troy

• What information do I, the discerning consumer, require in order to consume this game? The Hilltoppers and Trojans kick off at 7:30 p.m. ET. The game will be televised on ESPNU and streamed on WatchESPN.

• What am I watching for here? WKU should be able to run the ball with some ease, but we’re really looking forward to seeing the Hilltoppers’ defense, particularly Jonathan Dowling, who has hauled in four interceptions in four games played. He’ll go up against Corey Robinson and Troy’s prolific passing attack.

• What’s at stake? With a win, the Hilltoppers remain undefeated in conference play and at the top of the Sun Belt standings with the Warhawks and Ragin’ Cajuns.

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Umm, it’s called the Football CHAMPIONSHIP series for a reason. HelLO. (AP)

• Think we’ve solved this thing. The entity we are apparently still insisting on calling the FCS wants to rebrand itself, and is endeavoring to do so with the NCAA’s help:

CAA officials are not revealing the cost of the plan, nor do they want to end the suspense by releasing a recently completed consultant’s report.

But it’s about more than just a name, NCAA spokesman Damani Leech said. ”There’s other things related to branding. There’s the strategy behind it. There’s the actual messages,” Leech said. “It’s more than just what you call yourselves, but it’s what you say about yourself and how you talk about yourself.”

For free, we will now fix this problem: Return to I-A and I-AA. AA is, like, a whole ‘nother A, you guys. Americans are not super great at applying basic math to real-world problems. Ride that. In many high school football systems, a greater number of A’s affixed to one’s team signifies a larger program.

Act larger. Swagger taller. Send your best teams to the Sugar Bowl and demand they take the field. Based on our previous experiences in the Superdome, it is entirely possible this might be allowed to happen. Your destiny is exactly that: yours.

• And now, the weather. From the “Tropical Storm Isaac, College Football And You” Department: Tulane moves the Green Wave to Birmingham to ride it out; LSU has closed school today and tomorrow with Saturday’s opener with North Texas still planning to go ahead, and last we heard from Louisiana Tech, the Bulldogs and Texas A&M were still scheduled to convene in Shreveport Thursday night.

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Armanti Edwards dives over Michigan — and expectations! See what we did there? (AP)

• Beep beep, Freep. The Detroit Free Press headline “Michigan AD Dave Brandon: We have to play Appalachian State to ‘pay them back’” is baldly misleading, but got us to click through, so job well done, we guess? We’ll save you the trouble of reading the article and point out that “pay them back” was indeed uttered by Brandon — as one of a series of reasons he hears from a fanbase wanting to face the Mountaineers again.

This is not a new sentiment, but we’ll take this moment to reiterate what a bad idea this 2014 rematch is from a football standpoint. It’s a clever way to ensure robust ticket sales against an FCS opponent, but if the Wolverines wreck ‘em, so what? They can boast only of having run it up on a program with a fraction of their resources and move to 1-1 in the series. If they win an ugly game, that’s just sad and weird. And while it’s highly, highly unlikely that they’d drop another one, well, how unlikely was that first loss?

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Dear, dear Hawaii-San Jose State. We’ll miss you most of all. (AP)

• Idaho football is the sea captain’s daughter in this scenario, we guess. One of the problems with covering conference realignment is the long lead time we have on the finality of it all. The WAC is actually, finally disintegrating, but since we’d already been eulogizing it for months, all we have left to add are dates: The conference intends to drop football after this upcoming season in order to focus on keeping the league together in any capacity at all, which is itself a task fraught with peril. Idaho and New Mexico State, free to good homes. Please give.

• Duck, Ducks. “What it means for Oregon is that even if the NCAA never proves that Oregon’s coaching staff intended the purchase of Lyles’ recruiting service to get them access to prospects or had much contact with Lyles, the school could still face severe penalties.” John Infante breaks down l’affaire Lyles with several ominous conclusions.

• How long do we plan on continuing to pretend anyone will outbid Jerry Jones? Houston and San Antonio aren’t even the shiniest choices in their own state to land the Champions Bowl. And there’s still time, Tampa and Jacksonville! Do it for Beef ‘O’ Brady’s! (For the record, we are still hoping Vicksburg will toss in a bid, because you’ve seen basketball on an aircraft carrier, but never football in a riverboat casino, amirite??)

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In two weeks and three days, Arizona State will be suiting up for its season opener. Todd Graham will probably still be the Sun Devils’ coach. (We wouldn’t keep making these jokes if it weren’t totally possible for him to leave ASU in the next two weeks. Adventure!)

17 days.

In two weeks and four days, we’ll kick off the 2012 college football season. Two days after that, we’ll find out just how much of a favor the previous Arizona coaching staff did Rich Rodriguez by red-shirting Matt Scott.

18 days.

Mark Richt says his wife likes his goatee. twitter.com/marcweiszer/st…

— Marc Weiszer (@marcweiszer) August 9, 2012

• Mark Richt remains firmly in control of his facial hair. Who are we to question Lady Richt, really?

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It’s easy to imagine NCAA president Mark Emmert gesturing to his face to explain how future minor NCAA infractions might be met by a court of a coach’s peers screaming, “WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOUR FACE?” at the offending party. (Getty Images)

Lovingly curated light reading to speed you through your Friday:

• That this bowl is imaginary doesn’t make its specter any less real. A 6-6 record appears likely to remain the bar to clear for postseason eligibility, and you can sort of see around the edges in these quotes to where people are thinking that hey, it’s all about the bowl tycoons raking in the cash while the kids rake in the commemorative keychains, right?

“Thirty-five bowl games can be a lot, but certainly those games provide an opportunity for a lot of student-athletes to experience the postseason,” Womack said.

All we ask is that all social media channels for any future bowls be run by the Florida Citrus Sports team.

• Slapping with trout added as penalty for butt-dialing. NCAA bigwigs are getting behind a new penalty structure, which will have four tiers of violations. We have helpfully named them for you: primary, secondary, tertiary and what’s-wrong-with-your-faceiary.

• Just an aborted attempt to helicopter Tee Martin off the deck of a cruise ship, no big deal. Lane Kiffin recounts USC’s madcap pursuit of Silas Redd.

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Washington State coach Mike Leach made a terrific debut at Pac-12 Media Days. (Jayne Kamin-Oncea-US PRESSWIRE)

We were winding our way back from ACC Media Days while our friends and colleagues took in the show in Universal City. Assorted highlights from the daylong Pac-12 media blitz follow. As with most media blitzes, not much was learned, but fun was had.

• This may be all that you are looking for. Longtime readers (and brand-new readers) will know of our fondness for Mike Leach. We have excerpted two of his Q&A answers below, but what you really want to do is watch video of the whole thing, right? Go do that now. For the unconvinced, a Leachian preview:

Q.  Coach, what coach in the conference would make the best hunt and go fishing partner for you to go on a trip with?

LEACH:  Good question. Let’s think about that carefully because we don’t want to get this one wrong. Rich Rodriguez has spent a lot of time in West Virginia so potential rub‑off there. I’m not as familiar with ‑‑ let’s see, I have it down to a playoff, Rich, and Kyle Whittingham is definitely a good one, Colorado, I’m not so sure what his hunting skills are.

I’m going to give the nod to Kyle. He’s sandwiched between a bunch of mountains, surrounded by them, and he’s been there for a while and fairly certain ‑‑ and he’s a tenacious guy. So I think that if you were to go hunting in Utah, Kyle would be the key guy to have around.

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