Paul Johnson and Jon Barry won the 2011 Chick-fil-A Bowl Challenge charity golf tournament. Paul Johnson is clearly as bewildered as we are to learn he excels at the serene sport of golf. (Abell Images)

The Chick-fil-A Bowl’s annual charity golf tournament kicks off this weekend, forcing 16 ACC and SEC skippers to mute their phones (probably), partner up with celebrity alums from their current programs and battle for scholarship dollars in the carefully sculpted wilds of Georgia. The pairings for the main event have been released. We have some thoughts.

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Some light reading and our favorite stories of the week to speed you through Friday.

Everything I’ve ever known is a lie. RT @ASUDevilscom: Brock Osweiler measured 6-foot-6 7/8 at NFL Combine without shoes.

— Gina Mizell (@ginamizell) February 24, 2012

• Can’t trust a blessed thing in this world. If we can’t depend on Brock Osweiler being 6-8, what can we depend on? Next thing you’ll tell us Ron Zook is, at best, a mediocre and unenthusiastic jetskiier.

• More like “leaders of the pack beating a fast trail out of Denton,” amirite, Hoosiers? The problem, in the end, with naming conference divisions “Leaders” and “Legends” is that every league, no matter how stacked, is going to have its Indiana. Smart and sassy Michigan internet fixture MGoBlog follows up our shoddy “research” with some “research” of its own — and speaking of shoddy, Brand Explorers still can’t spell “analysis.” Fun extrapolation from the ensuing comment thread: “This, combined with the the poll posted on the board yesterday, suggests that Michigan fans disapprove of the division names more strongly than they approve of Brady Hoke.” Who just won Michigan a Sugar Bowl, you might have heard.

• The state bird of Ohio. Is not football, but don’t mention that to the northern cardinal.

• Ricky Williams, graven idol. We can only hope that future civilizations, surveying the wreckage of post-zombie-apocalyptic America, will find these bronzed tributes to our beautiful game and build a religion around them.

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Jim Delany and his B1G brethren have elected to stick with "Leaders" and "Legends" as division names. (US PRESSWIRE)

“Hey guys, I’ve come up with a new mnemonic for remembering which teams are in the Leaders division. Ready? Illinois, Indiana, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue and Wisconsin.” — A joke we have been working on, to no avail

While we were raised on one team and own many expensive hooded sweatshirts (and one spacey t-shirt) dedicated to that team’s supremacy, we are professional polytheists when it comes to college football. We have favorite teams in every conference, whose good fortune cheers us and faceplants sadden our days. We want the best for the best sport. We are also blessed with almost superhuman strength when it comes to liking dumb things ironically, but you guys: We are utterly unable to get on board with this “Leaders & Legends” thing the Increasingly Inaccurately Named Big Ten continues to insist is A Thing, a notoriously ill-conceived branding attempt we are now all apparently stuck with.

Our favorite pull quote from that Tribune report, and it’s not close:

The Big Ten plans to “work harder to help fans understand why the names were chosen” and “understand who is in which division.”

Now you know the exact percentage of people who understand anything about anything. It’s [33.333 - [haters]].

It was a diabolically shrewd plan on the part of Jim Delany and his ilk, when you think about it: Wait a year for the conference faithful to become inured to the idea, then toss out some “research” (conducted by a firm with a name straight out of a DOS game and that, as alert reader J. Clark points out, misspells “analysis” in a graphic on its front page) to prop up the campaign and count on inertia to do the rest. Plus, they already had all this stationery made.

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Wisconsin's Bret Bielema and LSU's Les Miles aired their Signing Day grievances with the media. (Getty)

We have been (professionally and brahsomely) enamored of Bret Bielema and Les Miles since 2006 and 2007, respectively, and the origins of what we would call these man-crushes if we possessed the proper plumbing can be traced to very specific events. Bielema captured our attention with that notoriously trollsome stunt he pulled against Penn State, wherein the Badgers ran out the clock on the first half with a newly acquired 10-3 lead by deliberately running offsides on two kickoffs, leaving the Nittany Lions no time with which to operate once a third was executed. (Wisconsin would go on to win, 13-3.) We have never lived in Big Ten country, but we have a casual favorite Big Ten school, and that is it, and that is why.

Miles, for his part, won our bloggy hearts with his now-legendary “Have a GREAT day” press conference, hastily assembled just prior to the ’07 SEC Championship Game to dispel rumors he was lighting out for the Michigan job. He didn’t go. We were sad about that. We had the best gameday sign that year, and also we did not like watching our football team lose to LSU a whole bunch. But we were Les Miles fans from that moment forward.

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Five-star tackle Andrus Peat headlines Stanford's terrifyingly fierce offensive line class. (US PRESSWIRE)

• “When you’re the first person in your family to graduate from high school, you don’t need to be sitting out.” Justin Taylor and family spoke to the AJC about Taylor’s decision to spurn Alabama’s offer of a grayshirt year and sign with Kentucky instead. The three-star running back and Atlanta native will look to infuse some life into a rushing offense that averaged just 124 yards per game in 2011.

• The SEC East resurgence comes not from the south, but from the sides. Andy Staples was on the scene in Nashville as James Franklin reeled in the flossiest class in Vanderbilt program history.

• “Urban Meyer can’t stop yawning.” An unfair excerpt from Stewart Mandel’s visit with the Urbz and his mighty crop of blue-chippers.

• They’ll breed. You’ll die. We legitimately fear the prowess of the linemen Stanford has landed.

• Go west, and north. Steve Sarkisian lost some in-state gems, but pillaged California in return.

• Jordan Payton settles! This counts as news at this point.

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Le'Veon Bell's two short-yardage touchdowns helped Michigan State force overtime. (US PRESSWIRE)

Snaps from the Jan. 2 slate’s non-BCS bowls, of which the Big Ten managed to win just one of four…

• No. 12 Michigan State 33, No. 18 Georgia 30 (3OT): Hail, Sparty the redeemer! At the end of a very long afternoon for the Increasingly Inaccurately Named Big Ten, following three dissimilar but equally dispiriting losses by conference squads (more on those down below), MSU pulled one out for the honor of Jim Delany and middle America.

The game began in most ignominious fashion, with the Spartans’ first drive culminating in a safety by all-everything Dawg Brandon Boykin, and two spectacular field-enveloping plays (an 80-yard touchdown pass from Aaron Murray to Tavarres King and a 92-yard punt return by Boykin) giving Georgia a 16-0 halftime lead. Le’Veon Bell made up most of that ground for the Spartans in the second half with two short-yardage touchdown runs, and by the end of his second scoring effort, the game was tied 27-27 with 14 seconds to play in regulation.

Which is about where the trouble started, although Dawgs fans fed up with conservative playcalling on offense might have a good argument that Georgia’s last drive of the fourth quarter sealed its fate. Here, as predicted in this week’s Bowl Breakdown, special teams came into the spotlight in a big, bad way. UGA kicker Blair Walsh, a Groza finalist in 2010 but not himself in 2011, missed a 42-yard field goal attempt (on third down, no less) in the first overtime period, after Bacarri Rambo’s interception of Kirk Cousins snatched away State’s chance to strike first. Walsh connected on a 47-yarder in the second period, as did MSU’s Dan Conroy. Walsh’s final attempt, to match Conroy’s third-period three-pointer, was blocked.

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This long-burning question finally has an answer: Washington State. (Icon SMI)

• We have our heading: CBS’ Bruce Feldman had it first, and had it correct: The Dread Cap’n has docked in Pullman and intends to stay a spell. And we owe a debt of gratitude to Larry Scott, whose blockbuster Pac-12 media rights deal facilitated the triumphant return of Mike Leach to the ranks of active college football coaches. Triumphant? At Washington State? You bet your barnacles. Stewart Mandel has a much longer column up on this topic, but let me just add to the chorus: Leach is inheriting a talented passing offense from Paul Wulff. He’ll have the money to hire some talented assistants. He’s well-known enough to garner media attention for his team even if ESPN decides in a fit of entirely plausible petulance to plunge the program into a total Worldwide Leader media blackout. (What will become of the GameDay flag?)

Apart from all that, it’s just a win for fans of the game. College football is more interesting with Mike Leach in it than without, and since it’s just Washington State and it can’t possibly threaten your team’s livelihood for months at least, those of you without active rooting interests in the Cougars have plenty of shady cover beneath which to become ravenous sidewalk alumni.

• Rest in peace, Tiger: Chester McGlockton, former star Clemson defensive tackle and current Stanford assistant coach, died Wednesday of what’s being reported as a heart attack. McGlockton, 42, was finishing up his second season on the Cardinal staff. Our sincere condolences and best wishes to his family and the Clemson and Stanford football communities.

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