Our continued best wishes to Tulane’s Devon Walker for a complete recovery. (AP Photo/Tulane University)

• Actual good news, actually. Devon Walker is getting out of rehab and will spend the winter holidays continuing his recovery at home with his family. Here’s his statement: ”I am so happy to be going home where I can reunite with my family and friends. My family and I are very grateful for the support we continue to receive. Some days, when I think that I just can’t do this anymore, remembering my many friends and supporters (both old and new) who are praying for me gives me the strength to go on. I know that my fight is just beginning. Please continue to pray for my recovery. Thank you very much.”

• And now, humans in plush cow suits playing drums in the general direction of Dabo Swinney. The Chick-fil-A Bowl is your one-stop destination for events of this kind.

• Coach-firin’ follies. Are increasingly giving way to coach-hirin’ follies: Missouri offensive line coach Josh Henson will replace the departed Dave Yost as the Tigers’ offensive coordinator.

• Roster blotter. Stedman Bailey will pass on his senior season at West Virginia in favor of the NFL draft … also turning pro: Tennessee’s Justin Hunter, per Justin Hunter … Louis Nix will return to Notre Dame, with the intent of taking a little Senior Day stroll with his mom … Cincinnati’s Brendon Kay has been granted a sixth year of eligibility … and stop us if you’ve heard this before, but a Montana player is transferring. No, again. No, again again.

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Stepfan Taylor (33) and Stanford will look to pull off a repeat performance against UCLA next week. (AP)

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

• No. 11 Stanford 35, No. 15 UCLA 17. With tonight’s victory, the Cardinal secured a share of the Pac-12 North division title and set up a rematch for the conference championship six days from now in Palo Alto. The win was all but assured midway through the second quarter, when Stanford jumped out to a 21-7 lead on a 49-yard Stepfan Taylor touchdown run; UCLA didn’t come within a score of catching up again all night. Stanford’s last conference title came in 1999; the Cardinal will be making their first appearance in the Pac-12 championship game.

Johnathan Franklin, he of the 131-yards-per-game rushing average, was held below 100 yards for just the fourth time this season, recording 65 yards on 21 carries and scoring one of the Bruins’ two touchdowns. Taylor more than doubled up Franklin, gaining 147 yards on 21 carries and scoring twice, all before being rested in the fourth quarter. UCLA quarterback Brett Hundley, meanwhile, threw for 259 yards but was sacked seven times — bad even for an offense that ranked 110th nationally in sacks allowed before this game, and above even Stanford’s lofty four-sack average.

Not to take anything away from Stanford, which has done some very neat work this season in the absence of Andrew Luck, among other key figures, but it’s all right to feel the tiniest bit let down about this. If only for the sake of variety, it would’ve been interesting to see UCLA play Oregon for the first time this season and not the Cardinal for a second in a week. But if we got everything we wanted, there’d be no point in writing fanfic about Ron Prince becoming monarch-commissioner of college football, and where’s the fun in that? The battle for a Rose Bowl bid begins next Friday at 8 p.m. ET. [BOX | RECAP]

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Assorted bests and worsts from college football’s weekend that was:

• Most ominous foreshadowing: The head of the beloved Oregon mascot whipping off and flying away in midair, not too long before the Ducks’ first loss of the season. That led, of course, to this spectacle on GameDay:

We’ve crossed over into the other side: twitter.com/Landgrant33/st…

— Land-Grant Holy Land (@Landgrant33) November 17, 2012

We should’ve seen Stanford coming. We all should’ve known.

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UCLA’s Johnathan Franklin rushed for 171 yards and two touchdowns in a victory over USC. (Jeff Gross/Getty Images)

Snap Judgments from the Week 12 midday slate. For more, check out our early Snaps, our coverage of Stanford-Oregon, our look at the new BCS landscape and our complete Top 25 review.

• No. 17 UCLA 38, No. 21 USC 28. You heard a lot last week about the football monopoly in Los Angeles being over. No, again. No, for real this time. Well, you’ll hear even more about it this week, but only because it’s finally, demonstrably true. (We’re taking suggestions on which board-game related jokes to start making in its place from here on out. Balderdash? Sorry? Jenga?)

On a rainy afternoon in the Rose Bowl, the Bruins dashed out to a 24-0 lead midway through the second quarter, only to see the Trojans snatch momentum back by the start of the third, by which point Matt Barkley had thrown two touchdown passes and defensive tackle George Uko had scored a genuine Fat Guy Touchdown on a slip-and-slide fumble recovery. (Storied rivalry, historic venue, high conference stakes, home-and-home jerseys AND a FGTD: This game had it all, y’all.) A pair of traded touchdowns and a successful USC two-point conversion later, and the Trojans were trailing by three points with a little more than seven minutes left in the fourth quarter.

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@martinrickman I vote for a picture of Dianne Wiest since it’s the Big Wiest.

— Dan Weiner (@DanWeiner) November 13, 2012

• Let’s settle this now. Behold, the divisions of the new Big East: Central Florida, South Florida, Connecticut, Louisville, Cincinnati and Rutgers in the East East, and Boise State, Houston, Memphis, San Diego State, SMU and Temple in the East West. The ease of remembering mostly geographically based divisions aside (lookin’ riiiight at you, Increasingly Inaccurately Named Big Ten and ACC), new divisions mean new opportunities for mnemonic acronyms and Lovecraftian anagrams. IMPORTANT NOTE: For reasons relating to not wanting to come up with a bunch of U-words, we’re going with Central Florida instead of UCF here, South Florida instead of USF and Connecticut instead of UConn. Thank you for your understanding.

Our best suggestions in the clubhouse thus far:

East: Crooked Stepping Creeping Landscape Creep Rust, Considering Shaken Chosen Lawyer Creator Rake and Change Shrewd Cremini Lump Craze Riot.

West: Blistered High Mockery S‘more Stereo Turtle, Blended Holding Minor Sopping Sleepy Tangent and Broad Headache Manic Stiff Solace Toad.

Almost none of these words have anything to do with anything, which is sort of what we get for putting South Florida, Connecticut, Boise and San Diego State in the same conference. Please feel free to leave your own suggestions below.

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Johnny Manziel (2) and Texas A&M dealt Alabama its first loss since last November. (Mike Zarrilli/Getty Images)

Snap Judgments from the Week 11 midday slate. For more, check out early Snaps, late Snaps, our recaps of Texas A&M-Alabama and Kansas State-TCU and our complete Top 25 review.

• No. 15 Texas A&M 29, No. 1 Alabama 24. We are reminded tonight of how Kevin Sumlin’s first round of interviews went at last summer’s SEC Media Days. No reporter actually stood up, shoved a mic in his face and asked, “HEY COACH, YOU SKEERED?” but something like that wasn’t all that far from happening by the time the Q&A ended. Sumlin dispensed with those questions back in July with gracious humor, some quips and a few dagger stares. Tonight, his Aggies dispensed with the No. 1 team in the country.

Heading into Week 11, Alabama had a perfect record in 2012, one loss in nearly two full seasons of football and a unanimous lock on the No. 1 spot in the AP Poll. And tonight, in Tuscaloosa, the Tide were rudely introduced to a Kliff Kingsbury offense that put them in a 20-0 hole, at home, by the end of the first quarter. ‘Bama answered with two touchdowns and a field goal over the next two quarters, but it surrendered nine more points to the Aggies in the fourth. The Tide pulled to within a five-point, 29-24 deficit on a 54-yard AJ McCarron-to-Amari Cooper score halfway through the final period and held A&M to a three-and-out on the subsequent possession. But a costly McCarron interception inside the five-yard line on what could have been the game-winning drive, plus a ‘Bama offsides penalty with A&M set to punt in the final minute, sealed the stunning upset.

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• So this makes Nick Saban the Mandarin? LSU’s crack video crew has made a trailer for the upcoming Tigers-Tide game in which Les Miles is Tony Stark, or something. From that, we can infer Saban to be the Sir Ben “Thunderbirds” Thunderbirds-Kingsley in this nonexistent movie, for those of you scoring at home.

• Big morning reading material. Major Tuesday morning movement from the NCAA: “The Division I Board of Directors today adopted an overhauled enforcement structure that creates additional levels of infractions, hastens the investigation process and ratchets up penalties for the most egregious violations.” (We know what you’re about to ask, and we believe Mark Richt’s butt-dialing incident would be a Level IV.)

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Tajh Boyd displays fierce jazz hands and passing acumen. (AP)

• No. 14 Clemson 42, Wake Forest 13. Where to begin: Clemson’s Tajh Boyd set school records for single-game passing yards (428) and touchdown passes in a half (five). That also ties his own single-game touchdown passing record, which he shares with Cullen Harper. Each scoring pass was thrown to a different receiver. Sammy Watkins caught balls with a vengeance, if that’s possible, setting a program record for single-game receiving yards (202 on eight catches). And we may have already sourced the Deacs’ primary error, which is quite correctable: Y’ALL S’POSED TO BE TURNIN’ LEFT IN THAT THING. [BOX | RECAP]

• No longer technically under our purview, but …  Former LSU teammates Tyrann Mathieu, Jordan Jefferson, Karnell Hatcher and Derrick Bryant were arrested yesterday on drug charges after officers were summoned to Mathieu’s apartment complex pursuing a complaint that “a man [was] attempting to force his way in to the complex through a security gate.” (The interloper in question was Jefferson, if any of you have any remaining jokes you’d like to burn off about his abilities against other kinds of defenses.)

• Now here’s some sunshine. “Head coaches in football and basketball will be held directly accountable for NCAA rules violations by members of their coaching staff in radically new legislation that is expected to be adopted Tuesday by the Division 1 Board of Directors,” and it just gets spicier from there. Our pal and former colleague George Schroeder has more.

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Will Nuke go … nuclear tonight in Winston-Salem? (We are very sorry.) (AP)

You have but one choice for Thursday night FBS football, in the form of No. 14 Clemson at Wake Forest. We’re sure you have so many questions.

• Why? What else are you gonna do, watch baseball? Of course you’re not gonna watch baseball. Besides, this might be fun. Clemson holds a three-game win streak over Wake Forest, but the Tigers have been a touch snakebit in this particular slot, going 1-9 in Thursday primetime ESPN ball since 1998. The last time they played Wake in such a game, the Demon Deacons won 12-7 and Tommy Bowden was fired within days. Basically, Halloween is coming right up, and one of these teams has “Demon” in its name, and you never really know what hexes are put on night games. So watch.

• What even is a Demon Deacon? Wake Forest will gladly explain this for you, but we’d like to sum it up with our favorite quote from the school’s reading material on the subject: “And while there are any number of ways to dress a Tiger, there is only one way to dress a Demon Deacon — with distinction.”

• What information do I, the discerning consumer, require in order to consume this game? The Tigers and Demon Deacons kick off at 7:30 p.m. ET on BB&T Field at Groves Stadium. The game will be televised on ESPN and streamed on WatchESPN.

• What’s at stake here? Clemson is 6-1 overall and 3-1 in ACC play. That one loss came to Florida State, but the ‘Noles are carrying an L as well, and the Tigers could take the Atlantic if they win out and FSU stumbles just one more time.

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Tuesday night not all right for the Ragin’ Cajuns. (AP)

• Arkansas State 50, Louisiana 27. Terrance Broadway completed 28-of-39 passes for 374 yards and three touchdowns, but also committed three of the Cajuns’ five turnovers during a highly non-competitive home-field rout. Red Wolves kicker Brian Davis accounted for a full 20 of Arkansas State’s 50 points, kicking five field goals and five extra points. Ryan Aplin had a 21-of-31, 269-yard, one-touchdown outing; Rocky Hayes and David Oku added 86 and 83 rushing yards, respectively. The Red Wolves improved to 3-1 in Sun Belt play.  [BOX]

• Excellent scheduling news. Our absolute favorite kind of scheduling story: Power conference showdown! Oregon and Ohio State have announced a two-year home-and-home series, to be played in 2020 and 2021.

• Roster blotter. Charlie Weis benches Dayne Crist … Clemson defensive back Jerrodd Williams, who’s seen playing time in six games for the Tigers on special teams, is done for the season after breaking his leg in Tuesday’s practice … Southern Miss moves on to its fourth quarterback this season, Arsenio Favor.

• Hey, here’s a neat lead. “The Missouri athletics department is tightening employee use of school-issued credit cards after an audit found a series of improper purchases, including bills for more than $7,600 from a Las Vegas strip club.” Stewart Mandel has already cut directly to the proper joke for this news, saving you all the trouble:

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas … unless you charge it to your Mizzou-issued employee credit card. arkansassports360.com/88085/mizzou-c…

— Stewart Mandel (@slmandel) October 23, 2012

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