Lovingly curated bits of light reading to speed you through to the weekend:

• A hit, a palpable Hokie hit. Boston College blog BC Interruption goes logo-trolling, with splendid results.

• Jock exams. Andy Staples takes the NCAA rules test, discovering that “An institution may send an institutional postcard, provided its dimensions do not exceed 4 1/4 by 6 inches, it includes only the institution’s name and logo or an athletics logo on one side when produced and it includes only handwritten information, (e.g., words, illustrations) on the opposite side when provided to the recipients,” and maybe learning a little something about life along the way. [banjo twang]

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John Marinatto announced his resignation Monday after nearly three years as Big East commissioner. (AP)

Say this for the Big East: It didn’t drop this news on at 4:30 on a Friday. The conference announced Monday morning that John Marinatto will step down after nearly three years as league commissioner. Marinatto’s statement:

“After a great deal of thought and prayer, I have decided to step down as Commissioner of the BIG EAST Conference and formally advised our Board of Directors.”

Thought, prayer and pressure from conference presidents, according to Brett McMurphy, who first reported the story.

Marinatto presided over what will charitably be called a “tumultuous period” in league history, and realignment shifts occurring on his watch will echo at least through the 2015 season. A quick cheat sheet (see Stewart Mandel’s map of the conference square dance for a more complete picture):

• 2012: TCU joins the Big 12 instead of joining the Big East as originally planned; West Virginia leaves the Big East for the Big 12; the Big East regains Temple.

•  2013: Boise State, Houston, Memphis, San Diego State, SMU and UCF will join the Big East; Syracuse and Pitt will jump to the ACC.

• 2015: Navy will join the Big East.

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Contributing to the WAC’s demise: Larry Coker’s UTSA team, which is ditching the league for Conference USA. (Icon SMI)

Quick question before we dig in here, and we genuinely want to hear your thoughts: Do you find reading about realignment as tedious as we find writing about realignment? It’s always struck us as a square dance on a grand scale, scored by apparently tireless fiddlers and sponsored by U-Haul, Golden Flake and some terrifying PCP-laced herbal laxative. When the sun peeks over the horizon, everybody’s still at the dance.

Like we were saying yesterday about playoff football staging locations: We’ll watch it anywhere. If we’re that invested in North Texas football, does it particularly matter whether the Mean Green are playing teams from the WAC or the Sun Belt on any given weekend? And if we’re not fans of, say, Hawaii football, but find ourselves compelled to watch the Warriors because of those two delightfully relentless homers who call the games on local TV, we’ll follow that feed where it takes us. Even during the great teeth-gnashy SEC realignment rigmarole, when it seemed as though the future of rivalry games like Georgia-Auburn might be endangered — would the cessation of the series stop Georgia and Auburn faithful from lining up in Athens and on the Plains? Just try stopping them. Those people have crossbows, probably.

Anyway. This stuff is hateful, but it’s news, and it’s May, and as such we write words about it. CBS, as usual, has been out in front on this story, and according to the reliable reporting of Brett McMurphy the WAC could be left with just Idaho and New Mexico State by the time this all shakes out. Jason Kirk points out the formidable geographical footprint that would be created by a MWC-CUSA hyperconference merger. (When these two collide, it’s going to look like the end of Melancholia, only funnier.)

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Temple mascot Hooter and the Fighting Hedwigs are in talks to join the Big East in all sports. (Main image: US PRESSWIRE; inset: Warner Bros.)

Temple’s return to the Big East, if it goes through, will elevate an owl mascot to the AQ level for the first time since the school’s 2004 ejection from the conference. It’s a natural fit for the league of Squibs, but as the move is rather last-minute from a conditioning standpoint, you may find yourselves falling behind, winded in an effort to make Harry Potter jokes during league play in 2012. Below, a few basic maneuvers you might find useful, during an imaginary conference schedule that assumes the Fighting Hedwigs join up with the Ever-Increasingly Accurately Named Big East by fall:

October 6, 2012. Temple @ UConn. “Accio passing game, you guys! Amirite??”

October 13, 2012. Syracuse @ Temple. “Addazio’s offense without Bernard Pierce is deader than Dumbledore.”

October 20, 2012. Temple @ Pitt. “I tell you what, this Owls front seven has put Tino Sunseri in Azkaban.”

October 27, 2012. Rutgers @ Temple. “And what a coming-out party for Matt Brown! He blasted through the Scarlet Knights’ line like a Dementor! A Dementor on a Firebolt!”

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Marshall: Determined not to let West Virginia hog the headlines. (US PRESSWIRE)

Crucial reading on topics carefully curated to contain only stories of the utmost importance to speed you through your Friday afternoon. This is our love for you.

• News you can use. CBS is reporting that West Virginia and the Big East have reached a settlement agreement, and Boise State could be leaping in early to take WVU’s place. But of far greater urgency in the Mountain State is this tidbit out of Marshall:

A West Virginia college student is suing a fraternity for negligence, claiming he fell off a deck because a bottle rocket went off in another student’s rectum.
[...]
“Instead of launching, the bottle rocket blew up in the defendant’s rectum, and this startled the plaintiff and caused him to jump back,” and fall off the deck, the lawsuit contends.

• A poet can survive everything but a misprint. We have friends who are Actual Reporters who occasionally lament that they cannot, in their professional lives, take overt swings in print at players and coaches who displease them. To them, we say: Do not abandon hope. Seen a lot of mannered comedies? Restoration-era scribes knew better than just about anybody how to slice an offending party to ribbons with pure politesse. Some of the best stone-cold bitchery we’ve ever seen in ink has come from the Associated Press. It’s more of a structured art form, like composing a sonnet, but the constraints give the finished product an elegant beauty. Today’s lesson, from ESPN.com news services:

LSU quarterback Jordan Jefferson says he believes the major reason the Tigers suffered the first shutout in BCS title game history, a 21-0 rout to Alabama on Jan. 9, was because of the offensive game plan. Jefferson, on the same day he pleaded not guilty to a simple-battery charge stemming from an Aug. 26 arrest, second-guessed the offensive play calls in an interview with Atlanta radio station WCNN.

• And speaking of poetry. Is Butch Davis taking an advisory role with Tampa Bay rather than the DC job so he can remain on UNC’s payroll? Doug Farrar tweeted that Davis “has the ethical compass God gave a wolverine,” which we find difficult to argue. What animal would you associate with Davis, gentle readers?

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The Memphis Tigers have live tigers as mascots (not pictured), but their appeal ends there. (Getty Images)

Football’s version of Manifest Destiny is ripping the space-time fabric of the sport asunder. We accept this new age of ceaseless, often senseless expansion, albeit with much sniping. In these troubled times, resurgent survivalist instincts are perhaps to be expected (she said, from her secret blogging lair stocked wall-to-wall with bottled water and guns). But this latest development is five or six bridges too far to be believed. Memphis? To a (technically) AQ conference? There is transcontinental conquest, and then there is straight-up hoarding, and we need to talk about the Big East’s behavior and its recent veer toward the latter.

No major-conference program is hankering to hitch its wagon to this sputtering star, so raiding the mid-majors is a necessity. But Memphis football is the stack of rotting newspapers in this scenario.

“But I need it!” No, Big East. You really don’t. You’re hurting your brand. You’re hurting yourself. Memphis’ financial straits regarding athletic revenue have been well-documented, its on-field product reviled as pale and listless. The Tigers haven’t won more than two games in a season since a 6-7 2008 campaign that culminated in a 41-14 walloping by USF in the St. Petersburg Bowl. The last time they went to a bowl game and actually won was 2005. This is an addition in name only, and one that dilutes a football brand that can ill afford it. What’s more: In moving away from Conference USA, Memphis is endangering a rivalry game with the greatest trophy in the history of this sport or any other.

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The Mountain West is trying to capitalize on its one season with TCU and Boise State as members by applying for an AQ bid. (Icon SMI)

• Ask me what my job is, then ask me the hardest thing about it: The Mountain West has to look out for the Mountain West, and it’s leveraging every last iota of influence out of its one season with both Boise State and TCU to angle for a BCS auto-bid for 2012 (in which it will operate without the Big 12-bound Horned Frogs) and 2013 (when the Broncos are scheduled to make their exit for the Big East).

• Fresh coaches, bought and sold! Colorado State is expected to announce Alabama offensive coordinator Jim McElwain as the next head coach of the Rams this afternoon. McElwain has been Nick Saban’s coordinator since 2008; this will be his first head coaching position. And Toledo has replaced the recently departed Tim Beckman with his offensive coordinator, Matt Campbell, a three-year veteran of the Rockets’ staff.

• Dispatches from Happy Valley: You can relive the brief proceedings of Jerry Sandusky’s preliminary hearing here, but if you missed his court appearance, you didn’t miss much: Sandusky and his legal team waived the right to the hearing, and the case is going to trial.

• Kuechly Kuechly Kuechly Kuechly Kuechly Kuechly Kuechly: Boston College linebacker Luke Kuechly, who’s already got the Butkus, Lombardi and Lott IMPACT Awards, and of whom we are becoming very fond because he’s a killy defender who looks like a big ol’ mathlete, can add the Bronco Nagurski Trophy to his groaning hardware shelf.

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TCU offensive coordinator Justin Fuente knows he just accepted the Memphis FOOTBALL coaching job, right? (US PRESSWIRE)

• Fresh coaches, bought and sold: News from the carousel: As Scout’s John Martin first reported, TCU offensive coordinator Justin Fuente is next in line for the Memphis meat-grinder — though not before a similar square dance first reeled in, then lost Jim McElwain. On paper, this looks like a solid get for the Tigers; what Fuente expects to get out of such a topsy-turvy administrative support scenario is known only to Fuente. Arizona State’s negotiations with June Jones have fallen through, in a manner that drove Jones’ agent to social media to express his bewilderment. Urbz hits the road to rake in future Buckeyes. Bill Byrne blames the big, mean internet for forcing him to fire Mike Sherman over the phone. And Ted Roof will trouble Auburn no more.

• Not a lawyer, but thinking this figure is waaaay low: Jerry Sandusky spent Wednesday night in jail following his arrest on new sex abuse charges. He posted $250,000 bail Thursday morning. Sandusky has been placed under house arrest as a condition of his release.

• A bad day gets worse: Oregon State defensive tackle Fred Thompson, who collapsed Wednesday playing basketball on campus, has died at the unforgivable age of 19. The cause of death was initially reported as a heart attack. Our sincere condolences and best wishes to Thompson’s family, the Beavers team, and the Oregon State football community.

• Realignment tidbits, grudgingly dispensed: The Big East makes its many-tentacled expansion official, and will go national (right, so that’s how they’re spinning this) without the Air Force Academy.

• Bowltyme! Brett McMurphy runs down shakeups in the BCS AQ system.

• Quote of the day: ”Fun Fact: Robert Griffin, if he wins, would be the first Heisman winner to wear Angry Birds socks since Paul Hornug.” — Dan Rubenstein

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Larry Fedora -- nearly unrecognizable without a visor and sunglasses -- will reportedly take over at North Carolina. (US PRESSWIRE)

• Fedora the Explorer alights in Chapel Hill:  Golden Eagles skipper Larry Fedora, one of this postseason’s hottest coaching commodities, has reportedly agreed to succeed Butch Davis and interim coach Everett Withers at UNC, according to the Winston-Salem Journal. (I almost didn’t recognize him in that shot without the visor and sunglasses.) Fedora, of course, is fresh off a Conference USA title win gained against the previously undefeated Houston Cougars. Southern Miss was his first head coaching gig at the college level; he previously served as OC at Oklahoma State, Florida and Middle Tennessee State.

• Realignment tidbits, grudgingly dispensed: You know, I got some truly nasty emails when I suggested (in a post with a headline cribbed straight from Jonathan Swift, no less) that the SEC start poaching teams from the southeastern corners of their respective states. Well, the Big East has gone and done me one better, stomping a stiletto heel on the instep of geography with the reported additions of Boise State, San Diego State, Houston, Central Florida and SMU. All of which are quite easterly, from the conference honchos’ presumed floating island fortress in the Pacific. Ready for jokes? Ready for jokes!

“By joining the Big East conference, do these teams automatically qualify for East Coast Bias?” — David Foster

“Maybe the Big East just knows something about plate tectonics and continental drift that the rest of us don’t.” — @celebrityhottub

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Tyler Tettleton and MAC East champion Ohio survived Bowling Green 29-28 on a 23-yard field goal as time expired. (ZUMAPRESS.com)

• Ohio 29, Bowling Green 28: Your 2011 MAC East champions didn’t put on quite as dramatic a performance as we’ve seen from certain other recent weeknight conference games, but there was suspense to be had, in the form of a game-winning field goal with three seconds remaining on the clock. 23 yards! Caliente! [RECAP | BOX]

• Western Michigan 24, Miami (Ohio) 21: You like passing? Zac Dysert and Alex Carder combined for 842 aerial yards. [RECAP | BOX]

• Fresh coaches, bought and sold: It’s been an alarming 24 hours for coaching news. The universe continues to contrive to create job openings in order to keep Houston Nutt in the SEC, with Texas A&M on a three-game losing streak and now Gary Pinkel’s DWI arrest. And New Mexico has gone and hired Bob Davie, for which we should all be grateful, as it will greatly reduce the time we have to listen to him speak on television.

• Penn State things: SI’s special report on the Jerry Sandusky case, from the latest issue of the magazine, is now available online. A new judge has been assigned following some glaring conflict of interest concerns. Police are contradicting claims made by Mike McQueary. Nobody seems to think the university’s open-records law exemption is a good idea. And read with amazement how the internet played an instigating role in the investigation.

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