Unlike baseball, college football is actually supposed to have an opening weekend. (REUTERS)

All this chirping about based ball’s Opening “Day” just makes us pine for five months from now, when college football will accomplish in five days what baseball crams into nine or so. Is it too early to start making out our Week 1 mayhem wish list? Probably!

Thursday, August 30

• South Carolina @ Vanderbilt. James Franklin taunts Jadeveon Clowney after the Commodores pull off a late go-ahead touchdown, and the ensuing fracas manages to convince SEC officials to suspend the South Carolina stalwart. Seeking revenge, Steve Spurrier departs Nashville with five or six of Franklin’s scholarship quarterbacks, to feather his depth-chart-fiddlin’ nest back in Columbia. No one is truly satisfied, but no lessons are learned.

• Minnesota @ UNLV. TCF Bank revokes Golden Gophers’ stadium sponsorship after team refuses to pay $5,000 in ATM fees following return from Vegas.

• UCF @ Akron. Zips win, and Terry Bowden gets free jousting privileges at all Medieval Times locations for life.

• UMass @ UConn. In their FBS debut, the Minutemen rout the Huskies, relegating Connecticut to the MAC by a previously unnoticed realignment provision. All involved parties agree this is probably in everyone’s best interest.

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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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Quarterbacks Jordan Jefferson, Kirk Cousins, Logan Thomas, Brandon Weeden. (US PRESSWIRE)

SEC Championship Game

No. 1 LSU vs. No. 12 Georgia: After the grisly spectacle of the Pac-12 title game elicits repeated groans from the masses, will there be any undamaged vocal chords left to complain about the other “one-sided” championship matchup of the weekend? Let’s find out! Georgia hasn’t lost since Week 2, turning an 0-2 start and more tiresome calls for the tanned and fluffy head of Mark Richt into a 10-2 regular season and assurances of a reasonably prestigious bowl bid. The Dawgs did have the advantage of getting their two most fearsome opponents out of the way early, and easily handled remaining ranked foes Auburn and Georgia Tech in November. They also emerged victorious from the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party. You might have heard. And while South Carolina edged out Georgia in September, the Gamecocks’ two subsequent conference losses boosted UGA back into the Dome.

LSU is … LSU, but without the two regular-season losses that were once the hallmark of even the best Bayou Bengals teams under Les Miles. The Tigers have played seven ranked opponents to Georgia’s four, beginning with that Arlington showdown against Oregon over Labor Day weekend, which they won by two touchdowns. Since then, they’ve dispatched two more top five opponents (Alabama and Arkansas), blown some formerly well-regarded teams out of the water and ground out the requisite low-scoring slugfests.

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Denard Robinson rushed for two touchdowns and passed for three more in a win over Ohio State. (US PRESSWIRE)

Snap Judgments from the Week 13 early shift. For swing shift Snaps, click here. For late Snaps, click here. For Andy Staples’ recap of LSU’s win over Arkansas, click here. For Staples’ take on Alabama’s rout of Auburn, click here. For a recap of all the Top 25 action, click here. For highlights from SI.com, click here. 

• No. 17 Michigan 40, Ohio State 34: I swear, looking at Michigan box scores week after week, you’d think nobody knows that Denard Robinson is a player who ought to be defended on the football field. This week’s reasons to put a body on Denard: 14 pass completions for 167 yards and three touchdowns and 26 rushes for 170 yards and two additional scores. This week’s reason a team might put bodies on Denard and still lose: The Michigan quarterback’s ability to place the football in the hands of running back Fitzgerald Toussaint, who will then do things like run for 120 yards.

Michigan’s defense, the year’s most reluctant talking point, must not be overlooked here. Ohio State’s Boom Herron was contained to 37 yards on 15 carries, his third consecutive sub-century game after running wild against Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana following his return from suspension. More problematic for the maize and blue was Braxton Miller, who cracked 100 yards rushing for just the third time this season (accomplished previously against Indiana and Penn State) while shattering his former personal best outing as a passer with 235 aerial yards and two touchdown passes. The Buckeyes hung with it early and late, turning a 16-7 first-quarter deficit into a 24-23 halftime lead and adding 10 more points in the fourth to make the margin of loss more than respectable.

Still, the streak ends here. The Wolverines, you’ll recall, hadn’t beaten the Buckeyes since November 2003. They can now start their own cheeky counter: “It has been two hours since Michigan beat Ohio State in football.” We’re also almost surely witnessing the end of the tenure of Luke Fickell, a Buckeyes lifer thrust into a near-impossible situation in the wake of NCAA scandal and Jim Tressel’s resignation.

Time now to look to the future: Miller appears to be a young quarterback with many fine double-threat attributes. Wonder where the Buckeyes will find a head man with experience coaching up such athletes? Anybody hear anything? [RECAP | BOX]

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