• What information do I, the discerning consumer, require in order to consume this game? The Huskies and Orange kick off at 8 p.m. ET in the Carrier Dome. The game will be televised on ESPN and streamed on WatchESPN.

• Why should I watch a 2-4 team with a 3-4 team play football on a Friday night? Neither one of these squads has all that lofty a chance of getting past Rutgers, Louisville or Cincinnati for the league title, so we’re not really sure you should. We always want to err on the side of “more football” in life, but we’re not all that sure this qualifies as “football.” To work through our complicated feelings on this issue, and to help you work through them too, we have constructed the following feelings collage.

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• Bleep, bloop, Buckeyes. Ohio State’s marching band did a video game-themed halftime show, and if you haven’t seen it yet, be reassured: Your Monday is made.

If your heart doesn’t skip a beat at their Tetris formations, we cannot be friends. Sorry. [Via.]

• To the business at hand. The polls are out! What to do when three top-five teams get knocked out in the space of a single Saturday, including No. 4 LSU? Rank early Tigers opponent Washington No.13, among other atrocities, if you’re Glenn Guilbeau. Full AP Top 25 is here; the Biased And/Or Willfully Disinterested SIDs’ Poll can be found here.

• Injury report story hour. Missouri’s James Franklin will miss the Alabama game with an MCL injury, which is good news for James Franklin’s limbs and less good for his teammates.

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Central Michigan scored a win for the MAC by knocking off Iowa in the final seconds. (Matthew Holst/Getty Images)

Our weekly highlight show of lesser FBS luminaries. Non-AQs and independents, be welcome:

This will mark our fifth season tracking the record of non-AQ programs against teams from power conferences, for no other reason than liking to watch where the numbers go. We’re not sure we’ve ever seen a weekend produce a winning record for a mid-major league that involved more than one or two games. But glory be to the MAC, which played seven games against BCS-favored opponents, and won four. (Yes, we’re even including Northern Illinois’ win over Kansas, even though Kansas is Kansas. COUNT IT.)

MAC teams beat one Big Ten team, two Big East teams and one Big 12 team. Directional Michigan schools had a particularly grand weekend, with Central Michigan knocking off Iowa and Western Michigan laying out UConn. Eastern Michigan also acquitted itself admirably, putting up a dogged fight against Michigan State.

The fifth big winner of Week 4 was the gaudiest: Louisiana Tech, a team with qualities we have been relentlessly touting since last December or so, mowed down Illinois on the road, 52-24. The Bulldogs currently field the nation’s third-ranked scoring offense and have two more high-profile nonconference matchups in the next three weeks: at Virginia and home against Texas A&M. Stay tuned; they’re our favorites behind Ohio to finish the 2012 regular season undefeated.

Speaking of the Bobcats: They’re through their nonconference gauntlet after a Week 4 win over Norfolk State and received 40 votes in this week’s AP Poll. The only other non-AQ teams on that list are Boise State at No. 24 and Louisiana Tech, which received seven votes.

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Jason Wilson and Central Michigan flattened Keenan Davis and Iowa with a last-minute upset win. (Getty Images)

Snap Judgments from the Week 4 early slate. For more coverage, check out our midday Snaps, late Snaps and complete Top 25 review. Also check out our coverage of Florida State-Clemson, Kansas State-Oklahoma and Notre Dame-Michigan.

• Central Michigan 32, Iowa 31: College football’s governing trickster gods are cruel and capricious, and let us never, ever forget it. The same afternoon that saw an Iowa running back deliver a standout performance without suffering the latest in a staggering series of tailback injuries also saw the Hawkeyes defeated by a directional Michigan team –and not a particularly well-regarded directional Michigan team.

Running back Mark Weisman’s 27-carry, 217-yard, three-touchdown outing was overshadowed by the triumph of a Chippewas squad that’s seen little in the way of glory since the departure of quarterback Dan LeFevour. Weisman nearly doubled up Central Michigan’s entire team rushing-wise, but Chippewas quarterback Ryan Radcliff made up for it with an aerial attack that covered 283 yards and two touchdowns.

Radcliff wasn’t the highest-scoring Chippewa, though. That would be kicker David Harman, who made up for weeks of special-teams shame directed at kickers nationwide by hitting a career-long 47-yard field goal with three seconds remaining to clinch the win. And how did Harman find himself in position to hit the game-winner? The final 45 seconds of the game saw the Chippewas fail on a two-point conversion; fail to recover an on-side kick, then recover the on-side after a delay-of-game penalty gave them a second shot; continue to advance on a 15-yard Iowa personal foul penalty; and score nine total points to pull the upset. [RECAP | BOX]

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Tracking the zeitgeist of college football’s third weekend through social media:

Will the Cougs be Leaching Las Vegas w/ a win?

— Michael Felder (@InTheBleachers) September 15, 2012

Terrible kill by Marquess Wilson. #Pac12Volleyball

— edsbs (@edsbs) September 15, 2012

Very appropriate ending to the football equivalent of raccoons rummaging through garbage cans. Sure it’s fun to watch, but what a mess.

— Ralph D. Russo (@ralphDrussoAP) September 15, 2012

@edsbs Too bad Carter had to give up the magician gig due to ESPN’s ‘no Christian magicians’ policy. Same thing happened to Olbermann.

— Flubber McGee (@FlubberMcGee) September 15, 2012

Deon Bucannon’s four-way head turn there was magnificent toddler-opera: 1. “DAWG!” 2 wait 3. Naw I was– 4. DANG [flag]

— edsbs (@edsbs) September 15, 2012

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Freshman running back Rushel Shell racked up 157 rushing yards in Pitt’s upset win over Virginia Tech. (AP)

Snap Judgments from the early Week 3 slate. For more coverage, check out our midday Snaps, Alabama-Arkansas recap, Cal-Ohio State recap, Stanford-USC recap, evening Snaps and complete Top 25 review.

• Pitt 35, No. 13 Virginia Tech 17. We will not lie: We had not harbored high hopes for what appeared to be a dismaying Week 3 slate of games. With only three matchups between ranked teams and many other programs wrapping up their cupcake games before league play, we entirely expected to sit around in various states of boredom or sadness until USC and Stanford kicked off at 7:30 p.m.

So, of course, along comes Pitt, one week removed from getting waxed in its conference opener and two weeks removed from losing its season opener to an FCS team. The Panthers proceeded to stun us all, scoring more than twice as many points on No. 13 Virginia Tech than they managed against the Youngstown State Penguins in Week 1. College football’s gods are a capricious bunch, but let it never be said that they will let us remain without entertainment for long.

Tino Sunseri, so often maligned for reasons both fair and unfair, completed 19-of-28 passes for 283 yards and three touchdowns. One of those scoring throws landed in the hands of Ray Graham, less than a year removed from an ACL tear. Graham bears responsibility for the Panthers’ two remaining touchdowns as well, both of which came on short-yardage runs. Freshman Rushel Shell, who split carries with Graham, recorded 157 yards on 23 touches. The Panthers finished with 537 yards of total offense against Bud Foster’s defense. That is neither a trick nor a typo.

Let’s not let the defense go without credit: Pitt forced four turnovers, including three interceptions thrown by Logan Thomas, and two sacks. Thomas was also the Hokies’ leading rusher, winding up with a grand total of … 28 yards.

As first wins go, this is a doozy. As first wins between future division rivals go, it’s a shot across the bow. (It would be like the Sunseri of old to attempt a shot across the bow that strikes a direct hit on an opponent, wouldn’t it?) [BOX | RECAP]

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• Important things first. We will get to the part featuring teams expected to finish with winning records and play in the postseason momentarily, but for right now, please just bask in the radioactive glow of a Kent State player recovering a fumble and taking it 58 yards in the wrong direction. The announcers aren’t really enjoying this thing as much as they should, so maybe mute this and have the same spirited discussion with your coworkers that we had in our living room last night: Who’s the best/worst here? Andre Parker, the disoriented runner? The Towson players who tackled him even though a muffed punt can’t be returned (even in the wrong direction)? Or Parker’s Kent State teammates blocking for his wrongward journey? We love all three equally. We missed you, MACtion. (Kent State did manage a win, 41-21.)

• No. 9 South Carolina 17, Vanderbilt 13. The 2009 South Carolina-NC State 7-3 slog remains our gold standard for queasy Thursday night openers, but this game was a valiant attempt to carry on that legacy. Andy Staples was on the scene, and writes from Nashville: “Did South Carolina look like a top-10 team in its 17-13 win at Vanderbilt? Not even close. Did the Gamecocks look like a team capable of competing for an SEC — and, using a logical leap informed by the results of the past six years, the national — title? Nope. Did South Carolina leave Vanderbilt Stadium 1-0 overall and 1-0 in the SEC East? Yes. For opening night, that’s enough.”

• BYU 30, Washington State 6. We expected Mike Leach’s unseasoned band to have a rough go of it in Provo. We did not expect Washington State to not be able to score a single touchdown. Stewart Mandel was there to take it all in: “The outcome shouldn’t be entirely surprising. BYU, perhaps unduly overlooked by preseason voters (the Cougars garnered just 10 points in the same Coaches’ Poll that ranked them 25th to end last season), trotted out a senior quarterback, Riley Nelson, who went 6-1 upon taking over the starting job last season, along with seven returning starters from a top 15 defense. Wazzu, nine years removed from its last bowl trip, started a senior quarterback, Jeff Tuel, who’s experienced seven wins in his career (most while injured on the sideline), and a defense that returned three of the front seven from last year’s 82nd-ranked unit.”

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What is it about social media deals and ACC football and unending waves of sadness? Last summer, in the first week of this site’s existence, we examined the true value of Boston College’s Groupon deal, and now @thekeyplay alerts us to this new devilry from LivingSocial:

LivingSocial’s sales pitch begins: “Bicker as you might about whether the Big East or ACC is the better football conference, when it comes time for kick-off there’s only one thing that matters …” The end of this sentence is not “If these two teams combined their win totals from last season they could’ve gone to the Belk Bowl,” but we all know it for truth in our hearts.

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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As longtime proponents of AnimalShirts.net, we’re proud to see the long-surviving, much-maligned airbrushed T-shirt industry really gain a proper foothold in major college football. Lookin’ good, UConn! (Less thrilled, for the record: Actual UConn fans.)

We can really only see three problems with this shirt as it’s been presented to us: First, that some unimaginative artist neglected to take full advantage of some of the the artistic game-changers the T-shirt format allows. Is there a wolf tail peeking out the back of the shirt? If not, why not? (We had an iguana T-shirt that did this in junior high, and no real friends to speak of.) Second, the pictured wolf is quite beautiful, but looks almost friendly. That will never do. The popular breakthrough style would lend an air of menace to the Huskies’ football student sections.

Finally, there don’t appear to be sizing or cut options for women. While we are loath to take money away from this fashion-forward effort, may we instead suggest Animal Shirts’ ghostly white wolf tank dress in a fetching periwinkle? Add a kicky scarf and pair of kitten heels to take this look from tailgate to lunch date to job interview, all of which will take place at the nearest mall kiosk selling rain sticks and pewter figurines of dragons.