Landry Jones and David Ash will square off in Saturday’s Red River Rivalry game. (Icon SMI :: Getty Images)

Viewing recommendations for this weekend, for those of you over-saturated with South Carolina-LSU and Stanford-Notre Dame coverage. *See what we did there?

• Best THIS IS STILL A RIVALRY, CONSARNIT. The Red River Shootout, we would argue, has not lost any of its luster with Texas and Oklahoma both slipping out of the AP top 10. (We would also argue that it’ll always be the “Shootout” and never the “Rivalry.”) First of all, to complain that a Nos. 13 vs. 15 matchup is any sort of letdown is to forget how brief this season is in general, and how weird this week’s slate of games is in particular. Ranked-on-ranked action isn’t easy to come by this Saturday. Savor what is there. Second of all, don’t tell grownups that the Longhorns and Sooners might want to beat the snot out of each other that much less just because both teams have been dinged with a loss. Is it nastier when the stakes are higher? We’re not actually sure. Texas is still Texas, Oklahoma is still Oklahoma, fried bubblegum on a stick is still fried bubblegum on a stick and the RRS remains a destination game and appointment television.

• Best reason to eat French fries on a sandwich for brunch. Louisville at Pittsburgh, in one of those curious 11 a.m. ET kickoffs we can never quite perk up for.

• Best rivalry game you’ve never heard of, Week 7 edition. Nevada at UNLV, renewing the Battle for the Fremont Cannon. In general, this blog wants to always come down on the side of teams trading weapons as traveling trophies, be they cannons or axes or boots full of live bees. It’s one of our few guiding principles, and we stand by it.

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Colby Cameron and Johnny Manziel lead two of the nation’s top offenses. Who wins? Or will they decide to film a buddy cop comedy instead? JOHNNY FOOTBALL AND THE COLB-CAM: LOOSE CANNONS. (AP-Stacy Revere/Getty Images)

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

It is time. The Ohio Bobcats are 6-0, bowl eligible and unranked and likely to stay that way for a little bit while AQ teams above them take losses and are dropped in the polls accordingly. They’re also not making a great case for Big Important Bowl Inclusion, having allowed three non-AQ teams (Marshall, UMass and Buffalo) to play them closer than their Week 1 opponents at Penn State. Six MAC teams remain on the schedule, not one of which finished 2011 with a winning record and only one of which (Kent State) is currently above .500 in 2012. If the Bobcats plan on ascending into the national Top 25 before the year is out, they’ll have to stage some blowouts.

This week, national spotlights will be trained on Louisiana Tech, a team less likely to go undefeated but more likely to impress the BCS if it does. A matchup viewed as a high-stakes Week 1 upset possibility has only seen its stakes increase since Hurricane Isaac forced a six-week delay, as both LaTech and Texas A&M went and got themselves ranked. Tech’s No. 23 AP ranking is just the second AP nod in program history and its first since 1999. A&M has rattled off four straight wins since dropping its first SEC game to Florida in Week 2, with the final scores ranging from the predictable (70-14 versus South Carolina State) to the uncomfortable (30-27 at Ole Miss).

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Logan Kilgore and the Middle Tennessee State offense racked up 510 yards of offense in a win at Georgia Tech. (AP)

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

You see, they are called the “Sun Belt” teams because they are just out there belting people. See. That the Sun Belt would field four teams to be reckoned with in 2012 was a reasonable preseason estimate of ours, we think. What we didn’t expect was that two of those teams would be Louisiana-Monroe and Middle Tennessee State rather than Florida International and Arkansas State. Mario Cristobal’s Golden Panthers fell to 1-4 after a 48-20 loss to Louisiana Saturday; perhaps this is his way of telegraphing just how much he wants people to start bothering him with potential job openings in power conferences. We saw the Panthers, on paper, as the likely top contender for conference championship honors; right now, as deep as the Sun Belt is rolling, FIU will be lucky to finish in its top half.

But let’s focus on the good stuff, which you already know if you’re bothering to read this, but which we can’t stand not to repeat: Middle Tennessee, which opened the season with a six-point loss to an FCS team, just racked up 510 yards and 49 points against Georgia Tech, at Georgia Tech. Tee-hee! The Blue Raiders’ weapon of choice: junior running back Benny Cunningham, who carried the ball 27 times for a grand total of 217 yards and five touchdowns. MTSU’s defense sacked Tevin Washington four times. Paul Johnson must’ve eaten a quarry’s worth of gravel just to make it through a single film session.

“Our guys know what they’re getting into at Middle. These guys have played against them the last couple of years. This is a good conference,” said Louisiana-Monroe coach Todd Berry after Saturday’s win over Tulane. A popular sentiment heading into 2012, re: the Sun Belt, to be sure. But did you ever think these two outfits would be this thickly in the mix? Week 6′s Warhawks-Blue Raiders tilt is looking like appointment television about now.

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Kind of like preseason awards for the upcoming weekend of football, and just as binding. For additional preview content heading into Week 5, check out Andy Staples’ Walkthrough.

• POINTIEST POINTSPLOSION: No. 25 Baylor @ No. 9 West Virginia. We need this. “We,” in this case, stands for “America.” We were blessed with one of the finer shootouts in recent memory last Friday night, when Louisiana-Monroe and Baylor damned the very notion of defense and just lobbed bombs at each other for 60 minutes. It is the Bears’ sovereign duty to motor into Morgantown tomorrow morning with the same agenda in mind, and the Mountaineers’ to be gracious and accommodating hosts in this respect. The over/under for this game currently hovers in the low 80s, and we think that’s insufficient. We hope it’s insufficient. By the time this thing is over all fans should be too wrung out from touchdown celebrations to even consider burning the nearest piece of upholstered furniture.

We will be spiritually satisfied with nothing less than those 30 seconds at the end of a fireworks show sustained for three to four hours. We regret only that this is a noon game, which will make the smoke emanating from the scoreboard by the end of the first half more difficult to Instagram. College football trickster gods, hear our prayer.

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• Make eye contact with Nick Saban in the safety and comfort of your home. teamcatlab takes a spin with college football’s wee emperor.

• Grudging BCS update. We want a dead period for all of this. Conference realignment, playoff creation, all of it. Let it consume the other eight months of the year, and let us talk football and only football right now. Into this line of fire steps the AP’s Ralph Russo to keep the rest of us posted on the growth of the new postseason system.

• Maize & Bones. In one of the more macabre stories to come out of the Michigan football community this week, the estate sale apparently being thrown by Bo Schembechler’s son, Matt, has been cut short by an injunction filed by the groundskeeper (see the Twitter timeline of Michigan Daily’s Stephen Nesbitt for details). Also, there’s a box of femurs just hanging out, like bones are wont to do at an estate sale? Or something?

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Robbie ‘Mighty Mouse’ Rouse, out for a leisurely stroll against one of the worst football teams in human memory. (AP)

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

Soooo remember last week, when we were all “Robbie Rouse is 79 yards away from becoming Fresno State’s all-time leading rusher, isn’t that swell?” We all know by now what happened next. So while we’ve got Mighty Mouse up on a pedestal, let’s put some of his teammates up there with him.

Video game football doesn’t begin to cover what Fresno State did to Colorado in Week 3; this was more akin to watching a cartoon. Were you aware … 

•  Rouse’s 94-yard touchdown run, the one that made him Fresno State’s all-time leading rusher, wasn’t even the Bulldogs’ longest scoring play of the game? On Fresno State’s prior possession, Derek Carr and Isaiah Burse combined for a 97-yard pitch-and-catch touchdown run.

•  Carr recorded his 300 passing yards and five touchdowns all in the first half?

•  Fresno State’s defense recorded four interceptions and four sacks?

•  Safety Phillip Thomas was responsible for three of those interceptions, two of which he returned for touchdowns?

•  Even the Bulldogs’ punter, Andrew Shapiro, got in on the rout with a career-long 69-yard punt? 

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Assorted bests and worsts from the weekend that was:

Tino Sunseri: Making football things happen since RIGHT NOW, haters. (AP)

• Best gotcha. From Pitt’s sports information department: “Each of Pitt’s five wins over Virginia Tech have come against nationally ranked Hokie squads (No. 13/13 in 2012; No. 5/5 in 2003; No. 3/3 in 2002; No. 12/13 in 2001 and No. 19/20 in 1997).” In other news to make you question whether that blue you’re seeing is really blue, Tino Sunseri is your Big East Offensive Player of the Week.

• Worst portents. First, we offended a couple Twitter followers over the weekend with a lively animated GIF of Smokey’s hindquarters, so if your employer thinks dogs should always wear pants, do not click this link. Second, remember always that the gods of sport are capricious, and never, ever Tempt The Wrath Of The Whatever From High Atop The Thing:

Pastor leading Lord’s Prayer at Neyland Stadium skipped “amen” and went straight to “Go Big Orange!”

— Mark Schlabach (@Mark_Schlabach) September 15, 2012

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Loud, long and sincere applause for Manti Te’o, y’all. (AP)

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

• No. 20 Notre Dame 20, No. 10 Michigan State 3. That Michigan State scored at all in tonight’s contest is something of a minor miracle, particularly taking into account certain other fateful kicks we’ve seen go awry today. Dan Conroy made a successful 50-yard field goal with four minutes remaining in the first half, the Spartans’ lone scoreboard contribution of the evening. Michigan State’s Andrew Maxwell was sacked four times (giving him the unenviable rushing stat of -28 yards), barely completed half his passes, and accounted for 187 of his team’s 237 yards of offense. Le’Veon Bell, he of the 44-carry, 210-yard outing against Boise State, contributed 19 rushes for 77 yards.

Everett Golson’s completion percentage was even poorer, but he made one crucial pass count early, hitting John Goodman in the end zone for a backwards leaping touchdown catch you’ll be seeing frequently on highlight reels this weekend. Cierre Wood, George Atkinson and Thewo Riddick contributed 56-, 43- and 30-yard rushing performances for the Irish.

Points aside, all Irish eyes were focused on star linebacker Manti Te’o, performing admirably just days after the deaths of his girlfriend and grandmother. Te’o recorded 12 tackles (seven solo) and two pass breakups. [BOX | RECAP] Read More…

Andrew Manley threw for 242 yards as NMSU fell to UTEP in last year’s Battle of I-10. Will he exact revenge in ’12? (AP)

Kind of like preseason awards for the upcoming weekend of football, and just as binding. For additional preview content heading into Week 3, please see Andy Staples’ Walkthrough.

• Best interstate rivalry game. From Tuesday’s Profiles in Profiteroles, we remind you that the Battle of I-10 passes two trophies back and forth between UTEP and New Mexico State. One is a brass spittoon, the other a shovel found in an abandoned mine. We cannot stress to you enough how thrilled we are that the Battle of I-10 is real. The world is a fine place.

• Best intrastate rivalry game. Central Florida and Florida International have much in common entering this matchup. Both have designs on their respective conference championships, pretty good chances of getting to the top once league play begins and a recent history of disappointments in nonconference play.

• Most promising ranked-teams football game. We suspect No. 2 USC will run (well, fly) away from No. 21 Stanford in kind of a hurry. No. 18 Florida vs. No. 23 Tennessee is a rare night kickoff, which sets off all sorts of bad-luck haunting alarms in our head. That leaves No. 20 Notre Dame at No. 10 Michigan State as the only remaining ranked-on-ranked game of Week 3. It also carries the most promise for a compelling, close-fought football product.

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ULM quarterback Kolton Browning edged the Warhawks past Arkansas and into history. (Wesley Hitt/Getty Images)

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

• HAIL TO THE SUN BELT, SURE IS A FUN BELT, RA RA RA! What could top Utah State’s thrilling Friday night victory over Utah? Nothing short of Louisiana-Monroe taking a top 10 SEC team to overtime, on the road, and pulling out the win on a fourth-down quarterback dash. Said quarterback, Kolton Browning, has since been named Davey O’Brien Quarterback of the Week and a Walter Camp National Player of the Week honoree. Browning accounted for 481 of ULM’s 550 yards of offense, and four of the Warhawks’ five touchdowns. The Warhawks have their first win over a ranked team since leveling up to FBS, and to round out the weekly awards, have been named Week 2′s Tostitos Fiesta Bowl National Team of the Week. Last week it was Ohio. (A moment of cynicism: We love the attention being bestowed on non-AQs more than just about anybody right now, but this Tostitos shout out is pretty adorable considering how nigh-impossible it would be for the Bobcats or the Warhawks to actually make it into the Fiesta Bowl.)

• It is barely Week 3 and we are already out of poll puns. Idle in Week 2, Boise State is unranked in both major polls for the first time in four years. BYU is the only ranked team in this week’s AP Poll at No. 25, with Boise State, ULM (whee!), Ohio and Utah State also receiving votes. The Aggies’ lone vote is the program’s first since 1966; the Warhawks’ 23 are their first in team history. We hesitate to even mention the Coaches’ Poll for fear of helping its continued legitimacy, but teams receiving votes from disinterested voting SIDs include Boise State, BYU, Louisiana Tech, Ohio, Nevada and ULM.

• EA Sports loves USA, after all. EA Sports personnel have been spotted in Mobile, making preparations to incorporate South Alabama into the next edition of NCAA Football.

• The best news. Tulane’s Devon Walker is reportedly “alert and responsive” following spinal surgery. Tulane has set up an assistance fund in his name; for more ways to support the Walker family, click here.

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