Nick Florence threw for a Baylor-record 581 yards against West Virginia … and lost. (ZUMAPRESS.com)

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

• Most traumatizing treasured memory to be passed down to future generations:

Talk about a memorable tailgate, I just attended a wedding in the parking lot of FedEx Field. Hokies instagr.am/p/QKwOFNqIUU/

— Homer McFanboy (@HomerMcFanboy) September 29, 2012

“Grandmama, what was your wedding day like?” “Well, Kayleee, Bud Foster’s defense allowed 495 yards to Cincinnati, including a 39-yard touchdown pass with less than 30 seconds to play, which is how we got the idea to name your uncle Munchie, in the hopes that he’d grow up to achieve greatness.”

• The We Are Giving Nick Florence A Medal, Consarnit Medal of Gallantry in the Face of Complete Defensive Lunacy: Florence, y’all. See, 581 yards and five touchdowns shouldn’t rightly send anybody home with a loss. Baylor converted 11-of-16 third-down tries Saturday; just one more successful attempt and, again, we’re maybe writing a different story today.

• Loudest scream into the abyss: We are automatically behind any quarterback who shows up in a shirtless mugshot setting before even earning the starting job, so Johnny Manziel turning out to be really good at football is just icing at this point. But what icing: While we were watching Baylor and West Virginia blow holes in one another Saturday, Johnny Football (CAN YOU BE ANY MORE AMERICAN? WE THINK NOT!) was throwing for 453 yards, rushing for 104 more and accounting for four scores against Arkansas. Speaking of which:

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

How about ULM’s two biggest fans tonight – Willie (Duck Dynasty) and SBC commish – go Warhawks twitter.com/kbcommish/stat…

— karl benson (@kbcommish) September 22, 2012

House of Pain, color-out attendance, weeknight kick, no running backs… OMG Monroe deep fried the MAC.

— Steven Godfrey (@38Godfrey) September 22, 2012

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

• No. 4 Oregon 63, Tennessee Tech 14. When is a complete obliteration of an FCS team by a top-five program news? When the afternoon slate was characterized largely by other blowouts and we decide to have some fun watching De’Anthony Thomas show off his gears:

The Ducks’ competition, thus far, has consisted of the Golden Eagles, Fresno State and Arkansas State, but sometimes there’s value in just kicking back and enjoying some pinball. Thomas rolled up 222 all-purpose yards, including the above-depicted 59-yard run, a 49-yard reception (that ended in a fumble) and a 48-yard punt return. Marcus Mariota threw for 307 yards, completing 21-of-28 attempts, before being pulled early in the third quarter. Byron Marshall led the Ducks in rushing with 125 yards and a score on 13 touches. Aren’t video games fun? [BOX | RECAP]

And now, other assorted blowouts from around the nation:

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

MAMA! COME ON INSIDE! ONE OF THESE UTAH TEAMS BOUT TO PUNT! CAN’T MISS THAT!

— Jason Kirk (@JasonKirkSBN) September 8, 2012

ACC MISSED THE BOAT ON UTAH.

— THE KEY PLAY (@thekeyplay) September 8, 2012

Special Teams Coach Beehive was a sentimental hire from the start for Utah. Won’t save his job after this game. (Plus: is beehive.)

— edsbs (@edsbs) September 8, 2012

@andy_staples @ben_jones88 We’re still getting our shirts and ties pressed at 9 am.We’re not Juggalos.

— Bobby Big Wheel (@BobbyBigWheel) September 8, 2012

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Jeff Driskel accounted for 138 all-purpose yards as Florida edged out Bowling Green. (Sam Greenwood/Getty Images)

Snap Judgments from Saturday’s afternoon slate. For more from SI.com check out our early and late Snaps, plus our game coverage of Alabama-Michigan, Auburn-Clemson, Ohio-Penn State, South Carolina-Vanderbilt, Washington State-BYU, NC State-Tennessee and Boise State-Michigan State and our full Top 25 review.

• No. 23 Florida 27, Bowling Green 14. Whatever else happens, today will always be the day we saw a MAC player do a chomping throat slash in the Swamp. A couple more breaks and slightly better all-around play (two missed field goals will loom large in the minds of the Falcons), and Bowling Green, on the road, could’ve beaten the Florida Gators. Whether this is “the year” of any conference remains very much to be seen, but this Saturday was a fun one for fans of the MAC.

Five more elements that most perfectly symbolize this afternoon’s action:
1. Florida getting hit with 13 penalties for a total loss of 101 yards.
2. The faked punt that set up the Falcons’ touchdown drive, with Bowling Green’s punter running for a first down and a late hit penalty on Florida tacking on an additional 15 yards.
3. Two Bowling Green players colliding, Three Stooges-style, in midair.
4. The Gators getting a false start penalty in the victory formation.
5. This:

Crowd boos a cop for stabbing a beach ball.

— Alligator Army (@AlligatorArmy) September 1, 2012

We could fill another entire blog post with indignant reactions that followed the announcement that Jacoby Brissett and Jeff Driskel would be co-starters at quarterback for Florida. With both in the first huddle, fear spiked that Muschamp meant they would start at quarterback simultaneously, but Brissett lined up at quarterback on first down, and Driskel settled in at receiver. On the next play, Driskel took over under center, and, as previously promised by Muschamp, they alternated the first two quarters — sort of. Driskel played the rest of the first quarter and was allowed to complete his already in-progress drive that ate up more than five minutes of the second quarter, culminating in the Gators’ first touchdown of the afternoon, a 15-yard run by Mike Gillislee. Brissett took over for the remainder of the half, and Driskel played the entire second half.

Our dad was visiting today, and theorized that Florida’s lines, or perhaps Muschamp himself, were easily distracted by laser pointers. He also hypothesized that some enterprising visitor in the stands had figured this out. It’s not the worst theory we’ve ever heard. The Falcons led once in the first quarter and tied the game again in the third. And while the final score was semi-respectable, reactions from our Gator buddies regarding what it took to get there ranged from white-hot rage to bleak despair. [BOX | RECAP]

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Armanti Edwards dives over Michigan — and expectations! See what we did there? (AP)

• Beep beep, Freep. The Detroit Free Press headline “Michigan AD Dave Brandon: We have to play Appalachian State to ‘pay them back’” is baldly misleading, but got us to click through, so job well done, we guess? We’ll save you the trouble of reading the article and point out that “pay them back” was indeed uttered by Brandon — as one of a series of reasons he hears from a fanbase wanting to face the Mountaineers again.

This is not a new sentiment, but we’ll take this moment to reiterate what a bad idea this 2014 rematch is from a football standpoint. It’s a clever way to ensure robust ticket sales against an FCS opponent, but if the Wolverines wreck ‘em, so what? They can boast only of having run it up on a program with a fraction of their resources and move to 1-1 in the series. If they win an ugly game, that’s just sad and weird. And while it’s highly, highly unlikely that they’d drop another one, well, how unlikely was that first loss?

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Ohio State football coach Francis Schmidt leads practice in 1938: twitter.com/si_vault/statu…

— Andy Gray (@si_vault) August 21, 2012

Tell us these guys don’t look like they’re about three seconds away from all breaking into song.

• Everything about college football recruiting remains anywhere from vaguely to outright creepy. From the pros to the rest of us.

• What does Collin Klein look for in a date? “Someone just like my mom,” he said “–but younger.”

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USC tops the preseason AP poll, which means we get to use this photo of Lane Kiffin again. (AP)

• Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Hey, American Gladiators is on! Ow. The Associated Press preseason Top 25 has been released, for whatever that’s worth. And while we’re on the topic of whatever that’s worth, a gentle reminder: Preseason polls are worth a good time-killing argument, plus a bonus argument over the usefulness of the poll’s actual existence in the case of the Coaches’ Poll, and that is all. Would you like to hear our argument? It’s a good one! Here goes: We think there’s a better than even chance Ohio goes undefeated this year (that’s the Ohio Bobcats, because would you look at that schedule), and not a single poll voter gave the Bobcats a single poll vote. (We do not have a vote, and that is a good thing, because these rankings would take forever to do well and we would rather be making jokes. If you would like to peruse the votes of the folks who actually do this thing, here they are.)

• Starkville down a top Dawg. Mississippi State wide receivers coach Angelo Mirando announced his resignation Sunday night for non-specified personal issues, which the Clarion-Ledger’s Brandon Marcello reports are not issues of the legal type.

• Those Ds were his Ds. Julius Peppers speaks out on the unfortunate publicizing of his college transcript.

• Back to school. Chris Brown has written many words on the Sluggo Seam that you should read.

• Injury report story hour. Utah quarterback Jordan Wynn is scheduled to return to practice today … Michigan defensive tackle Ondre Pipkins is up and about after a spinal injury scare … Iowa defensive lineman John Sawhill is giving up football due to injury concerns … Iowa presents another injured running back, right on schedule … and Tennessee’s tight ends are already lined up over a haunted burial ground of some sort, so just try not to jinx the rest of the Vols’ offense.

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