After impressing in backup duty last season, Eddie Lacy will be Alabama’s starting running back in 2012. (Getty Images)

A host of household names departed the corps of college football last winter. So did some lesser-known but crucial moving parts. Today, we get acquainted with their replacements. Here are 10 teams (listed alphabetically) with gaping holes to fill:

Alabama: Trent Richardson

Last year: Richardson finished the 2011 season ranked fifth nationally in rushing, averaging perilously close to 130 ground yards per contest. He ranked sixth in scoring, averaging more than 11 points per contest. About all he failed to do was follow up Mark Ingram’s Heisman with a stiffarm trophy of his own.

This year: The next guy up, if you want to get technical about it, is 2011′s No. 2 man Eddie Lacy. It’s a big dropoff from Richardson’s 130-yard average production to Lacy’s 56, but you have to like the numbers Lacy put up on such a paltry allowance of carries (674 rushing yards, 95 touches). Lacy recently returned to action following offseason foot surgery and will be a full participant in fall camp.

But like CBS’ Daniel Lewis, we are almost more intrigued by the guys coming up behind Lacy: Jalston Fowler, Dee Hart and T.J. Yeldon. These players are always fun to track at ‘Bama because, like Richardson behind Ingram, they are undeniably talented, have to wait their turn and will be endlessly clamored for on the radio and message boards the first time Lacy has an off night.

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• On Griffin, on Kuechly, on Bullock, on Claiborne!

Western Kentucky running back Bobby Rainey earned a second-team All-America nod from SI.com after rushing for a school-record 1,695 yards. (Don McPeak-US PRESSWIRE)

SI.com’s 2011 All-America team has been released. Other familiar names on the first team: Ball, Mercilus, Richardson, Blackmon, Woods and Upshaw. (And your eyes do not deceive you: That is Western Kentucky’s Bobby Rainey down there on the second team. Yes, that is well-deserved. No, I did not get to pick this team myself.)

• Fresh coaches, bought and sold! Gus Malzahn, ten pounds of GMOOH in a five-pound bag. Arkansas State is a curious choice of destinations for reasons financial, but not geographical, and will lend credibility to our constant shilling for the Sun Belt. Fresno State is reportedly thisclose to announcing Tim DeRuyter as Pat Hill’s replacement, and UCLA will operate in the two-staff tango.

• O frabjous day! Craig James to cease polluting our airwaves?  I knew there’d be a use for this campaign poster someday.  If anybody needs me, I’ll be booking a flight to an upcoming town hall meeting to ask him to sign my copy of Swing Your Sword.

• Realignment tidbit, grudgingly dispensed. Navy to the Big East, very eventually!

• Roster blotter. Time to pop open another little hatch on your Maryland Football Transfers Advent Calendar. Two Oklahoma State linemen have been hit with misdemeanor drug charges. Mike Bellamy, suspended for the ACCCG, won’t suit up for Clemson in the Orange Bowl, either.

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Punter Brad Wing (38) was arguably No. 1 LSU's most valuable player this season. (US PRESSWIRE)

Today we’re taking up the mantle donned by Andy Staples in the year of the House of Spears and banging our drum (actually, it’s probably more of a tambourine) for an imaginary, expanded Heisman Trophy finalists field. The names listed here failed to earn national recognition for the most famous of bronze lumps, but would be nationally revered if we ran the zoo. Our contenders are a mixed bag of defenders, linemen, stars from overlooked positions and conferences, and even a special-teams whiz kid (guess who!), who’d have our votes in a Very Merry, Very Alt Heisman Race:

• P Brad Wing, LSU. While I could not be more pleased to see a non-offensive player among this year’s actual finalists, particularly one so fearsome as Tyrann Mathieu … I’m not at all sure he’s the best player on his team. Then again, the guy who is the best isn’t even up for his own position award. LSU’s success this season has ridden on defense, and Wing, the freshman Aussie with the adamantium leg, is a field position war machine, a siege engine who’s barricaded opponents behind their own 20-yard line on 23 of 57 tries this year. On average, LSU opponents have returned Wing’s bombs less than half a yard. The first time I saw him play in person, during the Tigers’ Sept. 25 road trip to Morgantown, Wing’s six punts landed on the three, four, five, 11, eight and nine-yard lines. But he won our hearts against Florida, where a fake punt led to a 44-yard touchdown run — that was ultimately called back for taunting under the execrable new “sportsmanship” penalty. Despair not, B-Wing: It’s etched forever on the scoreboard of our souls.

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