Have a touchdown pass, America. Bryn Renner has so many of them to spare at the moment. (AP)

• North Carolina 37, Virginia 13. That sure got away from us in a hurry, didn’t it? A 36-yard interception return by UNC’s Tre Boston late in the first half broke the game open at 20-10, and apart from a lone third-quarter field goal the Cavaliers would not threaten again. Bryn Renner wrapped up the evening with 29-of-36 pass attempts completed, good for 315 yards and three touchdowns. His favored target, Quinshad Davis, recorded 178 receiving yards on 16 catches, and Gio Bernard added 57 yards rushing and 47 receiving yards with one score. Erik Highsmith caught two of Renner’s three scoring passes. UVA is out of postseason contention but could still prevent Virginia Tech from going to a bowl with a win next Saturday in Blacksburg. [BOX | RECAP]

• This holiday season, give the gift of vintage sanctions. The COI has imposed a few additional penalties on Tennessee for violations dating from the Lane Kiffin era, which we’re only mentioning here because Dave Hart saying ”We will finally close the chapter on the prior actions of members of a previous football coaching staff,” very shortly before he creates a second coaching staff he’ll have to call “previous,” gives us the grim giggles.

• What a nice gesture from a nice person. Per a Kansas sports info release: “In an effort to send his 2012 senior class out with a fitting farewell, Kansas football head coach Charlie Weis is offering to foot the bill for all KU students seeking admittance to Saturday’s ‘Senior Night’ game versus Iowa State.” Kickoff is scheduled for 7 p.m. ET. No word on whether journalism students are included in the invitation.

• Shiny! The 2012 Nagurski Trophy finalists were announced Thursday. Still in the running for college football’s National Defensive Player of the Year: Jadeveon Clowney, Jarvis Jones, Dee Milliner, Manti Te’o and Bjoern Werner. Winner to be announced on December 3.

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• Good morning to America’s Heartland, with love from catlab. Team catlab, your one-stop destination for all catlab needs and services.

• I got those suspended-while-my-team-plays-Boise-State blues. Dave Christensen just sings it out, man.

• Soren Sorensen’s persistent use of Comic Sans continues to be excused, as He Ain’t From Around Here. The New York Times runs down college football statheads.

• On the Mike Leach Twitter thing. Brian Floyd traces the feelingsball origins of folks getting het up over Wazzu players being banned from Twitter, and Tom Fornelli dispenses sense:

If you don’t trust your players on Twitter then you probably have a pretty good understanding of the decisions college kids make.

— Tom Fornelli (@TomFornelli) October 24, 2012

• And the seventh seal was opened, and it said “but but cash money.” The seventh access bowl may not happen, for basically the same reasons the have-not teams it would have welcomed into the postseason are have-not teams in the first place.

• Big East football: Pay attention. No, really. Stop making that face!

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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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• No. 24 Boise State 7, BYU 6. Hoowee, Thursday night’s game had just about everything — with the notable and unsettling exception of offense. The Cougars gained 200 net yards and turned the ball over five times. The Broncos outgained them by 61 yards but scored fewer than 10 points for just the second time in Chris Petersen’s tenure. By the time BYU benched Riley Nelson and sent freshman backup Taysom Hill in for a four-yard rushing touchdown, the first offensive score of the night, fewer than five minutes remained in the game. We can safely assume that Bronco Mendenhall’s ill-fated call of a two-point conversion attempt was a signal that he wanted this to be over just as badly as the rest of us, to whatever end.

If that was the night’s only offensive score, you ask, how did Boise State get seven points? FAT GUY TOUCHDOWN! The very BEST sort of Fat Guy Touchdowns are the ones involving nose tackles, and redshirt senior Mike Atkinson obliged a grateful nation by pawing a Nelson pass out of midair and lumbering 36 yards for six points. It was his first career interception and score. We are grateful to have witnessed it. [BOX | RECAP]

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Here we see Dri Archer running away from Buffalo’s defense. This happened a lot on Wednesday night. (AP)

• Kent State 23, Buffalo 7. It is expected, in major college football, that there will be punches and that those punches need to be rolled with, with all speed. Accidents happen. Injuries crop up. But we can’t really fault Buffalo for dropping a game in which four of its starters got knocked out, particularly when one of those was star running back Branden Oliver. Oliver missed the second half with what was announced as only a “leg injury”; strong safety Issac Baugh, wide receiver Fred Lee and defensive end Steven Means were also out by the end of the evening.

Also not helpful for Buffalo: Kent State running back Dri Archer. The junior edged out teammate Trayion Durham, 127 rushing yards to 112, our favorite being a 57-yard second-quarter scramble that included an ice-cold spin move to break a tackle. [BOX | RECAP]

• Daily inspiration. Disappointed in last night’s game? Understandable. But understand that better things lie ahead:

Heady move starting #MACtion with Kent State-Buffalo. Weeded out the flybys. For those with patience, it’ll be rewarded

— Brian Floyd (@BrianMFloyd) September 20, 2012

BYU and Boise State kick off at 9 p.m. ET. Join us, won’t you?

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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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Looks like we got a bear in the air in Nick Florence, boys. (Cal Sport Media via AP Images)

• While you were lolling. We’re still at that honeymoon stage where we’ll watch anything remotely resembling college football, even if Kentucky’s school commercial did run immediately before the Wildcats dropped a pass and fumbled on consecutive plays. Louisville triumphed in this early rivalry game, 32-14. [BOX | RECAP] In evening action, Baylor walloped SMU, 54-29, with a 341-yard, four-touchdown passing performance from RGIII successor Nick Florence. [BOX | RECAP]

• We have a vote for a thing! Some nice people with unsound judgment have given us a vote in this year’s FBS Independent Players of the Week awards. Week 1′s top vote-getters: BYU quarterback Riley Nelson, BYU tight end Kaneakua Friel, Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o and BYU punter/kicker Riley Stephenson.

• Please secure your homes against an incoming barrage of Apollo 13 jokes. We may have called Ohio beating Penn State correctly, and UTEP putting a scare into Oklahoma, but that just makes our first really big Inevitable Wrong Thing all the more potent, doesn’t it? Houston, our pick to win C-USA if UCF is ineligible, got dropped 30-13 by Texas State (that’s Texas STATE, yes) on Saturday, and this morning the school announced offensive coordinator Mike Nesbitt’s resignation. Cue Louisiana Tech sports information, with the Stat of the Week:

@siholly So far this season Louisiana Tech has faced/prepared for three offensive coordinators and played zero games. Stat of the week?

— Patrick Walsh (@LATechPWalsh) September 3, 2012

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Brady Hoke grapples with the shame of finishing his first year at Michigan with a mere Sugar Bowl berth. (AP)

• Can’t fault his logic. Summer is the most frustrating point on the college football calendar when it comes to parsing coachspeak for actual facts. Every team had a really great summer. Every team’s new strength coach has moved it light-years beyond last year’s benchmarks. Offenses are crisper; defenses are really hunkering down (while playing faster at the same time). And every program’s immediate and entirely attainable goal is to win a conference championship.

Brady Hoke, like everyone else in his profession, spoke along these lines when he first took the reins at Michigan last year. The Wolverines went 11-2 and won the Sugar Bowl. Those two losses were conference losses and cost them a shot at the Big Ten title. Hoke’s self-assessment, therefore, is that he failed in his first year. This is our favorite thing any coach has said in months.

Elsewhere in Wolverenia: The starting running back gig is publicly up for grabs, and the receiving corps is thinned for the moment following Roy Roundtree’s knee surgery.

• We return one more time to Friday’s well. Previously on INTEGRITY OF THE COACHES’ POLL: Lane Kiffin and USA Today got in a snit over his vote in their poll party. Today’s episode: Kiffykins gives no bothers, and doesn’t even want to be in your stupid Coaches’ Poll. While we’re all here, this is a fine time to argue over USC’s crime statistics versus UCLA’s.

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Lane Kiffin, seen here pondering the ineffable integrity of the Coaches’ Poll. Probably. (AP)

Lovingly curated light reading to speed you through to the weekend:

There are a couple things happening in Los Angeles right now that we’re going to sort of mash together here. See if you can keep up, because both tales are of vital importance to your very existence.

• The part where Jim Mora is all “LOL USC is full of murders” and then has to act like he’s sorry he said that. So UCLA’s new head ballcoach tried the white salmon trick on the radio, at the expense of his crosstown rivals. Here we have to go straight to excerpting the L.A. Times story on the matter because we don’t want you to miss a word:

Mora, discussing recruiting on the Roger Lodge radio show, said he makes a point to tell parents how safe it is at UCLA, noting, “We don’t have murders a block from our campus.”

The murder of two Chinese graduate students near the USC campus in April became international news. But Mora said Thursday that he was speaking only about the UCLA campus. “I just said our campus is safe,” Mora said. “I didn’t say anything about anyone else’s campus. I just said it about our campus. I didn’t mention another campus. We don’t have anybody getting murdered a block off of our campus.

“If anybody, whether USC or Cal State San Bernardino, is offended by the statement, then that’s their insecurity, not mine.”

Mora later delivered something at least remotely resembling an apology, although we are not precisely sure why he bothered. If you’re the guy who’s OK insinuating to parents that their sons might be murdered if they sign with the Trojans, and then bring up that recruiting tactic on live radio, at least stick the landing. Own that. (It’s also worth noting that we are absolutely certain this kind of gambit is employed in recruiting all over the country — but that you don’t hear those guys bringing it up on the radio. Ten points from Hufflepuff, J-Mo.) And, more importantly for internetting purposes, why on earth would you leave yourself open to the obvious and scathing retort?

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Could Kyle Brotzman’s notorious miss against Nevada in 2010 be a boon for Boise State? (Peter Read Miller/SI)

Stanford’s offensive coordinator position was recently endowed by an anonymous donor to honor Andrew Luck (gross autoplay video alert at that link). The donation got friend of the program The Gurgling Cod thinking about how to turn this into a rivalry game:

UGA FAN PROTIP — make anon gift to GT, name OC position after Reggie Ball. #trollanthropy espn.go.com/college-footba…

— The Gurgling Cod (@TheGurglingCod) May 23, 2012

Monied fans, you have your marching orders. Our previous bloggy home has just wrapped up an annual charity drive in which donations are given to match rivalry scores (say, $70.33 for enthusiastic fans of January’s Orange Bowl outcome), but an endowment? Oh, that’s a gift that lasts and lasts. We have 10 modest suggestions for our readers overburdened with spite and disposable income:

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