Stephon Tuitt and Notre Dame sacked Riley Nelson four times in a victory over BYU. (Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)

Snap Judgments from the Week 8 midday slate. For more, check out our early Snaps, late Snaps, our coverage of South Carolina-Florida, Kansas State-West Virginia, Oregon-Arizona State and our complete Top 25 review.

• No. 5 Notre Dame 17, BYU 14. We will now dispense the first piece of news you interested parties who missed the game will want to hear: Tommy Rees started at quarterback for the Fighting Irish, with Andrew Hendrix in to run a few plays and no action for Everett Golson, who was recovering from a concussion. We will now dispense with the second piece of news you interested parties who missed the game will want to hear: Notre Dame allowed its first offensive touchdown since its Sept. 8 matchup with Purdue.

Rees wasn’t asked to do much, and he attempted only three passes in the entire second half. He finished 7-of-16 for 117 yards, a touchdown and an interception. The Irish offense functioned mostly on the footwork of Theo Riddick, who had a career day with 143 yards on just 15 carries, and Cierre Wood, who totaled 114 yards on 18 carries. Tyler Eifert led Irish receivers with four catches for 73 yards and a score. We feel like we’ve used the phrase “supposedly vaunted defense” a lot this year, but the Cougars were allowing an average of fewer than 68 yards against the run coming into South Bend Saturday.

BYU was also operating under a sometimes backup quarterback, with Riley Nelson making his second start since Taysom Hill sustained a season-ending knee injury against Utah State. (You’ll recall Nelson, like Rees, has prior starting quarterback experience.) Nelson completed 22-of-35 attempts for 172 yards, two touchdowns and two picks, and he was sacked four times. His final interception ended BYU’s would-be comeback drive deep in Cougar territory with 22 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter. [BOX | RECAP]

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Michigan State’s Mark Dantonio can get WAY grouchier than this. You’ll see. (AP)

Your oddly specific Saturday viewing guide. For more football-centric preview content, check out Andy Staples’ Walkthrough.

• Most locally sourced farm-to-fan football. In-state rivalries abound in Week 8, for those of you keeping vigilant watches on your carbon footprints. Saturday’s sustainably-grown grudge matches include No. 22 Stanford at Cal (3 p.m. ET), Michigan State at No. 23 Michigan (3:30 p.m.) and No. 12 Florida State at Miami (8 p.m.).

• Worst idea for a noon kickoff in recorded human history. Or maybe “best idea in terms of public safety,” but we’re still calling an 11 a.m. CT kickoff for LSU at Texas A&M the worst kind of cowardice. Who wants to live forever?

• Saddest ball of football sadness. Army (1-5) at Eastern Michigan (0-6), the latter of which we really did call “the country’s best winless team” on the Mandel Initiative podcast earlier this week. We meant every word of that. (HONORABLE MENTIONS: Boston College, already with a loss to this Army team, has to play a Georgia Tech team that’s already lost to Middle Tennessee State; and FAU-South Alabama, which will play in the One Of You is Getting Off The Floor Of The Sun Belt Whether You Want To Or Not Classic.)

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Josh Nunes led Stanford back from a 14-point fourth-quarter deficit vs. Arizona. (Jason O. Watson/Getty Images)

Snap Judgments from the Week 6 afternoon slate. For more, check out our early Snaps, late Snaps coverage of LSU-Florida, Georgia-South Carolina, West Virginia-Texas and complete Top 25 review.

• No. 18 Stanford 54, Arizona 48 (OT). Stanford wasn’t the only ranked team to be threatened by a less well-regarded program in Saturday’s second flight of games, but it certainly wrapped up its Week 6 contest in the most entertaining fashion. Trailing Arizona 48-34 early in the fourth quarter, quarterback Josh Nunes pioneered two touchdown drives and rushed for one- and three-yard scores to force overtime.

From there, as Bryan Fischer succinctly put it, the Cardinal began to play defense when it counted. Chase Thomas intercepted a tipped pass from Matt Scott, and Arizona’s defense, content to remain as languorous as it had been for much of the afternoon, allowed Stepfan Taylor to run for a 21-yard touchdown on the Cardinal’s second ensuing play from scrimmage.

Let us speak now of what was done well: Scott, whose existence on the Widlcats’ roster was the most compelling reason to watch RichRod’s Arizona tenure from the jump, completed a school-record 45-of-69 attempts for 491 yards and three touchdowns. The occasionally maligned Nunes turned in a performance to be proud of, completing 21-of-34 attempts for 360 yards and two passing scores. Each team boasted a 100-yard rusher (Arizona’s Ka’Deem Carey had 132 yards and three touchdowns on 29 carries; Stanford’s Taylor had 142 yards and two scores on 31 carries) and an 100-yard receiver (Arizona’s Austin Hill had 166 yards and two touchdowns on 11 catches; Stanford’s Levine Toilolo had 141 yards and a score on five grabs). Nick Saban does not approve. [BOX | RECAP]

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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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This is a 1-pound, half ground beef, half ground bacon burger topped with bacon, peanut butter and jelly. No words. twitter.com/Andy_Staples/s…

— Andy Staples (@Andy_Staples) October 3, 2012

Staples, doing the good work.

• Next food news update of vital importance. None other than the Wall Street Journal measures SEC stadiums’ proximity to Waffle Houses, even going so far as to state a measurement in sausage links. We have never felt closer to the WSJ than we do right now.

• Will the Honey Badger return to LSU? A resounding “maybe!” from the Times-Picayune.

• Welp. “According to a study published in the October issue of American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, male non-athletes were more likely than females to increase their alcohol consumption and partying, and decrease their study time, in response to the success of the team.” [Via.]

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Washington’s Kasen Williams provided one of Thursday’s only moments of offensive flash. (AP)

• Washington 17, No. 8 Stanford 13. Will this be one of those delightful years that sees every highly regarded team picked off, one by one? What, like you don’t want to see a Minnesota-Oregon State Rose Bowl? Cartoon beavers and gophers, clutching flower stems in their teeth! Don’t hate this beautiful inevitability.

We do not quite credit Stanford’s Trent Murphy with the elusive FAT GUY TOUCHDOWN, but he certainly is burly, and his interception return provided some of the only entertainment to be found in Thursday night’s matchup. Stewart Mandel, bless him, actually watched the whole thing and wrote some words about it. Honor him. [BOX | RECAP]

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

• Play of the week. Bryan Bennett, Colt Lyerla, we don’t even particularly want to know what happened here; we just want to bask in its radiance. Friendship!

Just a few yards further back from the goal line and this might have turned into the clown-shoed fumble of the week, which makes it all the more poignant and glorious.

Serious (ish) question. Who gets the touchdown on that Oregon score? Can you split them like sacks?

— Joe Galbraith (@joestate) September 23, 2012

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• They do move in herds. Hey, the polls are out! AP! Coaches’! Crazy! Go!

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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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