Broncos fans, you know you want some of this.

Many, many scheduling moves announced today, including our favorite type of football, Road Trip To Louisiana Football:

• UConn vs. Boise State. Continuing their efforts to shake off the terrifying ghosts of western trips past, the Huskies have scheduled a home-and-home with the Broncos to be played in Connecticut in 2014 and on the blue turf in 2018.

• Cincinnati at Michigan. In addition to a just-announced basketball series, the football Bearcats will travel to Ann Arbor for a Sept. 9, 2017 game, marking the first meeting between the two programs.

• Louisiana vs. Boise State. The Ragin’ Cajuns will host the Broncos in 2014 and make a return trip to Boise for the 2016 season opener. (Attention, people of Boise: Go to this game.)

The Ragin’ Cajuns retain their hold atop the finest spring game destination leaderboard. Bring us back one of those “IN HUD WE TRUST” koozies. (AP)

As we learned last year in Lafayette to our fattening benefit, getting fed at Louisiana-based football activities is one of the highlights of spring ball. It’s also an easy-to-master process:

1. Show up

2. Walk around until you find somebody with a crawfish pot

3. Be offered crawfish

4. Repeat

The Ragin’ Cajuns don’t play their spring game until April 20 this year, which should give you plenty of time to condition your stomach linings against whatever hell your mouth intends to rain down on them. Your training regimen begins tomorrow in Monroe, with Super Warhawk weekend. We are told friendly feeders are just as easy to find here. But should you find yourselves at the Warhawks’ spring game festivities sans pals with boiling proclivities, despair not: The school is offering its own officially sanctioned crawfish boil for $25 a head at the alumni center, starting at 12:30 p.m. Diligence in conditioning now will yield true tailgating greatness this fall.

Johnny Football, tiptoeing to greatness with a thunder. (AP)

• Mack Brown offered the Manning Award as a safety. College football’s first freshman Heisman Trophy winner can add another accolade to his surely sagging trophy shelf: Johnny Manziel has won the Manning Award. Manziel entered the national lexicon with last year’s shirtless mugshot follies, won the starting job at Texas A&M as an underclassman, took home the Heisman, obliterated a former conference rival in the Cotton Bowl and will — football gods willing — continue to stay on his “hi, haters” message train throughout the forthcoming offseason. It is getting perilously close to impossible to hate Johnny Football, particularly if you don’t have a rooting interest in a defense that had to play him this year. Congrats, kiddo.

• Coach-firin’ follies. The silly season rolls on in the assistants derby: OUT goes Louisiana defensive coordinator Greg Stewart … IN comes Mario Cristobal at Miami in a most excellent personnel coup for the ‘Canes … and IN comes Ted Roof, back at Georgia Tech? (Related reading: “Has the internet desensitized us to the extraordinary?”)

• Gettin’ drafty. GONE: Tennessee’s three brightest offensive stars. BACK: Tajh Boyd, whose future presence, along with Aaron Murray’s, makes Clemson’s Week 1 date with Georgia an absolute must-watch game. GONE, TEARILY: Outland Trophy winner Luke Joeckel, whose letter to the faithful of Texas A&M you simply must read.

• Roster blotter. Burnt Orange Nation has the latest on the allegations against Case McCoy and Jordan Hicks … charges are expected against Arizona’s Ka’Deem Carey.

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The story of a bowl, as told through social media.

Mark Hudspeth bets you won’t hit a hit a hit a hit a [radio edit]

— Jason Kirk (@JasonKirkSBN) December 22, 2012

ecu: the late night wrestling on cable access you watch when you can’t sleep of football

— Martin Rickman (@martinrickman) December 22, 2012

More like New Score-leans Bowl.

— SBN College Football (@SBNationCFB) December 22, 2012

Key West. Eating juevos rancheros & watching New Orleans Bowl. Just like Hemingway used to roll. twitpic.com/boagxb

— Ryan McGee (@ESPNMcGee) December 22, 2012

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Follow this trailer to the New Orleans Bowl. (Holly Anderson/SI.com)

The 2012 New Orleans Bowl is just hours away. We’re sure you have so many questions. We’re here to help. (For an X’s and O’s breakdown, click through to Zac Ellis’ game preview.)

• What’s all this, then? The R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl is one of the stabler games in the current postseason field, running on just its second title sponsor since its first year in 2002, and one of the most attractive travel options of 2012, combining hordes of nearby Cajuns with postseason football and New Orleans nightlife.

• Where will this game be played? The Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans, home to the New Orleans Saints, Tulane football team and the Sugar Bowl.

• When is it on television? Coverage begins at Noon E.T. on ESPN with Beth Mowins, Joey Galloway and Quint Kessenich bringing you the action. The game will also be streamed on WatchESPN.

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The Switzies are named for former Oklahoma coach Barry Switzer, patron saint of football frolicking. Ten imaginary trophies — and the coveted Grape Job! plaque — honor our on- and off-field favorites at the close of the season.

• Special Achievement in Spectacle by a Heisman Winner. Johnny Manziel made more spectacular plays this season, in front of bigger crowds than the one that showed up in Shreveport when the Aggies faced Louisiana Tech in mid-October. But we got to see this one with our own eyes, giving it a special place in the shining black pits where our hearts should be. 

Just a madcap sequence of events on a night that saw more than its share of them.

• GameDay Moment of the Year. Someday eons into the future, when as-yet unimagined civilizations discover Earth and piece together the history of college football, it is our fervent and enduring hope that a being fancying itself a prophet uncovers this photo of South Carolina’s live mascot being fed Steve Spurrier-branded wine, and builds a religion around it.

Did Sir Big Spur sample the Steve Spurrier wine? twitter.com/gogamecocks/st…

— GoGamecocks.com (@gogamecocks) October 6, 2012

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Jordan Lynch, pinballer of the year. (AP)

Our weekly highlight show of lesser FBS luminaries. Non-AQs and independents, be welcome. WE HAVE MUCH TO DISCUSS.

• On teams about to move themselves outside our purview. Like we said this morning, we had no sooner finished updating our magnificent work of college football realignment art than word came down we might need to add Middle Tennessee State to it. And right as we were wrapping up this here column, Florida Atlantic joins the fray, chasing FIU to Conference USA. Consider this another plea for a dead period in conference realignment, for the sake of everyone’s collective multitasking abilities, at least until the bowls are over. What on earth else are we going to talk about in February if we get all this conference-hopping sorted out before Christmas?

And what to do with some of these teams going forward? We have a while to figure it out, obviously, but how to cover this ballooning middle class created by the sinking of the Big East? Will the Blue Raiders graduate from Profiterole-dom as Temple did last year? We’ll probably dedicate way more thought to this than we should; but, again, best to save that for the offseason when we have nothing better to do.

• Conference races drawing to a close. Where we’re at heading into that weird hybrid weekend of regular and postseason games: Kent State and Northern Illinois meet Friday night in Detroit for the MAC title game. Tulsa hosts Central Florida this Saturday for the C-USA championship. The Mountain West remains deadlocked in that wacky three-way tie between San Diego State, Fresno State and Boise State, with only the Broncos’ Saturday date with Nevada standing any chance of breaking it. The top two teams in the Sun Belt, Arkansas State and Middle Tennessee, play a final regular-season game Saturday that may as well be the conference title game. Utah State has clinched the WAC title outright with last week’s victory over Idaho. And Army and Navy will meet a week from Saturday for the right to hoist the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy, with Air Force out of the race entirely for the first time since 2005.

• Bowltyme! Stewart Mandel’s latest postseason projections can be found here, along with a freshly-updated chart listing every accepted bowl invitation. Profiteroles playing this holiday season include Nevada in the New Mexico Bowl, Utah State in the Potato, San Diego State and BYU in the Poinsettia, Louisiana in the New Orleans, SMU in the Hawaii, Air Force in the Armed Forces and Navy in the Fight Hunger.

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Will Kent State’s Dri Archer earn a return to his home state of Florida this postseason? (AP)

• Peasants at the gates! Utah State and San Jose State make their first appearances in the BCS rankings, while Northern Illinois enters the BCS Top 25 for the first time in 2012. Are we in for some surprise gate-crashers in the big-money bowls after all? Maybe. Allow SMQ to explain it all for you: “So even for the winner, the potential stakes in the MAC title game range from the Orange Bowl to the GoDaddy.com Bowl, with nothing in between.” And remember not to overlook this Friday’s NIU-Kent State showdown while penciling the Golden Flashes in for a trip to Florida.

• Cajuns to New Orleans to repeat legendary tailgating feats. Bowl invitations issued over the weekend: Utah State to a second consecutive Famous Idaho Potato Bowl, Nevada to the New Mexico Bowl and the Ragin’ Cajuns to their second New Orleans Bowl. Now, we didn’t see the Cajuns in their postseason appearance in person last year, but we have been to New Orleans for college football games, and been to tailgates in Lafayette, and this game just became our first mandatory trip of the postseason. Stewart Mandel’s latest bowl projections can be found here, freshly updated with all invited teams.

• Coach firin’ season, continued. Jon Embree tells the Denver Post he’d been told just last week that his job was safe … one Post columnist calls Embree’s ouster shameful and unjust … Marshall’s defensive coordinator has resigned … and Ellis Johnson’s press conference has been canceled, with a team meeting scheduled for 4:00. Nothing to see here!

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What glories yet await Cory Dorris and the Golden Hurricane as Conference USA play continues? (AP)

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

Tis the season for car commercials with big-ass bows and conference math. We attempted to explain, in bewildering detail, how the MAC races could shake out from here in our Wednesday night MACtion preview. We are here to inform you (with some glee, as we adore late-season chaos) that the MAC has far from the most convoluted conference race situation at the moment. Very quickly, the current states of the remaining non-AQ conference races, as teams not named Navy or BYU begin to prettify themselves for postseason suitors:

• Conference USA: Two teams with perfect 6-0 league play records top the two divisions: Central Florida in the East and Tulsa in the West. After Saturday, one squad’s record will bear some blemish when the two clash in Tulsa, but don’t expect that to affect the race. The Knights have only UAB to clear after that in the regular season, and hold a head-to-head advantage over East Carolina, the only other team in the division with fewer than three conference losses. Tulsa’s championship game aspirations could still be spoiled with a loss tonight and another at SMU November 24, assuming the Mustangs (4-2 in league play) beat Rice in the meantime.

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Jerome Smith ran for 144 yards, including a 35-yard third-quarter touchdown, in Syracuse’s win over Louisville. (AP)

Snap Judgments from the Week 11 early slate. For more, check out midday Snaps, late Snaps, our recaps of Texas A&M-Alabama, Kansas State-TCU and our complete Top 25 review.

• Syracuse 45, No. 11 Louisville 26. The number of undefeated teams in FBS play dropped from six to five following today’s first flight of games, with the Big East becoming the latest conference to lose its last unbeaten program. The Cardinals fell behind less than three minutes into the game, on a 20-yard ‘Cuse field goal, and would tie the score twice in the first quarter, but they never held a lead over the unranked Orange. Three Syracuse touchdowns in the second quarter gave the underdogs a comfortable cushion that they wouldn’t surrender.

Syracuse’s Ryan Nassib threw for 246 yards and three touchdowns on just 15 completions. He was balanced on the ground by a 144-yard, one-touchdown rushing performance from Jerome Smith and a 99-yard, two-score effort from Prince-Tyson Gulley. Alec Lemon was by far the favored target of the afternoon, as he finished with nine receptions for 176 yards and two touchdowns. For the Cardinals, Teddy Bridgewater accounted for 422 passing yards and 17 rushing yards all by his lonesome. Louisville’s total net offensive output was 472 yards.

Spinning this forward: The Cardinals now trail Rutgers in the Big East title race; the Scarlet Knights are 4-0 in league play with Cincinnati, Pitt and Louisville left on the schedule. Syracuse can clinch bowl eligibility with a win in either of its final two games, at Missouri or at Temple. [BOX | RECAP]

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