CAUTION: DO NOT KICK TO THIS PLAYER. HE WILL RUIN YOU. (Scott W. Grau/Icon SMI)

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

We lamented, last week, the loss of the best hope for a BCS-busting scenario in 2012, but please don’t think we’re writing off five conferences and the independents. This entire series is a labor of love, constructed to avoid precisely that notion. Louisiana Tech probably won’t make an appearance in the Orange Bowl, but the Bulldogs will be bowling somewhere. And after a week out of the national rankings, they’re right back in following their 70-28 obliteration of Idaho. All any team can ever do is beat every opponent placed in front of it, and should it stumble along the path to postseason glory, the absolute best thing a team can do is what LaTech is doing right now.

Tech clocks back in at No. 24 in the AP Poll, trailing Boise State at No. 21 and Ohio at No. 23 and ahead of Toledo, Tulsa and NIU stuck under the “also receiving votes” category. Ranked this week in the actual BCS standings: the Broncos at No. 21 and Bobcats at No. 24. This week marks the Bobcats’ first-ever appearance in the BCS standings.

First in votes also received, the Rockets really should’ve cracked the Top 25 this week, in our humble, unimportant opinion, after knocking off No. 21 Cincinnati. (If you missed it, this was one of the weirder games of the season, with Toledo recording a 29-23 victory without an offensive touchdown. Its scoring: A 75-yard interception return, a 91-yard kickoff return and five field goals.) Look for Toledo to make a for-real appearance in the polls next week if the Rockets can really pile it on at Buffalo this Saturday.

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Landry Jones and David Ash will square off in Saturday’s Red River Rivalry game. (Icon SMI :: Getty Images)

Viewing recommendations for this weekend, for those of you over-saturated with South Carolina-LSU and Stanford-Notre Dame coverage. *See what we did there?

• Best THIS IS STILL A RIVALRY, CONSARNIT. The Red River Shootout, we would argue, has not lost any of its luster with Texas and Oklahoma both slipping out of the AP top 10. (We would also argue that it’ll always be the “Shootout” and never the “Rivalry.”) First of all, to complain that a Nos. 13 vs. 15 matchup is any sort of letdown is to forget how brief this season is in general, and how weird this week’s slate of games is in particular. Ranked-on-ranked action isn’t easy to come by this Saturday. Savor what is there. Second of all, don’t tell grownups that the Longhorns and Sooners might want to beat the snot out of each other that much less just because both teams have been dinged with a loss. Is it nastier when the stakes are higher? We’re not actually sure. Texas is still Texas, Oklahoma is still Oklahoma, fried bubblegum on a stick is still fried bubblegum on a stick and the RRS remains a destination game and appointment television.

• Best reason to eat French fries on a sandwich for brunch. Louisville at Pittsburgh, in one of those curious 11 a.m. ET kickoffs we can never quite perk up for.

• Best rivalry game you’ve never heard of, Week 7 edition. Nevada at UNLV, renewing the Battle for the Fremont Cannon. In general, this blog wants to always come down on the side of teams trading weapons as traveling trophies, be they cannons or axes or boots full of live bees. It’s one of our few guiding principles, and we stand by it.

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We know, David Ash. We can’t wait for Texas’ Week 6 game against West Virginia, either. (AP)

Snap Judgments from the Week 5 evening slate. For more coverage, check out midday Snaps and early Snaps, Holly Anderson’s coverage of Baylor-West Virginia, Andy Staples’ coverage of Ohio State-Michigan State, Stewart Mandel’s coverage of Stanford-Washington and our complete Top 25 review.

• No. 12 Texas 41, Oklahoma State 36: It may be impossible, even for devoted students of hyperbole such as ourselves, to demonstrate how much we’re looking forward to next week’s Texas-West Virginia game. Texas quarterback David Ash is going to draw statistical comparisons, over the course of this week, to Geno Smith, comparisons in which he will fall short in a numerical sense, even having faced a Cowboys’ defense that was missing several key components.

But for those of you who study the delicate science of clutchology, witness the Longhorns’ final scoring drive in Stillwater tonight, in which Ash hit D.J. Grant with a pass that resulted in a 29-yard gain, a pass caught so quickly it looked like a flicker in the cable feed on our crummy hotel television, and then less than a minute later connected with Mike Davis over the top of a Cowboys defender for 32 yards more. OUR NOTES ARE ALL IN CAPS AT THIS POINT, PROBABLY BECAUSE GUS JOHNSON WAS CALLING THIS GAME, BUT ALSO BECAUSE BOTH OF THESE PLAYS WERE REALLY NEAT.

Two plays later, Joe Bergeron tried to punch in a touchdown from two yards out and, depending on which shade of orange you prefer, either scored heroically or fumbled the ball and was handed a score by an inept set of officials. (On our subpar viewing monitor, it didn’t look like a score, but we weren’t there. What we do know is that we agree with our colleague Andy Staples that this was one of those games that just begged for ref suspensions. Bad calls went to both sides.)

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Denard Robinson will look to play hero against Notre Dame for the third straight season. (Lon Horwedel/Icon SMI)

Kind of like preseason awards for the upcoming weekend of football, and just as binding. For additional preview content heading into Week 4, including actual discussion of actual upcoming football games, actually, please see Andy Staples’ Walkthrough.

• Best opportunity for a drink refill and perhaps a nice nap inside a stadium. We have heard tell of this campaign to make Notre Dame fans watch football games more like living people and less like tastefully attired statues, but the combination of legions of Fighting Irish Down-In-Fronters and this banner does not inspire confidence in the possibility of a rollicking Saturday night in South Bend. More’s the pity, with both teams ranked and the possibility of an Actual Football Game looming large in prime time. Denard Robinson! Manti Te’o! Notre Dame’s defensive front! Denard Robinson again! Rejoice.

We have but one request, attendees of tonight’s festivities: Prove us wrong. Let your joy and anguish ring from sea to shining sea. We want it to be possible to relate to you, to like you, just in case your football team actually is planning on going the distance this year. Bridge the gap. Stand up and holler. Do the right thing.

*This makes Alabama very, very tall, yes. The football team, we mean. Not … well, you know.

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Give us this day our daily Catlab.

• And now, the weather. Today in Hurricane Isaac Affects Sports: LSU has canceled practice but still plans to play it season opener against North Texas. Oregon State’s opener against Nicholls State has been postponed indefinitely due to travel concerns.

• Football is here now give us football please and thank you. Today in Yelling At Your Television Provider: Pac-12 gets catty regarding DirecTV and its current lack of a distribution agreement … AT&T U-Verse plays footsie with the Longhorn Network … and we find ourselves among those unfortunate Americans with a cable provider not interested in carrying WatchESPN. Our feelings on this matter are summed up here.

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62% of the country is dead wrong on the most important question facing the nation this week. twitter.com/11W/status/240…

— Eleven Warriors (@11W) August 29, 2012

• PEOPLE. WE ARE A DAY AWAY. GET IT TOGETHER. In other wrongity-wrong map news, please enjoy playing “how many mistakes are in this picture” with this map of college football rooting interests (via @RedditCFB).

• And now, the weather. To yesterday’s list of teams affected by Hurricane Isaac, you may now add Louisiana Tech, which has moved its Thursday opener with Texas A&M to Oct. 13, and South Alabama, whose all-n00b debut versus UTSA will shift from Thursday to Saturday.

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• You would have to have absolutely zero familiarity with us to think we’re joking. Stand down, crabby Scout denizens; we’re serious: This is one of the best promo videos we have ever seen. Wonder of wonders, it is actually funny; how often do university videos find success in that department? The gently swaying hips. The “SHUT UP, DENNIS!” The punctuating vending machine punch at the end. Well done, Memphis. [Via.]

• May our children forgive us. The Pac-12 Networks went live Wednesday night, without any untoward destruction of property. There’s a new website, which is unsurprisingly slick. Here is a joke about cupcakes.

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Josh Boyce and TCU are back in the BCS Top 25 after knocking off Boise State. (Icon SMI)

The week in lesser FBS luminaries:

• One stage of your journey is over; another begins: Friday night, I lamented the loss of both Boise State and TCU from BCS contention. But rather than regretting the Horned Frogs dragging the Broncos down into the morass of one-loss teams, let’s celebrate what happened next: TCU’s return to the BCS Top 25. With one “good” loss and one of questionable quality, it’s where the Frogs deserve to be, and where they certainly would be were they already in an AQ conference. And they’ll both get to go out on garish high notes if they end up in the postseason where Stewart Mandel is projecting them: TCU against Nevada in the Poinsettia Bowl and Boise against UCLA in the Las Vegas both bode well for bitter blowouts.

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