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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Brett Baer’s 50-yard FG won New Orleans Bowl for Louisiana last year; his kicking skill has paid big dividends in ’12. (AP)

A too-rare Sun Belt Tuesday game graces your television schedule this evening. We’re sure you have so many questions.

• What information do I, the discerning consumer, require in order to consume this game? The Ragin’ Cajuns and Mean Green kick off at 9 p.m. ET in Denton’s Apogee Stadium. The game will be televised on ESPN2 and streamed on WatchESPN.

• Apogee Stadium? Sounds fancy! It’s a smallish venue, but fancy is certainly an accurate descriptor. Read on for more on North Texas’ attempts to make a sustainably designed athletics arena. The stadium was awarded LEED Platinum Certification last year.

• Is this the best combination of team names we will see in one place all year? It really is.

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Matt Barkley threw for 374 yards in USC’s rout of Hawaii. (Harry How/Getty Images)

Snap Judgments from Saturday’s evening games. For more from SI.com check out our early and midday Snaps, plus our game coverage of Alabama-Michigan, Auburn-Clemson, Ohio-Penn State, South Carolina-Vanderbilt, Washington State-BYU, NC State-Tennessee and Boise State-Michigan State and our full Top 25 review.

• No. 1 USC 49, Hawaii 10. The first line of the play-by-play report from tonight’s Trojans-Warriors game reads thusly: “15:00 USC Matt Barkley pass to Marqise Lee for 75-yard gain (TD).” Do not adjust your monitors. USC whipped out a 75-yard touchdown on tonight’s first play from scrimmage. Not a bad argument in favor of keeping that top spot in the AP Poll, even if it was just against Hawaii, who helpfully boosted the Trojans’ numbers with three turnovers and six sacks allowed.

Don’t forget our “one data point is worse than no data points” argument from the other night. USC is very good at football; Hawaii not so much. But both courses will correct in one direction or the other before the season winds down. We still know nothin’ bout nothin’. What we do know is that tonight’s fireworks were very entertaining, particularly if you like video games.

Before being retired a few minutes into the fourth quarter, Barkley put up a nice, shiny 50-minute performance: 23-of-38 passing, 372 yards, four touchdowns and no picks. Barkley’s star turn was matched by that of tonight’s favored target, Lee, who wrapped up his home opener with 187 yards on just 10 catches. Robert Woods added two additional touchdown receptions. And did we mention Lee ran back a kick the entire length of the field for a touchdown? That’s an afterthought tonight. That’s how good Lee was.

As for the much worried-about position of USC running back: Curtis McNeal got the starting nod, but Silas Redd led the backs with 55 yards on nine carries and a touchdown. (And a fumble.) Linebacker Hayes Pullard recorded the Trojans’ third touchdown of the first quarter with a 27-yard interception return. [BOX | RECAP]

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Penn State players will face an emotional opening game — and a potential upset — against Ohio. (AP)

Kind of like preseason awards for the upcoming weekend of football, and just as binding:

• Best hi-lo upset potential: Ohio @ Penn State. From a football perspective it’s doable, with a loaded Bobcats squad visiting the depleted Nittany Lions. Both teams will be high-strung: On one sideline, Ohio will be facing its highest-profile game of the year (even if it reaches the MAC title game) and the trickiest obstacle to hurdle en route to a potential undefeated season. The home team will be beating the WE ARE STILL PENN STATE drums after an offseason of scandal. But the stakes are very different for each side. An Ohio win in State College will set the Bobcats on a downhill run to a division title. A Penn State win will mean the Lions have beaten a MAC team, but must still pass Virginia and Temple before settling down to the grind of Big Ten conference play.

• Best place for people-watching: Atlanta. Every once in a while, when the calendar gods smile, we get a magical weekend in the ATL where all of the following things are happening around the same time: The Chick-fil-A Kickoff, DragonCon, Atlanta Black Pride Weekend, NASCAR races and a Braves series. Are you at loose ends? Travel to Georgia this weekend. Head for Atlanta and any large, centrally-located bar or restaurant. Watch a burly Auburn fan try to politely squeeze past a table full of elves wearing glue-on pointy ears. Smile at the intersections of so many American dreams, and toast the nearest person in a BARVES shirt to our great nation. Repeat as necessary.

• Best haterade sweet spot: Alabama vs. Michigan. Given each of these fine programs’ ability to draw the ire of conference rivals’ fans, it’s hard to find another game quite so many otherwise uninterested parties will be watching this weekend, just to see the Tide or Wolverines brought low after lofty 2011 postseason performances. The real winners here are joint SEC-Big Ten households containing bitter haters of both teams. Any LSU-Ohio State couples out there? Show yourselves. We would like to study you.

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Umm, it’s called the Football CHAMPIONSHIP series for a reason. HelLO. (AP)

• Think we’ve solved this thing. The entity we are apparently still insisting on calling the FCS wants to rebrand itself, and is endeavoring to do so with the NCAA’s help:

CAA officials are not revealing the cost of the plan, nor do they want to end the suspense by releasing a recently completed consultant’s report.

But it’s about more than just a name, NCAA spokesman Damani Leech said. ”There’s other things related to branding. There’s the strategy behind it. There’s the actual messages,” Leech said. “It’s more than just what you call yourselves, but it’s what you say about yourself and how you talk about yourself.”

For free, we will now fix this problem: Return to I-A and I-AA. AA is, like, a whole ‘nother A, you guys. Americans are not super great at applying basic math to real-world problems. Ride that. In many high school football systems, a greater number of A’s affixed to one’s team signifies a larger program.

Act larger. Swagger taller. Send your best teams to the Sugar Bowl and demand they take the field. Based on our previous experiences in the Superdome, it is entirely possible this might be allowed to happen. Your destiny is exactly that: yours.

• And now, the weather. From the “Tropical Storm Isaac, College Football And You” Department: Tulane moves the Green Wave to Birmingham to ride it out; LSU has closed school today and tomorrow with Saturday’s opener with North Texas still planning to go ahead, and last we heard from Louisiana Tech, the Bulldogs and Texas A&M were still scheduled to convene in Shreveport Thursday night.

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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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Unlike baseball, college football is actually supposed to have an opening weekend. (REUTERS)

All this chirping about based ball’s Opening “Day” just makes us pine for five months from now, when college football will accomplish in five days what baseball crams into nine or so. Is it too early to start making out our Week 1 mayhem wish list? Probably!

Thursday, August 30

• South Carolina @ Vanderbilt. James Franklin taunts Jadeveon Clowney after the Commodores pull off a late go-ahead touchdown, and the ensuing fracas manages to convince SEC officials to suspend the South Carolina stalwart. Seeking revenge, Steve Spurrier departs Nashville with five or six of Franklin’s scholarship quarterbacks, to feather his depth-chart-fiddlin’ nest back in Columbia. No one is truly satisfied, but no lessons are learned.

• Minnesota @ UNLV. TCF Bank revokes Golden Gophers’ stadium sponsorship after team refuses to pay $5,000 in ATM fees following return from Vegas.

• UCF @ Akron. Zips win, and Terry Bowden gets free jousting privileges at all Medieval Times locations for life.

• UMass @ UConn. In their FBS debut, the Minutemen rout the Huskies, relegating Connecticut to the MAC by a previously unnoticed realignment provision. All involved parties agree this is probably in everyone’s best interest.

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