Rashad Greene and other FSU return men, beware! Clemson’s long snappers will haunt you once every two years! (AP)

• A very specific part of the Clemson-Florida State series is haunted. We must share this email we received from Clemson sports information, because it’s too wacky not to pass along: “Clemson long snapper Phillip Fajgenbaum recovered a Florida State punt fumble in the first half. It set up a Clemson touchdown, helping the Tigers to a 21-14 lead at intermission. It was the first fumble recovery of Fajgenbaum’s career. What made it odd was that it marked the third straight trip to Tallahassee that a Clemson long snapper had recovered a Florida State fumble.  And those are the only recovered fumbles by  Clemson long snappers in the 21st Century. In 2010, Matt Skinner recovered a Florida State fumble on a punt return and in 2008 Charles Roediger accomplished the same feat.” Florida State special teams players of 2014: HEADS ON A SWIVEL.

• Other news of the weird in our inbox. Here’s a press release excerpt we bet the Big Ten didn’t count on writing this year: “Minnesota, Northwestern and Ohio State carry unblemished records into the beginning of conference play following wins last weekend…”

• Hey, Harvey Updyke’s back! “Updyke ran into trouble again last week when attempting to return a lawnmower to a national home improvement store in Hammond.” Harvey Updyke’s post-treeslaying life is going about how you’d expect.

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Shawne Alston led West Virginia’s productive rushing attack with 16 carries for 123 yards and two scores.
(Justin K. Aller/Getty Images Sport)

Snap Judgments from Saturday’s early slate. For more from SI.com check out our midday and evening 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. 11 West Virginia 69, Marshall 34. Minutes after wrecking Clemson in the Orange Bowl to conclude his first season as West Virginia’s head coach, Dana Holgorsen walked into his postgame press conference, looked around and declared, “Yeah, that’s exactly how we draw it up, right?”

He might have said much the same thing after the Mountaineers’ 2012 season opener. We’ve just seen the last version of the Friends of Coal Bowl for the foreseeable future, and WVU made it a memorable one. Holgorsen’s war machine wound down the afternoon in Morgantown with 655 yards of total offense, almost perfectly balanced — 331 rushing and 324 passing. This first stat was achieved without the presence of running back Dustin Garrison, who is still recovering from a December ACL injury. Shawne Alston led the ground attack for the Mountaineers, amassing 16 carries for 123 yards and two scores. Andrew Buie trailed with 80 rush yards and one touchdown (and one monstrous block), Tavon Austin with 67 yards and quarterback Geno Smith with 64 yards and a rushing score.

Through the air, Smith put on close to a perfect performance, completing 32-of-36 passes for 323 yards and four touchdowns. Backup Paul Millard got into the action late, throwing one touchdown and one interception. Stedman Bailey led the Mountaineers in receiving, with nine catches for 104 yards and two scores, followed by J.D. Woods, who caught seven passes for 75 yards and a score. Austin and KJ Myers hauled in additional touchdown grabs.

The defensive highlight of the afternoon came when linebacker Isaiah Bruce returned a fumble 43 yards for a score. Is it nonsensical to say this is the unit we’re most interested in tracking, development-wise? The Mountaineers’ offense is obviously potent, but these games will take a turn for the hair-raising once they get into conference play and face other formidable points generators. (Not that this will happen soon; the next scheduled opponents are James Madison and Maryland.) [RECAP | BOX]

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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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Illinois’ Tim Beckman called Northwestern “the team upstate” at Big Ten Media Days. (Reid Compton-US PRESSWIRE)

We’re watching from home as the Increasingly Inaccurately-Named Big Ten coaches assemble in Chicago for their annual carousel of preseason press conferences. Assorted highlights from the daylong media blitz follow. As with most media blitzes, not much was learned, but fun was had.

Given the wireless situation at B1G media days, you’ll probably never see this tweet.

— Tom Fornelli (@TomFornelli) July 26, 2012

Conference to conference, some things just never change.

• Big Ten Media Day MVP: Tim Beckman. First things first: We must inform you that Beckman now coaches football at Illinois. It is entirely possible that this fact has slipped your radar. Anyway, approximately half a dozen of Beckman’s staffers were spotted in State College yesterday, and some people thought that total was kind of tacky in terms of sheer volume. So Beckman took the stage today and made very sure everybody knew that Illinois assistants weren’t actually banging on the door of the football complex: “We were in State College, but we did not go on campus. We went to two establishments outside campus and called some individuals.” That is not why Tim Beckman is our Media Days MVP of Thursday, however. This is:

Q.  Can you talk about your renewed emphasis on Illinois’s game with Northwestern and why you chose to emphasize that game in particular?

BECKMAN:  Again, being around college football for my whole life, rivalries are something that make college football so unique. And even in the Big Ten, I’ve been in those big rivalry football games, and I think it’s something that you breed through your program. We call it the team upstate. And I’m not scared to say that. That’s the school we’re going to call it. We’re going to make it a rivalry and we’re going to make it a very, very important part of our football season.

Don’t make Pat Fitzgerald’s neck angry, Tim Beckman. You wouldn’t like it when it’s angry.  

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Lovingly curated light readings to speed you through your Friday:

• Hi, haters. There’s a font of NSFW language in the above video, so beware unless your boss finds it charming when profanity is sung or delivered in a British accent. But click, and you’ll find a loving anthem to internet trolls, largely dormant around here during the summer because we can’t call 35-percent completion ratios “lackluster” and in doing so grievously insult their favorite quarterbacks. We miss you guys too, and we’ll see you real soon.

• AND SPEAKING OF HATERS. You’re just jealous of Mike Garrett’s new job.

• So far as we know. Astonishingly, this Morgantown lawnmower DUI charge is not associated with the West Virginia football program. [via @BrianMFloyd]

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Yep, that's a belt buckle logo.

The 2011 Texas Bowl is just days away. We’re sure you have so many questions. We’re here to help. (For an Xs and Os breakdown, check out Ben Glicksman’s game preview.)

• What’s all this, then? There was a once Meineke Car Care Bowl. This is not that bowl. That is that bowl. This is the Texas Bowl, now with a title sponsor.

• Where will this game be played? Reliant Stadium in Houston, home of the Texans, which we have always liked because it was the first stadium to feature a roof but also a real grass field. We imagine hordes of roving Pomeranians roosting there in the offseason and luxuriating in the cushy turf.

• Pomeranians move in packs in the wild? They migrate from the DFW Metroplex.

• When is it on television? Kickoff is scheduled for noon ET on Saturday, December 31. The game will be televised on ESPN.

• Whom does it feature? Tie-ins for all five whole years of this bowl’s storied history have included the Big East, Conference USA, Mountain West, Big 12 and Big Ten.

• What about this year? Backsliding again in terms of quality, we’re presented with Northwestern and Texas A&M, both 6-6 following the regular season.

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Denard Robinson rushed for two touchdowns and passed for three more in a win over Ohio State. (US PRESSWIRE)

Snap Judgments from the Week 13 early shift. For swing shift Snaps, click here. For late Snaps, click here. For Andy Staples’ recap of LSU’s win over Arkansas, click here. For Staples’ take on Alabama’s rout of Auburn, click here. For a recap of all the Top 25 action, click here. For highlights from SI.com, click here. 

• No. 17 Michigan 40, Ohio State 34: I swear, looking at Michigan box scores week after week, you’d think nobody knows that Denard Robinson is a player who ought to be defended on the football field. This week’s reasons to put a body on Denard: 14 pass completions for 167 yards and three touchdowns and 26 rushes for 170 yards and two additional scores. This week’s reason a team might put bodies on Denard and still lose: The Michigan quarterback’s ability to place the football in the hands of running back Fitzgerald Toussaint, who will then do things like run for 120 yards.

Michigan’s defense, the year’s most reluctant talking point, must not be overlooked here. Ohio State’s Boom Herron was contained to 37 yards on 15 carries, his third consecutive sub-century game after running wild against Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana following his return from suspension. More problematic for the maize and blue was Braxton Miller, who cracked 100 yards rushing for just the third time this season (accomplished previously against Indiana and Penn State) while shattering his former personal best outing as a passer with 235 aerial yards and two touchdown passes. The Buckeyes hung with it early and late, turning a 16-7 first-quarter deficit into a 24-23 halftime lead and adding 10 more points in the fourth to make the margin of loss more than respectable.

Still, the streak ends here. The Wolverines, you’ll recall, hadn’t beaten the Buckeyes since November 2003. They can now start their own cheeky counter: “It has been two hours since Michigan beat Ohio State in football.” We’re also almost surely witnessing the end of the tenure of Luke Fickell, a Buckeyes lifer thrust into a near-impossible situation in the wake of NCAA scandal and Jim Tressel’s resignation.

Time now to look to the future: Miller appears to be a young quarterback with many fine double-threat attributes. Wonder where the Buckeyes will find a head man with experience coaching up such athletes? Anybody hear anything? [RECAP | BOX]

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Dan Persa (7) left with an injured shoulder in the second quarter, but Northwestern still pulled the upset. (AP)

Snap judgments from the Week 10 swing shift. For late shift Snaps, click here. For early shift Snaps, click here. For a review of the Top 25 action, click here. For game highlights from SI.com, click here.

• Northwestern 28, No. 9 Nebraska 25: Does it not make perfect sense, in this year of constant conference lobster-pot scrabbling, that the second Nebraska settles into the driver’s seat of the Legends Division (the Huskers have one conference loss and hold a tiebreaker over Michigan State thanks to last week’s head-to-head victory), it fritters it all away? On a failed onside kick? With ranked Penn State and Michigan and an Iowa team that’s suddenly looking tricky again on the slate to round out the season? Not a good look.

That the Wildcats managed the upset without the services of starting quarterback Dan Persa is even more damning evidence against the once-feared Nebraska defense. Persa left the game in the second quarter with a shoulder injury, and his replacement part Kain Colter put three touchdowns on the Huskers. Jacob Schmidt, Treyvon Green and Colter combined for 160 rushing yards, while Huskers star Rex Burkhead was held to 57, his second-lowest rushing total of the season and the first time since October 1 he’s failed to crack the century mark. Colter’s not exactly a pushover; he was Persa’s primary substitute during the first three weeks of the season and has seen playing time in four other games since, but it’s an adjustment for any team, and one Nebraska was utterly unable to capitalize on. [RECAP | BOX]

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