There are 11 conference races in FBS football, and heading into what will be their final Saturday of the regular season, only one — the WAC — has already crowned its champion. In every other league, and even among the independents where Army and Navy don’t play until next week, there’s at least a little room for movement at the top, if not an outright battle for the conference title. (For more in-depth preview content of this weekend’s SEC title game and other contests, visit Andy Staples’ Walkthrough.)

Georgia has a big game coming up. Of course there’s a song.

Actual Conference Championship Games, Actually

• Central Florida at Tulsa, 12:00 p.m. ET. In keeping with our tiebreaking theme, this game will serve as a best-of-three supremacy determiner: The Knights and Golden Hurricane are 1-1 all-time against each other when playing for the C-USA championship.

• Alabama vs. Georgia, 4:00 p.m. How many bowl scouts from games that can’t possibly hope to take Alabama or Georgia d’you reckon were awarded press credentials for this?

• Nebraska vs. Wisconsin, 8:00 p.m. If you like conference championship games featuring fewer than two division champs, this is the contest for you. Ohio State will celebrate its 12-0 regular season next Friday.

• Florida State vs. Georgia Tech, 8:00 p.m. It is technically still possible for a 6-6 team to receive a BCS bowl bid, at which point it would be a 7-6 team, which makes it all better, right? The majesty of the BCS!

Read More…

De’Anthony Thomas torched Oregon State for 122 rushing yards and three scores. (Jonathan Ferrey/Getty Images)

Snap Judgments from the Week 13 midday flight. For more, check out Friday’s Snaps, Saturday’s early Snaps, Saturday’s late Snaps, our recaps of Michigan-Ohio State, Florida-Florida State and Notre Dame-USC and our complete Top 25 review.

• No. 5 Oregon 48, No. 16 Oregon State 24. Despite the typically gaudy final score for the Ducks, this game was close well into the third quarter. Two De’Anthony Thomas touchdowns in just more than two minutes, separated by a Beavers fumble on a kickoff return, put the game out of reach. And Oregon being Oregon, the Ducks piled on just a bit, with Kenjon Barner and Marcus Mariota adding another pair of touchdowns around a second-down Sean Mannion interception. Turnovers completely hamstrung Oregon State this afternoon; the Beavers committed six in all, including three interceptions that killed off three of their four final drives.

While the Ducks’ most memorable defensive plays occurred in the air, their offensive attack was confined largely to the ground. Mariota completed 17-of-24 attempts for 139 yards and a touchdown and rushed for an additional 85 yards and a score. The best of these: a 42-yard touchdown run just more than two minutes into the first quarter. Ahead of him in rushing: Barner, with 221 yards and two scores on 29 carries, and Thomas, with 122 yards and three scores on 17 attempts.

Read More…

UCLA’s Johnathan Franklin rushed for 171 yards and two touchdowns in a victory over USC. (Jeff Gross/Getty Images)

Snap Judgments from the Week 12 midday slate. For more, check out our early Snaps, our coverage of Stanford-Oregon, our look at the new BCS landscape and our complete Top 25 review.

• No. 17 UCLA 38, No. 21 USC 28. You heard a lot last week about the football monopoly in Los Angeles being over. No, again. No, for real this time. Well, you’ll hear even more about it this week, but only because it’s finally, demonstrably true. (We’re taking suggestions on which board-game related jokes to start making in its place from here on out. Balderdash? Sorry? Jenga?)

On a rainy afternoon in the Rose Bowl, the Bruins dashed out to a 24-0 lead midway through the second quarter, only to see the Trojans snatch momentum back by the start of the third, by which point Matt Barkley had thrown two touchdown passes and defensive tackle George Uko had scored a genuine Fat Guy Touchdown on a slip-and-slide fumble recovery. (Storied rivalry, historic venue, high conference stakes, home-and-home jerseys AND a FGTD: This game had it all, y’all.) A pair of traded touchdowns and a successful USC two-point conversion later, and the Trojans were trailing by three points with a little more than seven minutes left in the fourth quarter.

Read More…

“Why, yes, this legal pad IS made entirely out of recycled hundred-dollar bills,” Bill Hancock is probably thinking here. (AP)

• Don’t run. We are your friends. SI.com’s Stewart Mandel was in Denver for the playoff meetings Monday and returned with a full report on the near future of college football:

“There will be plenty of money for everybody,” said Hancock. “The bottom line is more.”

Click through for actual details of the approved postseason format and the bowls and spoils in question.

• Roster blotter. Oregon has lost safety Avery Patterson and Tennessee has lost linebacker Curt Magitt, both to torn ACLs. In happier news, an update from Houston on defensive back D.J. Hayden tells us Hayden has been released from the hospital following his freak heart injury sustained last week in practice. The Cougars’ team physician, Walter Lowe, had this to say in a school release:

“Looking at the whole course of events and the severity of the injury, D.J. has progressed remarkably well and is out a lot sooner than expected. He’s got a lot of healing left to do as the procedure to repair the inferior vena cava is much like a heart transplant. The sternum should take around three months to heal and D.J. is expected to be able to resume normal activities without contact in three-to-four months.”

Read More…

Johnny Manziel (2) and Texas A&M dealt Alabama its first loss since last November. (Mike Zarrilli/Getty Images)

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

• No. 15 Texas A&M 29, No. 1 Alabama 24. We are reminded tonight of how Kevin Sumlin’s first round of interviews went at last summer’s SEC Media Days. No reporter actually stood up, shoved a mic in his face and asked, “HEY COACH, YOU SKEERED?” but something like that wasn’t all that far from happening by the time the Q&A ended. Sumlin dispensed with those questions back in July with gracious humor, some quips and a few dagger stares. Tonight, his Aggies dispensed with the No. 1 team in the country.

Heading into Week 11, Alabama had a perfect record in 2012, one loss in nearly two full seasons of football and a unanimous lock on the No. 1 spot in the AP Poll. And tonight, in Tuscaloosa, the Tide were rudely introduced to a Kliff Kingsbury offense that put them in a 20-0 hole, at home, by the end of the first quarter. ‘Bama answered with two touchdowns and a field goal over the next two quarters, but it surrendered nine more points to the Aggies in the fourth. The Tide pulled to within a five-point, 29-24 deficit on a 54-yard AJ McCarron-to-Amari Cooper score halfway through the final period and held A&M to a three-and-out on the subsequent possession. But a costly McCarron interception inside the five-yard line on what could have been the game-winning drive, plus a ‘Bama offsides penalty with A&M set to punt in the final minute, sealed the stunning upset.

Read More…

Everybody who wants to see the national championship trophy filled with marzipan, thumbs up! (AP)

Saturday games of varying degrees of interest, grouped in highly subjective categories. For more in-depth preview content, visit Andy Staples’ Walkthrough.

• Biggest game we feel like we couldn’t predict if our lives depended on it: No. 3 Kansas State at TCU, 7:00 p.m. ET. We’re still harboring a dream that seemed far-fetched just a few short weeks ago, a dream inspired by Tom Fornelli suggesting that if Bill Snyder takes home the crystal football this year, he’ll break it in half and make two hard candy dishes. The ‘Cats, at 9-0, are one of six undefeated teams remaining in FBS play. No gimme games remain, but then again, they haven’t played a gimme game since Oct. 6 against Kansas. In their past three outings, they’ve beaten three ranked opponents by a combined score of 154-68.

The Horned Frogs, no slouches on defense, will pose a greater threat to K-State’s undefeated season if the Wildcats take the field without starting quarterback Collin Klein. The Heisman frontrunner’s status for Saturday has been carefully guarded almost since the moment of his injury during last week’s game against Oklahoma State. It’s entirely possible we could see this contest played out without either team fielding the quarterbacks that topped the depth charts at the year’s outset. Only one thing is for certain: This will be the purplest football contest of the regular season.

Read More…

Kansas State’s Collin Klein is no stranger to reaching the end zone against Oklahoma State. (AP)

Assorted Week 10 football contests that you get to watch and we, for the most part, do not. Enjoy?

• Games we will miss the most while participating in a wedding ceremony taking place in a state that is very far away from any of these games: In descending order: Oregon-USC (7:00 p.m. ET), Alabama-LSU (8:00) and Oklahoma State-Kansas State (8:00). Let our plight serve as a dire warning: Friends don’t let friends go to art school and go out into the world thinking it’s socially acceptable to plan November weddings.

• Team of the week that Maryland will either beat or embarrass or both with its 19th-string quarterback: Is it terribly foolish of us to like the Terps’ chances against Georgia Tech? We’ll find out at 12:30 in College Park. Maryland’s defense has been its strength this season, and Tech’s doesn’t seem particularly inclined to stop teams that do have quarterbacks, so …

• Most Americanest football contest of Week 10: Air Force and Army run the next leg of the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy race at noon.

• Saddest event we still technically have to call a football contest: Auburn and New Mexico State, with a combined record of 2-14, meet on the Plains at 12:30.

Read More…

• Live to win. Never forget. Robb Akey is out at Idaho, and we are sad. We will remember Akey’s time at Idaho with great fondness, entirely because of this:

• The news Nick Saban doesn’t want you to hear. The latest BCS standings have Alabama, Florida, Kansas State, Oregon and Notre Dame in the top five. Among other undefeateds: Oregon State clocks in at No. 7; Mississippi State sits at 11; Rutgers and Louisville are 15-16. The lowest-ranked undefeated team is also brand-new to the BCS standings: Ohio, in at No. 24. Also new to the standings this week: No. 22 Michigan and No. 25 Wisconsin. Falling out: Cincinnati, TCU and Iowa State. This week marks the Crimson Tide’s longest No. 1 streak in school history, but you didn’t hear that from us.

Read More…

Geno Smith has thrown for 1,728 yards, 20 TDs and no interceptions in four games. (Justin K. Aller/Getty Images)

“The old adage is true: Offense sells tickets. And these days there is more pressure than ever on athletic directors to sell football game tickets to fund their programs.” – Ralph D. Russo, Associated Press.

Earlier this week, Nick Saban made headlines by refuting the above sentiment during the SEC’s weekly conference call: “[At] some point in time, we should look at how fast we allow the game to go in terms of player safety [...] I just think there’s got to be some sense of fairness in terms of asking is this what we want football to be?”

This spurred two immediate thoughts: Someone (namely, this blog) needs to stage a revival of Footloose that features Saban banning dancing in a small backwater town, but lacking a surplus of felt from which to make poodle skirts, someone needs to get a response from West Virginia’s Dana Holgorsen, the season’s most dastardly perpetrator of crimes against placid-paced football. Does he think his players suffer unduly from effects of the up-tempo pace?

“Nick’s a great defensive coordinator and obviously wants to slow things down because he’s got great players and coaches defense,” said Holgorsen. “Every defensive coordinator across the country wants it to be like it used to where it’s just slow and you can figure it out. … Texas high school football has been doing the same thing for the last 10 years and they’re starting to get really good at it, which means they’re starting to score a lot points. Ironically enough, the NFL is starting to do it a little bit. … It’s what people want to see.”

So this is, in fact, “what we want college football to be?”

“I’ve been doing the same thing for quite a while.” said Holgorsen. “I think based on popularity and TV, this is what people want it to be. As long as it’s good, sound, smart football, I think that’s the key.”

Read More…

“Psst. Hey, Colby Cameron, lookit me! I’m an AP Poll voter! I’m gonna slot Texas Tech in over you, no matter what!” (AP)

• Sonny Dykes will remember your insolence. It’s fruitless to worry over college football polls when one has no power to change them, but what else are we going to do at this hour on a Monday morning? We have followed the progress of the Louisiana Tech Bulldogs with interest since seeing them come perilously close to knocking off TCU in last season’s Poinsettia Bowl. They are currently 4-0 and have beaten Illinois and Virginia in nonconference play over the past two weeks (earning $1.6 million for those two road trips). They are not even close to cracking the AP Top 25, or the exercise in mass self-delusion we continue to refer to as the Coaches’ Poll. This is stupid and gross. Would you like to know more? Peruse our favorite Monday read, Bryan Fischer’s Poll Attacks.

• Or an Urbz-Dantonio glower-off, at 20 paces, at dawn. Ohio State doctored game footage it sent to Michigan State, says Michigan State’s defensive coordinator. “MSU associate athletic director John Lewandowski said MSU athletic director Mark Hollis and Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith settled the issue between them, with no Big Ten involvement,” says the Detroit Free Press. We imagine this matter was resolved with one extremely tense game of Hungry Hungry Hippos. (Did you know they make a travel version of this game now? We have one in our guest room. It’s like a little terrarium of potential sibling warfare. This post is in no way sponsored by Hasbro, which would not approve of some of the words we said to our little brother over the last marble.)

Read More…