The uninitiated may think of Daniel Moore as an ultra-masculine Lisa Frank for the college football set. (AP)

Daniel Moore, for those of you unfamiliar with Tuscaloosa’s Thomas Kinkade, has earned some measure of fame in SEC country for his oil-paint depictions of glorious moments in Crimson Tide football lore. This offseason, however, he’ll take a rare detour from Rammer Jammerian subject matter to focus on a surprising new project: A portrait of Johnny Football besting Alabama in the Tide’s only loss of 2012. (As the A&M loss didn’t cost ‘Bama a trip to the title game, we suppose he can afford to be gracious.)

Moore’s paintings typically carry simple, sturdy titles, such as “Crimson Dynasty,” “Maximum Block” or “The Winning Connection,” and because it is Tuesday and we literally have nothing better to do, we set out to collect suggestions from our readership for possible titles to adorn this new work. Cast your vote for one of six submissions after the jump:

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“Chip, I’m coming for your Ducklings. They’re so succulent. Do you like Chinese food?” (AP)

We’re still really hoping this Clancy Pendergast thing pans out for USC, because a name like that following “Monte Kiffin” makes writing Trojans football/The Thorn Birds fan fiction that much easier. But until Lane Kiffin actually lands a defensive coordinator for 2013, we’re going to have to work with what we have. And what we have, in this case, is Oregon defensive coordinator Nick Aliotti turning down the gig, per a report in The Oregonian:

The Trojans recently reached out to Aliotti, who just completed his 21st season as an Oregon assistant. He began his career as an Oregon graduate assistant in 1978; he became best known for coordinating the “Gang Green” defense that helped the Ducks reach the Rose Bowl after the 1994 season. Aliotti’s defenses have been overshadowed by Oregon’s “blur” offense in recent years, though Kelly praised Aliotti and the defense virtually every chance he could.

That celebrated unit had its most alarming night of the 2012 season in the Coliseum last November, allowing the Trojans to amass 51 points and 615 net yards, albeit in a losing effort.

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Oregon in the top five means we get to post pictures of the Ducks’ mascot all the time. We like it when Oregon is in the top five. (AP)

• Brace yourselves for a largish shock. Alabama tops the AP Poll for the 10th consecutive week, with Oregon holding steady at No. 2. Your BCS top five, in descending order: ‘Bama, Kansas State, Oregon, Notre Dame and Georgia. The Toledo Rockets make what we call an overdue appearance in the BCS standings this week, along with UCLA and Northwestern. Dropping out: Boise State (breaking a 40-week streak), West Virginia, Arizona and Oklahoma State. Stewart Mandel updates SI’s bowl predictions and … is that hope for Louisiana Tech we’re seeing on the horizon?

• Coach firin’ season! No updates to the carousel as of noon Monday, but ominous rumblings are sounding out of Colorado, and we are really enjoying imagining Rex Ryan at Kentucky.

• Injury report story hour. What to make of Collin Klein’s Oklahoma State game injury? … leading Georgia receiver Marlon Brown is finished as a Bulldog after tearing his ACL against Ole Miss, although the program’s director of sports medicine indicated Sunday that “a full recovery is anticipated that will enable him to continue his career in the future” … perpetual South Florida quarterback B.J. Daniels is through with the Bulls after sustaining a broken ankle against UConn … Arizona’s Hank Hobson is out of the hospital …  and Maryland announced Monday the loss of starting MLB and leading tackler Demetrius Hartsfield to a torn ACL, which Patrick Stevens calculates makes five torn ACLs for the Terps this season and the fourth lost team captain in two years.

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• For the record, we were kidding. Saturday, in the waning minutes of the Texas-Kansas game:

Texas will still be ranked next week. THE COACHES POLL REJECTS YOUR REALITY AND SUBSTITUTES ITS OWN.

— Holly Anderson (@SIHolly) October 27, 2012

Sunday, in the Coaches’ Poll: The Longhorns move up two slots, from 24 to 22. We will choose our words more carefully when next taunting the spider-gods responsible for college football lists.

Elsewhere in rankings news: Alabama, Kansas State, Notre Dame, Oregon and LSU make up the new BCS top five, with the Ducks dropping two slots and the Wildcats and Fighting Irish rising. That dream of Bill Snyder using a crystal football as a hard candy dish draws ever nearer. … Louisiana Tech appears at BCS No. 25, a program first. … Along with LaTech, Nebraska, Arizona and Oklahoma State move into the rankings this week, replacing the departed Rutgers, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin.

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• Good morning to America’s Heartland, with love from catlab. Team catlab, your one-stop destination for all catlab needs and services.

• I got those suspended-while-my-team-plays-Boise-State blues. Dave Christensen just sings it out, man.

• Soren Sorensen’s persistent use of Comic Sans continues to be excused, as He Ain’t From Around Here. The New York Times runs down college football statheads.

• On the Mike Leach Twitter thing. Brian Floyd traces the feelingsball origins of folks getting het up over Wazzu players being banned from Twitter, and Tom Fornelli dispenses sense:

If you don’t trust your players on Twitter then you probably have a pretty good understanding of the decisions college kids make.

— Tom Fornelli (@TomFornelli) October 24, 2012

• And the seventh seal was opened, and it said “but but cash money.” The seventh access bowl may not happen, for basically the same reasons the have-not teams it would have welcomed into the postseason are have-not teams in the first place.

• Big East football: Pay attention. No, really. Stop making that face!

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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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• 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.

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• Bleep, bloop, Buckeyes. Ohio State’s marching band did a video game-themed halftime show, and if you haven’t seen it yet, be reassured: Your Monday is made.

If your heart doesn’t skip a beat at their Tetris formations, we cannot be friends. Sorry. [Via.]

• To the business at hand. The polls are out! What to do when three top-five teams get knocked out in the space of a single Saturday, including No. 4 LSU? Rank early Tigers opponent Washington No.13, among other atrocities, if you’re Glenn Guilbeau. Full AP Top 25 is here; the Biased And/Or Willfully Disinterested SIDs’ Poll can be found here.

• Injury report story hour. Missouri’s James Franklin will miss the Alabama game with an MCL injury, which is good news for James Franklin’s limbs and less good for his teammates.

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“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.)

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Central Michigan scored a win for the MAC by knocking off Iowa in the final seconds. (Matthew Holst/Getty Images)

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

This will mark our fifth season tracking the record of non-AQ programs against teams from power conferences, for no other reason than liking to watch where the numbers go. We’re not sure we’ve ever seen a weekend produce a winning record for a mid-major league that involved more than one or two games. But glory be to the MAC, which played seven games against BCS-favored opponents, and won four. (Yes, we’re even including Northern Illinois’ win over Kansas, even though Kansas is Kansas. COUNT IT.)

MAC teams beat one Big Ten team, two Big East teams and one Big 12 team. Directional Michigan schools had a particularly grand weekend, with Central Michigan knocking off Iowa and Western Michigan laying out UConn. Eastern Michigan also acquitted itself admirably, putting up a dogged fight against Michigan State.

The fifth big winner of Week 4 was the gaudiest: Louisiana Tech, a team with qualities we have been relentlessly touting since last December or so, mowed down Illinois on the road, 52-24. The Bulldogs currently field the nation’s third-ranked scoring offense and have two more high-profile nonconference matchups in the next three weeks: at Virginia and home against Texas A&M. Stay tuned; they’re our favorites behind Ohio to finish the 2012 regular season undefeated.

Speaking of the Bobcats: They’re through their nonconference gauntlet after a Week 4 win over Norfolk State and received 40 votes in this week’s AP Poll. The only other non-AQ teams on that list are Boise State at No. 24 and Louisiana Tech, which received seven votes.

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