Kind of like preseason awards for the upcoming weekend of football, and just as binding. For additional preview content heading into Week 5, check out Andy Staples’ Walkthrough.

• POINTIEST POINTSPLOSION: No. 25 Baylor @ No. 9 West Virginia. We need this. “We,” in this case, stands for “America.” We were blessed with one of the finer shootouts in recent memory last Friday night, when Louisiana-Monroe and Baylor damned the very notion of defense and just lobbed bombs at each other for 60 minutes. It is the Bears’ sovereign duty to motor into Morgantown tomorrow morning with the same agenda in mind, and the Mountaineers’ to be gracious and accommodating hosts in this respect. The over/under for this game currently hovers in the low 80s, and we think that’s insufficient. We hope it’s insufficient. By the time this thing is over all fans should be too wrung out from touchdown celebrations to even consider burning the nearest piece of upholstered furniture.

We will be spiritually satisfied with nothing less than those 30 seconds at the end of a fireworks show sustained for three to four hours. We regret only that this is a noon game, which will make the smoke emanating from the scoreboard by the end of the first half more difficult to Instagram. College football trickster gods, hear our prayer.

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Georgia’s defense stifled Vandy; the ‘Dores went 2-of-14 on third-down conversions. (Getty Images)

Snap Judgments from the Week 4 late slate. For more coverage, check out our early Snaps, midday Snaps and complete Top 25 review. Also check out our coverage of Florida State-Clemson, Kansas State-Oklahoma and Notre Dame-Michigan.

• No. 5 Georgia 48, Vanderbilt 3: “I don’t have any complaints at all,” said Mark Richt following his Bulldogs’ casual mauling of the Commodores. Nor should he: Georgia finished with 567 yards of offense in its second conference win, held the ‘Dores to a single field goal and made its opponent look not terribly unlike the Vandy of old. “The numbers show that we’re executing well,” said Richt. So, too, did the scoreboard.

The Dawgs’ latest plug-and-play tailback, freshman Todd Gurley, led all rushers with 130 yards on 16 carries, and he recorded Georgia’s first and final scores. Aaron Murray enjoyed a bit of moderate exercise, completing 18-of-24 pass attempts for 250 yards and two touchdowns. Jarvis Jones sacked Jordan Rodgers on fourth-and-eight for an 11-yard loss in the third quarter that brought the house down.

Vanderbilt had 15 first downs tonight to Georgia’s 29. It converted 2-of-12 third downs. It was very nearly tripled up in rushing yards, 103 to 301. (Did we mention Georgia had more than 300 rushing yards? Georgia had more than 300 rushing yards. We’re not the only ones eyeing that Oct. 6 Bulldogs-Gamecocks matchup with increasingly rabid anticipation.)

“We talked about how this is the first [conference] game of seven in a row,” said Richt, “and how important it is to win every single one of them to get where we want to go. But you have to take them one at a time. We have a lot of respect for Vanderbilt.” We almost believe him. [BOX | RECAP]

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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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Meet the new Boise. Same as the old Boise? If Joe Southwick has anything to say about it… (AP)

The return of our weekly highlight show of lesser FBS luminaries. Non-AQs and independents, be welcome. (Not you, Notre Dame; more on that at the bottom.)

• Time chasers. We mentioned this last week, but games we would most like to see played in other times: Boise State-Michigan State at the end of last year and Arkansas State-Oregon at the end of this one. The Broncos’ opening-week win streak was snapped, but not for a lack of effort on the part of Boise’s almost entirely rebuilt team. That Sept. 20 date with BYU is looking like appointment television about now. And we’re eager to see how Ryan Aplin and the Red Wolves develop offensively under Gus Malzahn as the season progresses against competition that’s more on their level. (Not included in this category: Memphis in Week 2. What do y’all reckon that score will look like?)

• ALL HAIL THE LORDS OF EARLY SEPTEMBER. Great show, Ohio. Now do it again, 11 more times. The Bobcats’ remaining regular season schedule, we remind you, consists of New Mexico State, Marshall, Norfolk State and eight MAC teams that finished with losing records in 2011. But this is MACtion, where accidents happen with a frenzied glee.

• HOUSTON. LOOK AT YOUR LIFE. LOOK AT YOUR CHOICES. We liked Houston. We really, really did. We agreed with noted football robot Paul Myerberg that the Cougars looked like a good bet to take the West, and look where that got us. Either Dennis Franchione has quietly built a program capable of winning in its first year of FBS competition, or Houston is flailing its way to a 2012 face plant. Or, heavens forfend — both. We know, at least, what Tony Levine thinks.

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Just try and tell us there’s not a hand turkey drawn on there somewhere, Tyler Bray. (AP)

Tonight in your living rooms and on your laptops: Two storkish quarterbacks, two stone-faced coaches and a reason to watch San Jose State besides geography, for once.

The opening act

7:30 p.m.: Tennessee vs. NC State (ESPNU). All summer long, we have pointed to the likely length of this game as its greatest attraction factor. Between Tyler Bray, Mike Glennon and the recent history of both teams’ ground attacks, this first game in the Georgia Dome could easily stretch until Auburn and Clemson faithful begin setting up their Saturday tailgates.

The natural matchup to watch tonight is the Vols’ aerial offense against State’s secondary. Of the two combatants, Tennessee’s passing game gets more attention on account of Justin Hunter, the highly publicized departure of Da’Rick Rogers and Tyler Bray being Tyler Bray. But SEC types remain unfamiliar with Wolfpack cornerback David Amerson at their own peril: The junior in the No. 1 jersey led the nation in interceptions last season, and will presumably be dogging Hunter all night long. For added flaky layers of uncertainty, Hunter’s game tonight will be his first since tearing his ACL in Week 3 against Florida last year; Rogers replacement Cordarrelle Patterson is a brand-new juco transfer, and tight end Mychal Rivera is recovering from an ankle sprain. Oh, and State dings its own depth by holding senior cornerback C.J. Wilson out of tonight’s action with an unspecified “eligibility issue.”

Look at us, building this up to be a shootout. After last season, which was almost entirely useless for data-mining purposes, we’re uncomfortable betting on Tennessee either way. For all we know, Rajion Neal could have a breakout game at running back for the Vols behind a solidified offensive line, Mustafa Greene could blow up for the ‘Pack after missing all of 2011 due to injury and this thing could finish 21-20 on a special teams facepalm.

We suspect not. But we’ve been wrong before, and will be again. We’ll also be in the Georgia Dome tonight to find out in person.

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Larry Coker's UTSA Roadrunners will play their first FBS season when they join the WAC in 2012.
(Icon SMI)

The 2012 WAC football schedule has been released, putting to rest this spring’s burning question: Which teams are in the WAC this year? The conference has kindly answered this for us with a handy press release and chart. Highlights for the year ahead:

• Defending conference champ Louisiana Tech draws the hottest Thursday night slot of the year, beginning the season on opening day (that’s August 30, for you sickos setting countdown clocks right this minute). The Bulldogs have to do it in Shreveport against Texas A&M, but it’s a jewel of a matchup stacked against the likes of Idaho-Eastern Washington, New Mexico State-Sacramento State and Utah State-Southern Utah. It’s also one in which you shouldn’t necessarily write off the Bulldogs as a competitive opponent: Sonny Dykes’ brand of offense should be coming into its own this season, and Tech played new Aggies coach Kevin Sumlin’s Houston Cougars to a one-point loss last season.

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