Prepare ye the way of the Mumme-stangs? (AP)

This is gonna be fun: Hal Mumme has finally been officially announced as a member of June Jones’ staff at SMU, where he’ll serve as the Mustangs’ passing game coordinator. This seems like a thing that Hal Mumme would be good at. Jones spoke with the Dallas Morning News back in February about Mumme’s potential role:

“We’ve been friends for 35 to 40 years,’’ Jones said by phone Saturday. “He believes the same things I do about offense. I tried to hire him three years ago but it didn’t work out.” [...] Jones said he will remain the primary offensive coordinator and will continue to call plays. Jason Phillips, brought in from Houston before last season as co-offensive coordinator and receiving coach, will have more input in alterations to the Run-and-Shoot as Jones seeks to enhance the passing attack.

The Run-and-Shoot with enhanced Air Raid qualities? Internet, it’s Wednesday afternoon in March, and you know your duty — time to name Hal Mumme’s passing attack for the Mustangs:

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WELL, THAT TOOK A TURN. The story of a bowl, as told through social media:

Easy way to smoke out family members who you shouldn’t be giving gifts to: Ask their opinion of the Hawaii Bowl

— Brian Floyd (@BrianMFloyd) December 25, 2012

“You’re thumbing your nose at the Hawaii Bowl? You hate college football? Well Santa’s skipping your chimney this year”

— Brian Floyd (@BrianMFloyd) December 25, 2012

The Hawaii Bowl is probably going to be pretty thrilling! There’s nothing else going on tonight, is there?

— SB Nation (@sbnation) December 25, 2012

Judging by the lighting, the Hawaii Bowl is coming to us live from the cleaning products aisle in a Walgreens.

— Bill Hanstockings (@sundownmotel) December 25, 2012

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The Hawaii Bowl pineapple football is the most beloved football costume of the college football postseason.

The 2012 Hawaii Bowl is just hours away. We’re sure you have so many questions. We’re here to help. (For an X’s and O’s breakdown, click through to Matt Dollinger’s game preview.)

• What’s all this, then? The Sheraton Hawaii Bowl is known for being a bowl game played in Hawaii around Christmastime, and for being the only bowl game to incorporate a football dressed up as a pineapple into its logo. But it’s not the Pineapple Bowl? The current incarnation of this game isn’t related to ye olde Pineapple Bowl, which itself was a a successor of the fantastically-named Poi Bowl.

• Where will this game be played? Hawaiian Airlines Field at Aloha Stadium.

• When is it on television? Coverage begins at 8 p.m. ET on ESPN, with the vocal stylings of Carter Blackburn, Kelly Stouffer and Kaylee Hartung. The game will also be streamed on WatchESPN. How much better could the ratings be if this game kicked off at 11 p.m. ET, like our beloved late Hawaii contests? Better in our house, to be sure. Nothing quite like falling asleep to the dulcet tones of football being played over the horizon.

• Whom does it feature? Conference USA versus Mountain West.

• What about this year? The 9-3 Fresno State Bulldogs versus the 6-6 SMU Mustangs! … welcome back, June Jones? Jones may find this an unpleasant return, yes. Remember that time we thought last year’s game might not be competitive either and then Southern Miss only won by a touchdown and also there was a fight? No, but for real, Fresno State is quite good and has players to watch on both sides of the ball (see: Rouse, Robbie; Thomas, Phillip; Carr, Derek) and SMU lost to Tulane. TULANE? Tulane.

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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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• “I think it all starts with a commitment to the university … the ability to have a clear vision.” While we technically agree with Colorado AD Mike Bohn that these are good qualities to seek in a college football coach, we have a humble suggestion: Next time, maybe don’t use those words right after firing a head coach two years into his tenure and right before making it outlandishly obvious through further words and sour facial expressions that you have nooooo idea what to do next.

The sporting internet watched with alternating horror and bewilderment as Jon Embree, Bohn and Colorado’s president and chancellor made statements and fielded questions on Embree’s ousting. You can watch the whole thing here, a fact which may be an indictment of the Colorado leadership in and of itself, read a summary of events here or get the general idea from those of us who watched it unfold in real time:

An emotional Jon Embree at his press conference. You can tell how much the job meant to him.

— Bryan Fischer (@BryanDFischer) November 26, 2012

A player just said from the back of the room “Thank you coach. We love you.” Embree said, “I love you too.” — Kyle Ringo (@KyleRingo) November 26, 2012

“We don’t get second chances.” Jon Embree on black head coaches. — Jason Kirk (@JasonKirkSBN) November 26, 2012

Embree on short-term turnarounds. “Basically, you can get mercenaries.” [Bobby Petrino startles to life in his coffin] — edsbs (@edsbs) November 26, 2012

embree’s basically saying, “if you wanted me to win this year, it was gonna cost cash money. untraceable CASH.” — Bomani Jones (@bomani_jones) November 26, 2012

And remember, Bohn hit this CU team with the same speech he used when he fired Hawkins. Players in that room heard it before — Brian Floyd (@BrianMFloyd) November 26, 2012

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Monteé Ball’s last name is also a football word, which should save us all some headline writing time once he finally breaks this record. (AP)

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

• Biggest game with nothing riding on it: No. 6 Ohio State at Wisconsin, 3:30 p.m. ET. The Badgers already know they’re headed to Indianapolis, as the only other teams with fewer than three conference losses in the Leaders Division (the Buckeyes and Penn State) are ineligible for postseason play. But a win here would be the biggest [screw]-you moment for Urban Meyer since the 2008 Florida-Georgia game. And if you think Urban Meyer doesn’t live for [screw]-you moments, please see the 2008 Florida-Georgia game.

What is actually at stake: The NCAA all-time career touchdowns record, currently sitting at 78 and held by former Miami RedHawk Travis Prentice. Monteé Ball is one score away from tying and two away from breaking this record, and he has a chance to do both at home. He recorded 198 rushing yards and three scores last week against Indiana; if Ball does break the record, expect to hear the hollering in Madison as far away as Kentucky, and expect little bits of glitter to spew from this page. (Please protect your eyes accordingly.)

• Biggest game we feel like we couldn’t predict if our lives depended on it: No. 21 USC at No. 17 UCLA, 3:05 p.m. We have well established at this point in the season that even when relying on math and the best available logic, picking games is tricky work. It’s much more fun, and equally ineffective, to rely on factors like spite and cussedness and probably-imaginary-but-maybe-not-surefire jinxes to decide, particularly in rivalry matchups, which is why this weekend’s clash in the Rose Bowl scares the hell out of us. Some factors to consider: Whose coach to dislike (or grudgingly admire) more? Is it cosmically dangerous to even bring up that “football monopoly” talk at this point? Can we straight-up call this game for USC because keeping an opposing team’s costumed representative from poking one’s field with a sword is the furthest possible thing from a power move imaginable?

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What glories yet await Cory Dorris and the Golden Hurricane as Conference USA play continues? (AP)

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

Tis the season for car commercials with big-ass bows and conference math. We attempted to explain, in bewildering detail, how the MAC races could shake out from here in our Wednesday night MACtion preview. We are here to inform you (with some glee, as we adore late-season chaos) that the MAC has far from the most convoluted conference race situation at the moment. Very quickly, the current states of the remaining non-AQ conference races, as teams not named Navy or BYU begin to prettify themselves for postseason suitors:

• Conference USA: Two teams with perfect 6-0 league play records top the two divisions: Central Florida in the East and Tulsa in the West. After Saturday, one squad’s record will bear some blemish when the two clash in Tulsa, but don’t expect that to affect the race. The Knights have only UAB to clear after that in the regular season, and hold a head-to-head advantage over East Carolina, the only other team in the division with fewer than three conference losses. Tulsa’s championship game aspirations could still be spoiled with a loss tonight and another at SMU November 24, assuming the Mustangs (4-2 in league play) beat Rice in the meantime.

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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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• Baby Mangino, you had a hell of a run. You achieved internet glory and are surely a robust and take-no-prisoners schoolchild by now. We wish you all the best, and must now pass your mantle to another:

Best Halloween costume ever #ThrowbackThursday #kstate twitpic.com/b59y5x

— D. Scott Fritchen (@DScottFritchen) October 18, 2012

• No. 2 Oregon 43, Arizona State 21. Stewart Mandel took in last night’s carnage in Tempe:

For exactly three plays Thursday, No. 2 Oregon looked mortal. On second down of the Ducks’ first possession, the quarterback fumbled. One play later, Arizona State quarterback Taylor Kelly threw a 28-yard touchdown.

“I don’t know if there can be a worst start,” said Oregon defensive coordinator Nick Aliotti. “And then we decided that maybe, possibly we wanted to play today.”

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Two FBS football games grace your Thursday night television schedule. We’re sure you have so many questions, and that one of them is, “Can we see that Duck Gangnam Style video again?” You sure can!

Houston @ SMU

• What information do I, the discerning consumer, require in order to consume this game? The Cougars and Mustangs kick off at 8 p.m. ET in Gerald J. Ford Stadium in Dallas. The game will be televised on FSN.

• Why am I spending my Thursday night watching a 2-4 team play a 3-3 team, one of which has already lost to Texas State and one of which has lost to Tulane? Far be it from us to tell you what to do with your free time, but the hours between now and that 9:00 p.m. Pac-12 kickoff loom long. (If you must watch at least one winning team, take in some FCS ball. North Carolina Central hosts Hampton at 7:30 p.m. on ESPNU.)

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