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.

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Stephen Morris and Miami crushed Virginia Tech Thursday night to stay ahead in the ACC Coastal Division race. (Joel Auerbach/Getty Images)

• Miami 30, Virginia Tech 12. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: An ibis and a turkey walk into the bar, and the bartender says: “Wait, so Virginia Tech can’t even hang on special teams anymore?” Logan Thomas threw for 199 yards and rushed for 124 more, including a 73-yard touchdown run early in the second quarter. No other Hokie entered the end zone last night, or managed a score of any kind in the entire second half. The specter of an all-Florida ACC championship game looms, unless Duke gets its way. And isn’t the possibility of Duke getting its way one of the more purely delightful things about this season? [RECAP | BOX]

• Ohio 45, Eastern Michigan 14. Congratulations to the Bobcats for their best win over a one-win team all season. Derrius Vick is as surprised as we are. [RECAP | BOX]

• Middle Tennessee State 34, Western Kentucky 29. The Blue Raiders and Hilltoppers hit the locker rooms at halftime tied 17-17, and traded scores throughout the final two quarters. MTSU scored the final touchdown, but WKU went down swinging with a safety-producing stop of Logan Kilgore in the final five seconds. [RECAP | BOX]

• Sandusky case update. Former Penn State president Graham Spanier was formally charged Thursday with perjury, obstruction, endangering the welfare of children, failure to properly report suspected abuse and conspiracy relating to his handling of the Jerry Sandusky case. Additional charges were also filed against Tim Curley and Gary Schultz. SI’s Michael Rosenberg has more.

• BIG OL’ BREAKING NEWS. BCS bowls would consider inviting a two-loss Notre Dame team? WELL, I NEVER.

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Stephon Tuitt and Notre Dame sacked Riley Nelson four times in a victory over BYU. (Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)

Snap Judgments from the Week 8 midday slate. For more, check out our early Snaps, late Snaps, our coverage of South Carolina-Florida, Kansas State-West Virginia, Oregon-Arizona State and our complete Top 25 review.

• No. 5 Notre Dame 17, BYU 14. We will now dispense the first piece of news you interested parties who missed the game will want to hear: Tommy Rees started at quarterback for the Fighting Irish, with Andrew Hendrix in to run a few plays and no action for Everett Golson, who was recovering from a concussion. We will now dispense with the second piece of news you interested parties who missed the game will want to hear: Notre Dame allowed its first offensive touchdown since its Sept. 8 matchup with Purdue.

Rees wasn’t asked to do much, and he attempted only three passes in the entire second half. He finished 7-of-16 for 117 yards, a touchdown and an interception. The Irish offense functioned mostly on the footwork of Theo Riddick, who had a career day with 143 yards on just 15 carries, and Cierre Wood, who totaled 114 yards on 18 carries. Tyler Eifert led Irish receivers with four catches for 73 yards and a score. We feel like we’ve used the phrase “supposedly vaunted defense” a lot this year, but the Cougars were allowing an average of fewer than 68 yards against the run coming into South Bend Saturday.

BYU was also operating under a sometimes backup quarterback, with Riley Nelson making his second start since Taysom Hill sustained a season-ending knee injury against Utah State. (You’ll recall Nelson, like Rees, has prior starting quarterback experience.) Nelson completed 22-of-35 attempts for 172 yards, two touchdowns and two picks, and he was sacked four times. His final interception ended BYU’s would-be comeback drive deep in Cougar territory with 22 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter. [BOX | RECAP]

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Casey Pachall has left TCU for the semester to enroll in an inpatient rehab facility. (Cooper Neill/Getty Images)

Casey Pachall, a second-year starting quarterback at TCU and a favorite of this blog for hair-related reasons, has played his last snap for the Horned Frogs in 2012. TCU coach Gary Patterson announced Tuesday that Pachall is entering an inpatient treatment facility following his arrest last Thursday on suspicion of DWI. Patterson left open the possibility of Pachall’s return to school and the team in the spring of 2013.

Pachall has been in the news for substance abuse-related issues before. During the wide-ranging drug investigation that resulted in the arrest and subsequent dismissal of four of his TCU teammates, he admitted to police that he’d failed a team-administered drug test in February. Pachall underwent drug and alcohol education classes and didn’t miss any playing time.

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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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Josh Nunes led Stanford back from a 14-point fourth-quarter deficit vs. Arizona. (Jason O. Watson/Getty Images)

Snap Judgments from the Week 6 afternoon slate. For more, check out our early Snaps, late Snaps coverage of LSU-Florida, Georgia-South Carolina, West Virginia-Texas and complete Top 25 review.

• No. 18 Stanford 54, Arizona 48 (OT). Stanford wasn’t the only ranked team to be threatened by a less well-regarded program in Saturday’s second flight of games, but it certainly wrapped up its Week 6 contest in the most entertaining fashion. Trailing Arizona 48-34 early in the fourth quarter, quarterback Josh Nunes pioneered two touchdown drives and rushed for one- and three-yard scores to force overtime.

From there, as Bryan Fischer succinctly put it, the Cardinal began to play defense when it counted. Chase Thomas intercepted a tipped pass from Matt Scott, and Arizona’s defense, content to remain as languorous as it had been for much of the afternoon, allowed Stepfan Taylor to run for a 21-yard touchdown on the Cardinal’s second ensuing play from scrimmage.

Let us speak now of what was done well: Scott, whose existence on the Widlcats’ roster was the most compelling reason to watch RichRod’s Arizona tenure from the jump, completed a school-record 45-of-69 attempts for 491 yards and three touchdowns. The occasionally maligned Nunes turned in a performance to be proud of, completing 21-of-34 attempts for 360 yards and two passing scores. Each team boasted a 100-yard rusher (Arizona’s Ka’Deem Carey had 132 yards and three touchdowns on 29 carries; Stanford’s Taylor had 142 yards and two scores on 31 carries) and an 100-yard receiver (Arizona’s Austin Hill had 166 yards and two touchdowns on 11 catches; Stanford’s Levine Toilolo had 141 yards and a score on five grabs). Nick Saban does not approve. [BOX | RECAP]

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We know. We KNOW, OK? We were over Gangnam Style and convinced no one would ever top what the Duck got up to on his day off. But Army’s offering comes awfully, awfully close. Cute kids! A real horse! Serious-faced cadets dancing with imaginary lassoes! A big-ass American flag! Party in the USA, y’all. We’re not sorry.

• WHAT IS THE LAMESTREAM MEDIA HIDING IN ITS HASH BROWNS?? A tweet we’re not going to bother to verify (because we’re having too much fun) blows the doors off yesterday’s blockbuster Wall Street Journal Waffle House report:

@nastinchka WSJ is wrong, BDS is .3 miles from WH. By road. It’s even closer as the drunk student stumbles #hasbrownnashnalchampeenshipPAWL

— Shane Givens (@2MuchUrAssuming) October 4, 2012

A cursory examination of a map of Tuscaloosa shows that if one is measuring from, say, the Saban statue, Alert Reader Shane may be onto something. More on this story as it develops.

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This is a 1-pound, half ground beef, half ground bacon burger topped with bacon, peanut butter and jelly. No words. twitter.com/Andy_Staples/s…

— Andy Staples (@Andy_Staples) October 3, 2012

Staples, doing the good work.

• Next food news update of vital importance. None other than the Wall Street Journal measures SEC stadiums’ proximity to Waffle Houses, even going so far as to state a measurement in sausage links. We have never felt closer to the WSJ than we do right now.

• Will the Honey Badger return to LSU? A resounding “maybe!” from the Times-Picayune.

• Welp. “According to a study published in the October issue of American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, male non-athletes were more likely than females to increase their alcohol consumption and partying, and decrease their study time, in response to the success of the team.” [Via.]

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Jason Wilson and Central Michigan flattened Keenan Davis and Iowa with a last-minute upset win. (Getty Images)

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

• Central Michigan 32, Iowa 31: College football’s governing trickster gods are cruel and capricious, and let us never, ever forget it. The same afternoon that saw an Iowa running back deliver a standout performance without suffering the latest in a staggering series of tailback injuries also saw the Hawkeyes defeated by a directional Michigan team –and not a particularly well-regarded directional Michigan team.

Running back Mark Weisman’s 27-carry, 217-yard, three-touchdown outing was overshadowed by the triumph of a Chippewas squad that’s seen little in the way of glory since the departure of quarterback Dan LeFevour. Weisman nearly doubled up Central Michigan’s entire team rushing-wise, but Chippewas quarterback Ryan Radcliff made up for it with an aerial attack that covered 283 yards and two touchdowns.

Radcliff wasn’t the highest-scoring Chippewa, though. That would be kicker David Harman, who made up for weeks of special-teams shame directed at kickers nationwide by hitting a career-long 47-yard field goal with three seconds remaining to clinch the win. And how did Harman find himself in position to hit the game-winner? The final 45 seconds of the game saw the Chippewas fail on a two-point conversion; fail to recover an on-side kick, then recover the on-side after a delay-of-game penalty gave them a second shot; continue to advance on a 15-yard Iowa personal foul penalty; and score nine total points to pull the upset. [RECAP | BOX]

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Here we see Dri Archer running away from Buffalo’s defense. This happened a lot on Wednesday night. (AP)

• Kent State 23, Buffalo 7. It is expected, in major college football, that there will be punches and that those punches need to be rolled with, with all speed. Accidents happen. Injuries crop up. But we can’t really fault Buffalo for dropping a game in which four of its starters got knocked out, particularly when one of those was star running back Branden Oliver. Oliver missed the second half with what was announced as only a “leg injury”; strong safety Issac Baugh, wide receiver Fred Lee and defensive end Steven Means were also out by the end of the evening.

Also not helpful for Buffalo: Kent State running back Dri Archer. The junior edged out teammate Trayion Durham, 127 rushing yards to 112, our favorite being a 57-yard second-quarter scramble that included an ice-cold spin move to break a tackle. [BOX | RECAP]

• Daily inspiration. Disappointed in last night’s game? Understandable. But understand that better things lie ahead:

Heady move starting #MACtion with Kent State-Buffalo. Weeded out the flybys. For those with patience, it’ll be rewarded

— Brian Floyd (@BrianMFloyd) September 20, 2012

BYU and Boise State kick off at 9 p.m. ET. Join us, won’t you?

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