Ty Flournoy-Smith (80), Ken Malcome (24) and the Bulldogs clinched the SEC East title by beating Auburn. (AP)

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

• No. 5 Georgia 38, Auburn 0. Aaron Murray constructed four touchdown drives on Georgia’s first four possessions in Auburn tonight, first throwing three scoring passes to three different receivers, then handing off to Todd Gurley for a rushing touchdown late in the second quarter. Murray finished 18-of-24 with 208 yards and three touchdowns. (You’re not hallucinating, watching replays of that third touchdown pass: Tavarres King played wearing No. 15 tonight to honor injured teammate Marlon Brown.) A breakaway 62-yard run by the other half of the Dawgs’ freshman tailback tandem, Keith Marshall, marked Georgia’s last score late in the third quarter. Gurley and Marshall combined for 19 carries totaling 221 yards.

On a Saturday that saw two of the six undefeated FBS teams fall (so far, that is — Oregon and Cal are tied 7-7 as we’re writing this), the one one-loss team in the AP top five sealed its regular-season conference fate. Georgia is your 2012 SEC East champion and will make a second consecutive trip to the Georgia Dome in December, presumably to face Alabama out of the West. Until then, the Dawgs are finished with SEC play, hosting Georgia Southern next week and Georgia Tech the week after that. Auburn, too, will stay in-state, getting Alabama A&M at home in Week 12 and (presumably!) providing a second division title-clinching game at Alabama in the Iron Bowl.

Said Murray in his postgame remarks: “ Like I’ve been saying all year, you just never know who’s going to win.” That may not be entirely true today, but it’s  a nice sentiment. [BOX | RECAP]

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Tired of reading exclusively about Missouri, Texas A&M and LSU heading into the weekend? We’ve got you covered. Read about the rest of the action in our Saturday Superlatives, which are kind of like preseason awards for the upcoming weekend of football, and just as binding. For additional preview content heading into Week 2, check out Andy Staples’ Walkthrough.

• Best Worst Anniversary. It’s Auburn-Mississippi State weekend, which means it’s the anniversary of No. 9 Auburn 3, Mississippi State 2. It also means it’s time to drag our favorite decrepit video down out of the bloggy attic.

We had what our parents called a “real job” in 2008, and constructed this 3-2 tribute video the Monday after the game on some ancient version of Quicktime while rendering something we were actually being paid to make in Final Cut. The video is grainy, but think of that aspect as a tribute to the quality of play captured. The end product is raggedy and not aging well, and it might just be the work we are most proud of in our entire lives.

Dan Mullen, discussing Auburn on his radio show tonight: “Hey, I’ll take a 3-2 win.” #2008

— Brandon Marcello (@bmarcello) September 7, 2012

PLEASE. PLEASE OH PLEASE. PLEASE MAKE THIS HAPPEN, DAN MULLEN POWERS. Week 2 proffers a uniquely terrible slate of games overall, and another 3-2 finish would be its crowning achievement. Auburn is looking to avoid an 0-2 start after an opening-week loss to Clemson, while Mississippi State is coming off a 56-9 win over Jackson State.

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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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Looks like we got a bear in the air in Nick Florence, boys. (Cal Sport Media via AP Images)

• While you were lolling. We’re still at that honeymoon stage where we’ll watch anything remotely resembling college football, even if Kentucky’s school commercial did run immediately before the Wildcats dropped a pass and fumbled on consecutive plays. Louisville triumphed in this early rivalry game, 32-14. [BOX | RECAP] In evening action, Baylor walloped SMU, 54-29, with a 341-yard, four-touchdown passing performance from RGIII successor Nick Florence. [BOX | RECAP]

• We have a vote for a thing! Some nice people with unsound judgment have given us a vote in this year’s FBS Independent Players of the Week awards. Week 1′s top vote-getters: BYU quarterback Riley Nelson, BYU tight end Kaneakua Friel, Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o and BYU punter/kicker Riley Stephenson.

• Please secure your homes against an incoming barrage of Apollo 13 jokes. We may have called Ohio beating Penn State correctly, and UTEP putting a scare into Oklahoma, but that just makes our first really big Inevitable Wrong Thing all the more potent, doesn’t it? Houston, our pick to win C-USA if UCF is ineligible, got dropped 30-13 by Texas State (that’s Texas STATE, yes) on Saturday, and this morning the school announced offensive coordinator Mike Nesbitt’s resignation. Cue Louisiana Tech sports information, with the Stat of the Week:

@siholly So far this season Louisiana Tech has faced/prepared for three offensive coordinators and played zero games. Stat of the week?

— Patrick Walsh (@LATechPWalsh) September 3, 2012

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Courtesy of the Texas State 2011-12 Fan Guide

• What’s all this, then? On July 1, a crop of the realignment changes we’ve been so resistant to took effect. Among the movers were the Texas State University-San Marcos Bobcats, now residents of the WAC.

• Do we finally have a new WAC member school intent on staying there? LOLZ of course not! After one year in the great WAC way-station, the Bobcats will join the Sun Belt for the 2013 season.

• Is this at least a program with a modicum of history? Absolutely, and then some. Texas State began play in 1904, and spent most of its modern existence in the D-II Lone Star Conference before beginning FCS play as a Southland school in 1987. The Bobcats won back-to-back D-II national championships in 1981 and ’82, and two conference titles during their FCS stay.

• So they have a big cat mascot. Can we make a rule against new schools entering the FBS having big cat mascots? Too many big cat mascots! I’m a dog person. Too bad. The Bobcats were here first, according to the university: “Texas State was the only college in the country until the late 1920s to possess the name for its athletic teams.”

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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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