And we’re back! Items of interest you may have missed whilst holidaying:

• Start ‘em early. The Palm Beach Post‘s Jason Lieser works to instill a proper reverence for prep work in our nation’s youth:

We made some flashcards to teach our 1-year-old about our upcoming trip to the Sugar Bowl. twitter.com/PBPjasonlieser…

— Jason Lieser (@PBPjasonlieser) December 24, 2012

• Roster blotter. And now, a whole bunch of players who are being held out of bowl games for assorted reasons: Stanford’s Terrence Stephens (secondary NCAA violation), Oregon’s Nick Cody and Axel McQuaw (academics), Minnesota’s Andre McDonald (the ever-popular-and-mysterious Violation Of Team Rules), Texas Tech’s Cornelius Douglas, Chris Payne and Leon Mackey (VOTR), UCLA’s Tevin McDonald (VOTR), Syracuse’s Adonis Ameen-Moore and Max Beaulieu (VOTR) and Marquis Spruill and Steven Rene (partial suspensions only) … Illinois’ Akeem Spence has declared for the draft …  Duron Carter has dropped out of FAU … Cody Vaz will start at quarterback in the Alamo Bowl … Oklahoma’s Stacy McGee was arrested Monday.

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It’s unlikely that Jordan Lynch and NIU can slide into a BCS bowl, but when have we ever liked sure things? (AP)

Quick hits from Friday night’s college football conference championship games. For more on Week 14, check out our Championship Saturday Snaps, coverage of Louisville-Rutgers, Oklahoma-TCU and the epic clash between Alabama and Georgia, plus our complete Top 25 review.

• No. 19 Northern Illinois 44, No. 18 Kent State 37 (2OT). Jordan Lynch put on a show in Detroit, and NIU’s defense played the part of showstoppers in the 2012 MAC championship game. The Huskies won their second consecutive conference title, in their third consecutive conference title game appearance, but this is MACtion, dahling. And MACtion would never, ever wind up without a flourish.

Down 10-0 late in the first quarter and looking slightly discombobulated, the Huskies executed a bit of gridiron theater we might have expected out of the early-season Golden Flashes, back when they were returning fumbled punts the wrong way down the field and tackling their own teammates for safeties: They attempted a fake field goal attempt that was interrupted by their own timeout call, effectively icing their own kicker, who wasn’t even planning to kick. Problem? Not for a team with Lynch, who returned to the field after the break, converted fourth-and-three on his own two feet, then continued running for 14 additional yards. Viva MACtion!

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Dri Archer and Kent State could be playing for a possible BCS berth. (Diamond Images/Getty Images)

Sports fans, you have two conference championship games to savor on the eve of the last college football-filled Saturday of the regular season. We’re sure you have so many questions. 

No. 18 Kent State vs. No. 19 Northern Illinois

Shouldn't the MAC Championship be played on Tuesday or Wednesday? Wouldn't that be keeping it real?

—
Tom Fornelli (@TomFornelli) November 26, 2012

• What information do I, the discerning sports fan, require in order to consume this game? The Huskies and Golden Flashes are scheduled to kick off at 7 p.m. ET at Ford Field in Detroit. The game will be televised on ESPN2 and streamed on WatchESPN.

• What’s at stake here? A possible BCS bowl trip, though as ever with teams from non-AQ leagues, the shot is an outside one. Stewart Mandel has the Golden Flashes in the GoDaddy.com Bowl in his latest projections (oh, the ad campaign they’ll make for that one) and the Huskies returning to Detroit for the Little Caesars Bowl.

But there’s victory in this already, for one side: Wherever Kent State goes, it’ll be the program’s first bowl game in 40 years.

• For whom are we to be watching? The Golden Flashes have a nasty running threat, particularly in the return game, in Dri Archer and another back, Trayion Durham, who cannot be left unattended. Archer is the nation’s top kick return threat, averaging more than 38 yards an attempt. He also leads the MAC in scoring and is the FBS’ fifth-ranked all-purpose runner heading into Week 14.

The Huskies have Jordan Lynch, and a bunch of other guys, and not to diminish their efforts at blocking for him or catching his passes, but Jordan Lynch is sort of overshadowing everything else at the moment. Right now, NIU’s quarterback is averaging more than 134 rushing yards per game, and he needs to gain just 92 tonight to set a new NCAA record for most rushing yards by a quarterback. Racking up 250 passing yards at Ford Field would also make him the first 3,000-1,500 player in FBS history. Friday MACtion, don’t let us down.

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• Louisville 20, Rutgers 17. We’ll let SI.com’s Gabriel Baumgaertner tell y’all all about the antics of Teddy Bridgewater, but don’t go away without watching him let it all out postgame with offensive coordinator Shawn Watson. Bridgewater led the Cardinals to a primetime win, on the road, against the country’s fourth-ranked scoring defense. And then this happened:

How Bridgewater is even remaining upright at this point is anybody’s guess, but up he his, and no matter your particular partisanship, you must applaud. Have you a pulse? You will be moved. But don’t take our word for it. Listen to his teammates. Here’s Louisville offensive lineman Alex Kupper, after the game: “His legacy at the University of Louisville keeps building and building, and he’s only halfway through. He’s just an unbelievable player, the way he fights. When you’re playing next to him, if you do anything less, it’s shame on you.”

Rutgers still gets a share of the Big East title, and Cincinnati could force a four-way tie atop the conference standings with a win over UConn, but take it from Louisville safety Calvin Pryor, as the Cardinals mull their postseason possibilities: ”Whatever it is is better than going to the Belk Bowl!” [BOX | RECAP]

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Stepfan Taylor (33) and Stanford will look to pull off a repeat performance against UCLA next week. (AP)

Snap Judgments from the Week 13 late slate. For more, check out Friday’s Snaps, Saturday’s early Snaps, Saturday’s midday Snaps, our recaps of Michigan-Ohio State, Florida-Florida State and Notre Dame-USC and our complete Top 25 review.

• No. 11 Stanford 35, No. 15 UCLA 17. With tonight’s victory, the Cardinal secured a share of the Pac-12 North division title and set up a rematch for the conference championship six days from now in Palo Alto. The win was all but assured midway through the second quarter, when Stanford jumped out to a 21-7 lead on a 49-yard Stepfan Taylor touchdown run; UCLA didn’t come within a score of catching up again all night. Stanford’s last conference title came in 1999; the Cardinal will be making their first appearance in the Pac-12 championship game.

Johnathan Franklin, he of the 131-yards-per-game rushing average, was held below 100 yards for just the fourth time this season, recording 65 yards on 21 carries and scoring one of the Bruins’ two touchdowns. Taylor more than doubled up Franklin, gaining 147 yards on 21 carries and scoring twice, all before being rested in the fourth quarter. UCLA quarterback Brett Hundley, meanwhile, threw for 259 yards but was sacked seven times — bad even for an offense that ranked 110th nationally in sacks allowed before this game, and above even Stanford’s lofty four-sack average.

Not to take anything away from Stanford, which has done some very neat work this season in the absence of Andrew Luck, among other key figures, but it’s all right to feel the tiniest bit let down about this. If only for the sake of variety, it would’ve been interesting to see UCLA play Oregon for the first time this season and not the Cardinal for a second in a week. But if we got everything we wanted, there’d be no point in writing fanfic about Ron Prince becoming monarch-commissioner of college football, and where’s the fun in that? The battle for a Rose Bowl bid begins next Friday at 8 p.m. ET. [BOX | RECAP]

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Assorted bests and worsts from college football’s weekend that was:

• Most ominous foreshadowing: The head of the beloved Oregon mascot whipping off and flying away in midair, not too long before the Ducks’ first loss of the season. That led, of course, to this spectacle on GameDay:

We’ve crossed over into the other side: twitter.com/Landgrant33/st…

— Land-Grant Holy Land (@Landgrant33) November 17, 2012

We should’ve seen Stanford coming. We all should’ve known.

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UCLA’s Johnathan Franklin rushed for 171 yards and two touchdowns in a victory over USC. (Jeff Gross/Getty Images)

Snap Judgments from the Week 12 midday slate. For more, check out our early Snaps, our coverage of Stanford-Oregon, our look at the new BCS landscape and our complete Top 25 review.

• No. 17 UCLA 38, No. 21 USC 28. You heard a lot last week about the football monopoly in Los Angeles being over. No, again. No, for real this time. Well, you’ll hear even more about it this week, but only because it’s finally, demonstrably true. (We’re taking suggestions on which board-game related jokes to start making in its place from here on out. Balderdash? Sorry? Jenga?)

On a rainy afternoon in the Rose Bowl, the Bruins dashed out to a 24-0 lead midway through the second quarter, only to see the Trojans snatch momentum back by the start of the third, by which point Matt Barkley had thrown two touchdown passes and defensive tackle George Uko had scored a genuine Fat Guy Touchdown on a slip-and-slide fumble recovery. (Storied rivalry, historic venue, high conference stakes, home-and-home jerseys AND a FGTD: This game had it all, y’all.) A pair of traded touchdowns and a successful USC two-point conversion later, and the Trojans were trailing by three points with a little more than seven minutes left in the fourth quarter.

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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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Assorted bests and worsts from college football’s week that was:

• Best throwback (see what we did there?): Can’t go wrong with a classic, can we, Aaron Murray?

• Unofficial Heisman winner of our hearts: AJ McCarron, but not for the football-related reasons you might think. No, Alabama’s quarterback won our undying allegiance much earlier in the day, after dropping this little number on GameDay:

AJ McCarron to ESPN on handling wrath of Saban: “I always mess with him. I always say it kind of makes you feel as small as him.”

— Jon Solomon (@jonsol) November 3, 2012

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Kansas State’s Collin Klein is no stranger to reaching the end zone against Oklahoma State. (AP)

Assorted Week 10 football contests that you get to watch and we, for the most part, do not. Enjoy?

• Games we will miss the most while participating in a wedding ceremony taking place in a state that is very far away from any of these games: In descending order: Oregon-USC (7:00 p.m. ET), Alabama-LSU (8:00) and Oklahoma State-Kansas State (8:00). Let our plight serve as a dire warning: Friends don’t let friends go to art school and go out into the world thinking it’s socially acceptable to plan November weddings.

• Team of the week that Maryland will either beat or embarrass or both with its 19th-string quarterback: Is it terribly foolish of us to like the Terps’ chances against Georgia Tech? We’ll find out at 12:30 in College Park. Maryland’s defense has been its strength this season, and Tech’s doesn’t seem particularly inclined to stop teams that do have quarterbacks, so …

• Most Americanest football contest of Week 10: Air Force and Army run the next leg of the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy race at noon.

• Saddest event we still technically have to call a football contest: Auburn and New Mexico State, with a combined record of 2-14, meet on the Plains at 12:30.

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