Andrew Manley threw for 242 yards as NMSU fell to UTEP in last year’s Battle of I-10. Will he exact revenge in ’12? (AP)

Kind of like preseason awards for the upcoming weekend of football, and just as binding. For additional preview content heading into Week 3, please see Andy Staples’ Walkthrough.

• Best interstate rivalry game. From Tuesday’s Profiles in Profiteroles, we remind you that the Battle of I-10 passes two trophies back and forth between UTEP and New Mexico State. One is a brass spittoon, the other a shovel found in an abandoned mine. We cannot stress to you enough how thrilled we are that the Battle of I-10 is real. The world is a fine place.

• Best intrastate rivalry game. Central Florida and Florida International have much in common entering this matchup. Both have designs on their respective conference championships, pretty good chances of getting to the top once league play begins and a recent history of disappointments in nonconference play.

• Most promising ranked-teams football game. We suspect No. 2 USC will run (well, fly) away from No. 21 Stanford in kind of a hurry. No. 18 Florida vs. No. 23 Tennessee is a rare night kickoff, which sets off all sorts of bad-luck haunting alarms in our head. That leaves No. 20 Notre Dame at No. 10 Michigan State as the only remaining ranked-on-ranked game of Week 3. It also carries the most promise for a compelling, close-fought football product.

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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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• Important things first. We will get to the part featuring teams expected to finish with winning records and play in the postseason momentarily, but for right now, please just bask in the radioactive glow of a Kent State player recovering a fumble and taking it 58 yards in the wrong direction. The announcers aren’t really enjoying this thing as much as they should, so maybe mute this and have the same spirited discussion with your coworkers that we had in our living room last night: Who’s the best/worst here? Andre Parker, the disoriented runner? The Towson players who tackled him even though a muffed punt can’t be returned (even in the wrong direction)? Or Parker’s Kent State teammates blocking for his wrongward journey? We love all three equally. We missed you, MACtion. (Kent State did manage a win, 41-21.)

• No. 9 South Carolina 17, Vanderbilt 13. The 2009 South Carolina-NC State 7-3 slog remains our gold standard for queasy Thursday night openers, but this game was a valiant attempt to carry on that legacy. Andy Staples was on the scene, and writes from Nashville: “Did South Carolina look like a top-10 team in its 17-13 win at Vanderbilt? Not even close. Did the Gamecocks look like a team capable of competing for an SEC — and, using a logical leap informed by the results of the past six years, the national — title? Nope. Did South Carolina leave Vanderbilt Stadium 1-0 overall and 1-0 in the SEC East? Yes. For opening night, that’s enough.”

• BYU 30, Washington State 6. We expected Mike Leach’s unseasoned band to have a rough go of it in Provo. We did not expect Washington State to not be able to score a single touchdown. Stewart Mandel was there to take it all in: “The outcome shouldn’t be entirely surprising. BYU, perhaps unduly overlooked by preseason voters (the Cougars garnered just 10 points in the same Coaches’ Poll that ranked them 25th to end last season), trotted out a senior quarterback, Riley Nelson, who went 6-1 upon taking over the starting job last season, along with seven returning starters from a top 15 defense. Wazzu, nine years removed from its last bowl trip, started a senior quarterback, Jeff Tuel, who’s experienced seven wins in his career (most while injured on the sideline), and a defense that returned three of the front seven from last year’s 82nd-ranked unit.”

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The story of opening night 2012, in tweet form: 

Gamecocks, we knew that eventually you’d have to play another game, in another city. We knew this day would come. It just hurts, is all.

— Capital One Bowl (@CapitalOneBowl) August 31, 2012

Nothing like watching two offenses work out the kinks in a driving rain.

— Andy Staples (@Andy_Staples) August 30, 2012

The first false start of the 2012 college football season comes from Guy Matched Up Against Jadeveon Clowney. Makes sense!

— SB Nation (@sbnation) August 30, 2012

…and then Clowney was all like, “Cthulhu!”

— Steven Godfrey (@38Godfrey) August 30, 2012

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Lovingly curated light reading to speed you through your Friday:

• “We are advancing constantly and we’re not interested in holding onto anything except the enemy.” Louisiana Tech has hit a vein of inspiration as it campaigns for postseason consideration for  Quinton Patton (at right).

• Matt Barkley to UMass! Andy Staples stages a massive college football draft. AJ McCarron from Alabama to South Alabama! Tyler Wilson to Akron! Maryland getting a higher slot in the draft order than Bowling Green!

• Keep stepping, Big E. Eric LeGrand fills in at Monday Morning Quarterback.

• Here is a video of Robbie Caldwell talking about football. No new turkey stories this time, but lordamercy, do we ever miss having Robbie Caldwell around as a head coach. Robbie Caldwell.

• We regret the error. Now entering the corrections hall of fame: “The private hot tub for Coach Chip Kelly and other Duck football coaches in the under-construction football operations center is located off the coaches’ locker room in the project’s so-called teaching box, not next to Kelly’s office, according to plans submitted to the city. An article in Tuesday’s Register-Guard inaccurately reported that the hot tub was next to Kelly’s office. The error stemmed from a misreading of the blueprint.” Register-Guard, we see you.

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Clearly, the UMass Minuteman cannot wait to partake in some MACtion. And really, who can blame him? (AP)

You didn’t ask, but we answered:

• 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 was UMass, which joins the MAC as a transitional member, replacing Temple.

• So we still have a 13-team conference? We do! The MAC prefers to think of itself as “prime.”

• What do we, as MAC fans and/or schedulers of profiterole paycheck games, need to know about UMass before we see it on the opposite sideline this fall? First and foremost, that UMass’ nickname is the Minutemen, and that they’ll be playing their home games at Patriots memorabilia-encrusted Gillette Stadium. So, let that Revolutionary War smack talk fly. “More like Jamarion Smith! He slipped through that defensive line like the Swamp Fox, Gary! Back to you in the studio.”

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Unlike baseball, college football is actually supposed to have an opening weekend. (REUTERS)

All this chirping about based ball’s Opening “Day” just makes us pine for five months from now, when college football will accomplish in five days what baseball crams into nine or so. Is it too early to start making out our Week 1 mayhem wish list? Probably!

Thursday, August 30

• South Carolina @ Vanderbilt. James Franklin taunts Jadeveon Clowney after the Commodores pull off a late go-ahead touchdown, and the ensuing fracas manages to convince SEC officials to suspend the South Carolina stalwart. Seeking revenge, Steve Spurrier departs Nashville with five or six of Franklin’s scholarship quarterbacks, to feather his depth-chart-fiddlin’ nest back in Columbia. No one is truly satisfied, but no lessons are learned.

• Minnesota @ UNLV. TCF Bank revokes Golden Gophers’ stadium sponsorship after team refuses to pay $5,000 in ATM fees following return from Vegas.

• UCF @ Akron. Zips win, and Terry Bowden gets free jousting privileges at all Medieval Times locations for life.

• UMass @ UConn. In their FBS debut, the Minutemen rout the Huskies, relegating Connecticut to the MAC by a previously unnoticed realignment provision. All involved parties agree this is probably in everyone’s best interest.

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MORE PRIMERS: ACC | Big 12 | Big East | Big Ten | Pac-12 | SEC

It won’t be too many more seasons until “mid-majors” are a dated concept, but until then, we present assorted burning questions for non-AQ conferences and independents heading into spring ball:

Independents

Dual-threat redshirt freshman Everett Golson could beat out Tommy Rees and Andrew Hendrix for Notre Dame's starting job. (US PRESSWIRE)

Time once again for everybody’s favorite game show, “Name! That! Irish! Quarterback!” A familiar question for Notre Dame, with a couple familiar answers. The oft-maligned Tommy Rees returns, as does Andrew Hendrix, both of whom you’ll remember from the 2011 position race. In hot pursuit: dual-threat redshirt freshman Everett Golson, who topped Bruce Feldman’s Tuesday Top 10 “most intriguing” list, and shiny recruitnik brass ring Gunner Kiel, whose chest has been insulted by Les Miles. Standout veteran tailback talent Cierre Wood will alleviate some of the pressure to produce yardage, but star receiver Michael Floyd won’t be around to make whoever wins out look pretty anymore.

Conference USA

Will changes at Houston hobble forward progress? Pinball wizard Case Keenum isn’t walking through that door, and neither is Kevin Sumlin. Gone, too, are Bryce Beall, Michael Hayes, Tyron Carrier, Justin Johnson and Patrick Edwards. Newly installed head coach Tony Levine is running right at these vacancies, and creating a few more, announcing open competition at every position with a cheeky depth chart graphic. Look to last year’s leading rusher Charles Sims to shoulder the bulk of offensive production as the rest of his unit readjusts. Also re-acclimating: A defense that didn’t spend enough seasons in Brian Stewart’s 3-4 to build a full complement of players to run it and is now flipping back to the 4-3 under promoted former linebackers coach Jamie Bryant. Whee!

What the Cougars do have, apart from Sims, is a poppin’ fresh, patisserie-made schedule that should allow them plenty of room to flex and grow into Levine’s regime. And then some. Get past Louisiana Tech on September 8 and they won’t face another team that finished 2011 with a winning record until SMU on October 20. Tulsa and Marshall are Houston’s only other opponents not currently smarting from sub-.500 seasons. It’s a nice lull in which the Cougars can get their feet set as a team before they head off to the Big East, which will provide marginally fewer pushover teams.

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