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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Why, yes, this will be our go-to Randy Edsall photo until the Earth stops spinning on its axis. Be his backup quarterback Valentine. Or else. –>

The Maryland press release announcing the cessation of transfer hostilities between Randy Edsall and the latest Terps pining to play elsewhere landed in our inbox, and all we could think was, ”This would look fantastic above a gallery of 20 or so laughing animals.” Can everybody see the camel in the second row here? Read on, and see if you don’t make that exact face.

“While at first I thought it was important to limit the institutions to which they could transfer, I have since reconsidered my decision” Edsall said. “At the end of the day, I want what’s best for these guys and I wish them well in their futures.”

When the history of Edsall is written, this gem will be enshrined in his gilded irony pantheon, alongside this passage uttered upon his departure from UConn:

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Five-star tackle Andrus Peat headlines Stanford's terrifyingly fierce offensive line class. (US PRESSWIRE)

• “When you’re the first person in your family to graduate from high school, you don’t need to be sitting out.” Justin Taylor and family spoke to the AJC about Taylor’s decision to spurn Alabama’s offer of a grayshirt year and sign with Kentucky instead. The three-star running back and Atlanta native will look to infuse some life into a rushing offense that averaged just 124 yards per game in 2011.

• The SEC East resurgence comes not from the south, but from the sides. Andy Staples was on the scene in Nashville as James Franklin reeled in the flossiest class in Vanderbilt program history.

• “Urban Meyer can’t stop yawning.” An unfair excerpt from Stewart Mandel’s visit with the Urbz and his mighty crop of blue-chippers.

• They’ll breed. You’ll die. We legitimately fear the prowess of the linemen Stanford has landed.

• Go west, and north. Steve Sarkisian lost some in-state gems, but pillaged California in return.

• Jordan Payton settles! This counts as news at this point.

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Isaiah Crowell's 2011 Signing Day announcement has yet to be topped, but should be an inspiration for all future recruits. (AP)

The fact that we’re still discussing Isaiah Crowell’s puppy-bearing 2011 Signing Day announcement a year later proves that, no matter what turns the running back’s career in Athens might take, the moment was a smashing branding success for the University of Georgia. This year’s haul of signing ceremonies has been light on pageantry, although one Mississippi State commit did involve an actual human baby in his announcement. So wags the world away. In a fit of wishful thinking, we got to fantasizing about blue-chip athletes swanning about campus with jars full of stinging insects and elite high school prospects piloting heavy machinery through school property, and before too long we had this list of schools whose commits we would very most like to see follow in Crowell’s footsteps and introduce a wee young mascot at their Signing Day ceremonies. Those  Top 25 teams are as follows:

25. Big Cat Schools. Your Wazzus, your FIUs, your LSUs. Perhaps unfairly dinged because there are just so many Big Cat schools, and if this becomes a trend we’ll soon have a Signing Day entertainment market saturated by baby lions and bobcats. Any LSU prospect bringing along a white tiger with purple eyes to match the Bayou Bengals’ latest Pro Combat unis, however, will receive an instant and much-deserved rankings boost. (This being LSU, we estimate this is at most three years from happening.)

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This guy came within a tiebreaker of going to the Orange Bowl instead. (Icon SMI)

The 2011 Liberty Bowl is just a day away. We’re sure you have so many questions. We’re here to help. (For an Xs and Os breakdown, check out Bill Trocchi’s game preview.)

• What’s all this, then? The Liberty Bowl retains its Memphis location for the 53rd year and has held onto its AutoZone sponsorship since 2004, making it a very grown-up bowl game indeed compared to your TaxSlayers and TicketCities.

• Where will this game be played? Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium, current home field of the Memphis Tigers and former turf of the XFL’s Memphis Maniax.

• Maniax? It might have actually been ManiAX, now that we remember. Don’t say you’ve already forgotten one of the greatest graphical endeavors in upstart football league history!

• The NFL would be a lot more fun if it adopted some of the XFL’s spelling rules. We could not agree more.

• When is it on television? Kickoff is scheduled for 3:30 p.m. ET on Saturday, December 31. The game will be televised on ABC.

• Whom does it feature? Typically, the top pick from Conference USA versus a low-ranked SEC team.

• What about this year? A weird to-do with the bowl contracts sent Southern Miss to the Hawaii Bowl instead, which consternated some people, but if this really is about the athletes, put yourselves in the Golden Eagles’ cleats: Christmas in Hawaii versus New Year’s in Tennessee? Thought so. The “winning” Liberty Bowl selectees are 9-3 Cincinnati and 6-6 Vanderbilt.

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Robert Griffin III threw for 479 yards as Baylor knocked off OU for the first time in school history (AP)

Snap Judgments from the Week 12 late shift. For early shift Snaps, click here. For swing shift Snaps, click here. For Stewart Mandel’s take on the BCS chaos, click here. For Andy Staples’ Nebraska-Michigan wrap, click here. To see how Top 25 teams fared, click here. For highlights from SI.com, click here.

• Baylor 45, No. 5 Oklahoma 38: You might not be able to imagine a scenario in which you’d want to urge Robert Griffin to play more football without giving your own team an opportunity to answer him, but then, you’re not Bob Stoops. Tied 38-38 with less than a minute to play following Blake Bell’s fourth rushing touchdown in five tries for Oklahoma, the Bears sent Terrance Ganaway up the middle, by all appearances attempting to run the clock out. Oklahoma called time out. And junior receiver Baylor Terrance Williams quipped himself into local legend: “All right, let’s play ball.” Two plays later, Griffin had run 30 yards down the field, into Sooner territory. The play after that, he hit Kendall Wright over the middle for a first down pickup.

The play after that, Terrance Williams caught a 34-yard pass from Griffin that won the Bears the game. Baylor would recover the ensuing kickoff, and the clock ticked down and stopped, and the turf at Floyd Casey was flooded with green and gold faithful.

The deciding factor may have been that one timeout, but trouble was brewing as far back as that last Bell touchdown. OU lined up to go for two, which would have given them a 39-38 edge, but a false start set them back far enough to have to kick for the extra point and the tie instead. The Sooners ended the game with nine penalties worth 91 yards.

It’s a mark of the evening’s high drama that we’re into the fourth paragraph without discussing Wright’s Sooner-aided 87-yard touchdown catch. You can watch it here. I’ll wait. And the rest, quite literally, is history: Tonight marks the Baylor Bears’ first-ever program win over OU. [RECAP | BOX] Read More…

Rex Burkhead rushed for two touchdowns and caught another against MSU’s normally stout D. (Cal Sport Media)

Snap Judgments from the Week 9 early shift. For swing shift Snaps, click here. For Stewart Mandel’s take on Joe Paterno’s historic 409th win, click here. For a recap of the Top 25 action, click here. And for highlights from SI.com, click here.

• No. 13 Nebraska 24, No. 9 Michigan State 3:  From Friday: “The Huskers are only better than average at defending the pass, but will have to be better than better to contain Kirk Cousins. In opposing possessions, the real story will be whether State’s second-ranked defense will be able to contain a Nebraska ground attack that’s just as potent as the Badgers’. How much luck did the Spartans need to win in Week 8, and has it run out?”

A bit, and yes, as it happens:

Cousins missed on 12 of his first 16 passes. He was intercepted on the Spartans’ first possession, was nearly picked off three other times and often threw into double coverage.

And the containment of Cousins was only the beginning of the Spartans’ tribulations this afternoon. State managed just 86 yards through the air on 11 completed passes (with 22 Cousins attempts) but found no refuge in the ground attack, gaining just 101 yards. The Huskers eschewed the pass almost entirely in the game’s early stages, with zero net passing yards recorded at halftime, relying instead on Rex Burkhead’s 130 yards on 35 carries. Burkhead recorded all three of Nebraska’s scores, running for two touchdowns and catching another from Taylor Martinez.

Discounted entirely as a legitimate outfit after that unfortunate Week 5 depantsing against Wisconsin, the Huskers now sit atop the Legends Division standings, with no competition ahead of them (Penn State and Michigan are the only ranked teams remaining in their November schedule) scarier than what they’ve already faced. [RECAP | BOX]

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