Why this bowl is not sponsored by Jerry Seinfeld is beyond us. “It’s football! In a baseball stadium! Can you believe this? Laugh! LAUGH, DAMN YOU.” (AP)

The 2012 Pinstripe Bowl is just hours away. We’re sure you have so many questions. We’re here to help. (For an X’s and O’s breakdown, click through to Gabriel Baumgaertner’s game preview.)

• What’s all this, then? As we said in 2011: “Last year, football games at Yankee Stadium were a new and much be-hyped thing. This year it’s just a field mashed into a baseball diamond, hype not included. But to be fair, as football games in baseball diamonds go, this still beats that infamously cramped Northwestern-Illinois game at Wrigley Field, correct? Correct.”

• Where will this game be played? Yankee Stadium, which we’re told is in New York and houses some sort of baseball team when it is not 20 degrees outside.

• When is it on television? Coverage begins at 3:15 p.m. ET on ESPN, with streaming viewing available on WatchESPN, and will feature Chris Fowler, Jesse Palmer and Tom Rinaldi. We missed you, Chris Fowler. Never leave us again. Enjoy him while you can; this is the only postseason play-by-play assignment currently listed for Fowler.

Read More…

Our continued best wishes to Tulane’s Devon Walker for a complete recovery. (AP Photo/Tulane University)

• Actual good news, actually. Devon Walker is getting out of rehab and will spend the winter holidays continuing his recovery at home with his family. Here’s his statement: ”I am so happy to be going home where I can reunite with my family and friends. My family and I are very grateful for the support we continue to receive. Some days, when I think that I just can’t do this anymore, remembering my many friends and supporters (both old and new) who are praying for me gives me the strength to go on. I know that my fight is just beginning. Please continue to pray for my recovery. Thank you very much.”

• And now, humans in plush cow suits playing drums in the general direction of Dabo Swinney. The Chick-fil-A Bowl is your one-stop destination for events of this kind.

• Coach-firin’ follies. Are increasingly giving way to coach-hirin’ follies: Missouri offensive line coach Josh Henson will replace the departed Dave Yost as the Tigers’ offensive coordinator.

• Roster blotter. Stedman Bailey will pass on his senior season at West Virginia in favor of the NFL draft … also turning pro: Tennessee’s Justin Hunter, per Justin Hunter … Louis Nix will return to Notre Dame, with the intent of taking a little Senior Day stroll with his mom … Cincinnati’s Brendon Kay has been granted a sixth year of eligibility … and stop us if you’ve heard this before, but a Montana player is transferring. No, again. No, again again.

Read More…

James White was part of a Badgers ground game that tallied 539 yards and eight scores. (Getty Images)

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

• Wisconsin 70, No. 14 Nebraska 31. This game wasn’t even as close as the final score indicates, which is really saying something. The Huskers were down 42-10 at the half — Wisconsin scored its final touchdown of the second quarter on a trick play with 20 seconds left on the clock, because Bret Bielema enjoys reminding folks he’s Bret Bielema — and scored two touchdowns in the fourth quarter after the Badgers had already crossed the 60-point mark.

“We kind of set our minds before the game that this is our game,” Monteé Ball said afterward. “The running backs were going to set the tempo.” Offhand, with 539 yards gained on the ground alone, we would venture to suggest they succeeded in their efforts.

Fun tidbit: Ball rushed for 201 yards on 21 attempts and three touchdowns, and was neither the leading scorer nor the leading rusher for the Badgers. Melvin Gordon rang up 217 yards on nine carries with one score, while James White added four touchdowns and 109 yards on 15 carries. Lost in all that: Taylor Martinez doing this Family Circus touchdown run. Don’t forget that Taylor Martinez did this, because it was awesome.

Wisconsin trailed Nebraska 3-4 in the series before tonight’s cannon show. Has a series ever been leveled with such gusto? And what will a defense of Stanford’s caliber make of these five-loss Badgers, who wouldn’t have even been in position to claim the Big Ten title and earn a Rose Bowl berth if not for other programs’ sanctions? “It’s OK to get there,” said Bielema of the Rose Bowl, “but you need to win it.” They’ll get their shot on New Year’s Day. [BOX | RECAP]

Read More…

There are 11 conference races in FBS football, and heading into what will be their final Saturday of the regular season, only one — the WAC — has already crowned its champion. In every other league, and even among the independents where Army and Navy don’t play until next week, there’s at least a little room for movement at the top, if not an outright battle for the conference title. (For more in-depth preview content of this weekend’s SEC title game and other contests, visit Andy Staples’ Walkthrough.)

Georgia has a big game coming up. Of course there’s a song.

Actual Conference Championship Games, Actually

• Central Florida at Tulsa, 12:00 p.m. ET. In keeping with our tiebreaking theme, this game will serve as a best-of-three supremacy determiner: The Knights and Golden Hurricane are 1-1 all-time against each other when playing for the C-USA championship.

• Alabama vs. Georgia, 4:00 p.m. How many bowl scouts from games that can’t possibly hope to take Alabama or Georgia d’you reckon were awarded press credentials for this?

• Nebraska vs. Wisconsin, 8:00 p.m. If you like conference championship games featuring fewer than two division champs, this is the contest for you. Ohio State will celebrate its 12-0 regular season next Friday.

• Florida State vs. Georgia Tech, 8:00 p.m. It is technically still possible for a 6-6 team to receive a BCS bowl bid, at which point it would be a 7-6 team, which makes it all better, right? The majesty of the BCS!

Read More…

Rex Burkhead goes out with a bang. (AP)

Snap Judgments from Friday afternoon’s action. For more, check out Saturday’s early Snaps and our complete Top 25 review.

• No. 17 Nebraska 13, Iowa 7. Bo Pelini was asked in his postgame on-field interview whose decision it was to insert the oft-injured Rex Burkhead into the Huskers’ final regular-season game. He laughed. “His!” The senior standout, absent for much of this season while nursing a knee injury, made the most of his time on the turf, leading Nebraska’s ground attack (69 yards on 16 carries) and scoring the Huskers’ only touchdown of the contest on a three-yard run in the third quarter.

Those of you who find our occasional gleeful odes to MACtion tacky are in for a real treat with today’s box score, where you will find just one player with an individual stat line totaling more than 100 yards. (The lucky lad: Taylor Martinez, who completed 9 of 14 passes for 63 yards and rushed for an additional 41.) Burkhead was trailed  by Ameer Abdullah (50 rushing yards on 14 carries) and Braylon Heard (46 yards on four carries). For the Hawkeyes, James Vandenberg completed 11 of 24 pass attempts for 92 yards and threw two interceptions. Mark Weisman led Iowa in rushing with 91 yards on 29 attempts.

Vandenberg also gave the Hawkeyes their only lead of the game, with a one-yard rushing touchdown late in the first quarter, a lead Iowa hung onto until Burkhead’s run. And for a moment there, late in the fourth quarter, it looked as though we might have a ballgame on our hands again. Given the ball on a Nebraska punt at their own 27 with about three and a half minutes to play, the Hawkeyes executed two consecutive six-yard plays before Vandenberg threw his second interception with just 2:11 remaining on the clock. And practically before time had expired in the stadium, we had that all-important BIG TEN CHAMPIONSHIP GAME TICKETS: ON SALE NOW email land in our inbox. The Huskers have earned at least a share of the division title and will play Wisconsin in Indianapolis on Saturday, December 1. Nebraska won their first meeting in September, 30-27. [BOX | RECAP]

Read More…

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.

Read More…

Just going to repeat yesterday’s MACtion preview caption here: “Behold Jordan Lynch. Fear Jordan Lynch.” (AP)

• Northern Illinois 31, Toledo 24. We do so love what’s become an annual late-season scramble for division supremacy between the Huskies and Rockets, and last night’s contest did not disappoint. The Huskies, who have won 10 games for the third straight year, will represent the MAC West in Detroit for the third consecutive season, and will face either Kent State or Bowling Green once they get there. Quarterback Jordan Lynch threw for 407 yards (a career best) and rushed for 162 more. No, by himself. No, seriously. Lynch was sent here by the football gods to make sure we all properly appreciate MACtion for the weeknight blessing it is. Message received. [BOX | RECAP]

• Ball State 52, Ohio 27. The Bobcats trailed by four points heading into halftime and were nearly doubled up by the end of the game, thanks mostly to a 21-point fourth-quarter scoring barrage from the Cardinals. Ball State scored three touchdowns in less than nine minutes on a Horactio Banks run, a Kelly Page pass and a Jahwan Edwards run. Page replaced starter Keith Wenning, who left the game in the second quarter with an Achilles injury. Also, this happened. [BOX | RECAP]

Read More…

Johnny Manziel (2) and Texas A&M dealt Alabama its first loss since last November. (Mike Zarrilli/Getty Images)

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

• No. 15 Texas A&M 29, No. 1 Alabama 24. We are reminded tonight of how Kevin Sumlin’s first round of interviews went at last summer’s SEC Media Days. No reporter actually stood up, shoved a mic in his face and asked, “HEY COACH, YOU SKEERED?” but something like that wasn’t all that far from happening by the time the Q&A ended. Sumlin dispensed with those questions back in July with gracious humor, some quips and a few dagger stares. Tonight, his Aggies dispensed with the No. 1 team in the country.

Heading into Week 11, Alabama had a perfect record in 2012, one loss in nearly two full seasons of football and a unanimous lock on the No. 1 spot in the AP Poll. And tonight, in Tuscaloosa, the Tide were rudely introduced to a Kliff Kingsbury offense that put them in a 20-0 hole, at home, by the end of the first quarter. ‘Bama answered with two touchdowns and a field goal over the next two quarters, but it surrendered nine more points to the Aggies in the fourth. The Tide pulled to within a five-point, 29-24 deficit on a 54-yard AJ McCarron-to-Amari Cooper score halfway through the final period and held A&M to a three-and-out on the subsequent possession. But a costly McCarron interception inside the five-yard line on what could have been the game-winning drive, plus a ‘Bama offsides penalty with A&M set to punt in the final minute, sealed the stunning upset.

Read More…

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.

Read More…

• Duck hunts. Not to be outdone by the LSU-Alabama trailer that dropped earlier this week, Oregon has released its own hype video in honor of the Ducks’ upcoming trip to USC. Among its highlights: The Duck learning to play Oregon Trail and doing the team’s laundry under threat of dysentery from a school employee, the Duck searching for a watch he does not wear, a covert laundry detergent handoff from gold-medal decathalete and Oregon grad Ashton Eaton and the implication that the Duck possesses a commercial driver’s license, which wouldn’t actually surprise anyone. Our one quibble is spelled out neatly by YouTube commenter “ChocolateJesus2K:

Wash uniforms? Oregon doesn’t wear the same thing twice.

Read More…