Notre Dame quarterback Jimmy Clausen was involved in a fight outside a South Bend bar early Sunday morning, according to a report Monday evening by WGN-AM's David Kaplan.

According to Kaplan, Clausen has two black eyes from the altercation at around 2:30 a.m. Sunday. ... The Tribune's Brian Hamilton reports that a South Bend police spokesman said Monday no police reports were filed over the weekend that involved Clausen. The particulars of the confrontation are thus unclear, though a person answering the phone at CJ's, the bar in question, said the incident "absolutely did not take place inside the bar."

The Worldwide Leader's Joe Schad also confirmed Clausen has a swollen eye, at minimum, after being "sucker-punched" outside a bar. If true, it follows Clausen's citation for underage possession as a freshman and starring role in the '08 "Beer Olympics" to keep his career average for minor off-field incidents at one per season.

On the bright side, everyone may be too busy examining Clausen's face for the rest of the week to concentrate on the growing speculation that he'll follow coach Charlie Weis into the NFL by tossing his name into the pool of early entrants for the draft following Saturday's regular season finale at Stanford. If there's anywhere a highly visible party hound can go to keep his after-hours exploits under wraps, it's the NFL, right?

About those fat jokes, though -- whether or not the hecklers, Photoshop artists and ruthless commenters ever considered the impact on their target, the endless digs haven't exactly been rolling gracefully through the years like water off a duck's back. From the sound of it, it's more like they penetrated Weis' heart and coalesced into a dense, black, malignant amulet of bitterness that he vows to carry with him forever:

"The damage to Maura and Charlie Jr. is irreparable," says Weis, referring to the personal nature of the attacks he has been subject to for years now. "It's watching me get hammered. I'll never forgive the people who character-assassinated me without even knowing me. Those people did irreparable damage to my wife and son, and I'll never forgive them."
[...]
"They have the right to criticize the coach for being 6-5," says Weis. "They have that right. It's all the other stuff. You think I don't know that I'm fat? Duh!"

Asked if he should be gone, where would Charlie Jr. would go to college, the coach reponded: "I know where he won't be going to college."

I'd like a precise statistical estimate of Weis critics since 2005 who are actually asking for forgiveness for their juvenile cruelty. Because I know I can name a few who are proudly standing by it.

I'm no kind of "insider" like Walters, who does his best in the service of a positive spin. But when the still-technically employed head coach bitterly promises that his emotionally wounded son won't be following in his footsteps at the old alma mater, it's hard to pretend this split is going to go down amicably.

Quiet. Too quiet.
The BCS hoi polloi remains at a standstill, with TCU and Boise State hanging onto their No. 4 and No. 6 slots, respectively, in the latest Series standings. BYU is also still ranked in the top 20, for reasons beyond even the good Doctor's understanding, and Utah and Houston linger down there in those 20-something slots that go to teams no one knows quite what to do with. Click the above link for more on why these standings are unlikely to change in the next couple weeks, but the short version is this: TCU is a virtual lock for one of the at-large bids, but Boise State may be on the outside looking in for another, for reasons that have nothing to do with the Broncos' march to another undefeated regular season on the field.

It's all local.
Moving from the national picture, then, to the conference championship races, where we have some excitement:

• The main event will be another Friday WAC night showdown on the blue turf, where Boise puts its perfect record and four-year home winning streak on the line against streaking Nevada, winner of eight straight and home to the most statistically dominant rushing attack in any conference in recent memory. The Wolf Pack are by far the greatest threat to the Broncos' in-conference dominance and BCS pretensions, and can walk away with their first WAC crowd since joining the league with a very plausible road upset.

• Central Michigan has locked up its half of the MAC with a 7-0 run in league play, but the East Division comes to a head this weekend when first place Temple (7-0) heads to second-place Ohio U. (6-1) in a rubber match that could provide the Owls one of the most unlikely 10-win seasons in history and their first trip to the conference title game in Detroit.

• Conference-USA is a mess of 5-2 teams on both sides, but East Carolina, the only six-win squad in the bunch, gets Southern Miss at home Saturday in a winner-take-all tilt for the East Division title. Houston reassumed the lead in the West Division with SMU's loss at Marshall and ought to be reasonably certain of handling Rice to sew up the other berth in the C-USA title game.

• Troy went ahead and clinched the Sun Belt title for the fourth year in a row with a convincing dismantling of Florida Atlantic. Middle Tennessee and Louisiana-Monroe will be at it this weekend for runner-up honors, with a likely bowl bid dangling from the arena ceiling for the first team to the top of the ladder.

Coaches! Get your coaches! Fresh coaches, bought and sold!
Texas A&M cast-off Dennis Franchione to UNLV? Sure, why not? To crib a little Dave Eggers, we are ardent admirers of the rich and insane, and as such are fully behind the constant employment of Fran-Fran, Jackie Sherrill, Barry Switzer and all the Bowdens. Make us proud, short-sighted athletic directors, and more importantly, keep us entertained with an endless supply of secret newsletter jokes.

In actual coaching news, Stanford running backs coach Willie Taggart has been named head coach at Western Kentucky. Before you start wondering why on earth anyone would want this job under an administration that fired its head coach before the end of its first official season in the I-A ranks, please note that Taggart's a former Hilltopper player and assistant coach. Whatever else happens on the field, a familiar face stands a chance of putting more warm bodies in seats, which we suppose is a start.

The Field is Their X-Box.
Our first order of business in the offseason will be the assembly of a boy band composed entirely of mid-major quarterbacks with ridiculous, arcade-caliber numbers spiraling joyously to the sky. Between them, Houston's Case Keenum, Boise State's Kellen Moore, Central Michigan's Dan LeFevour, Nevada's Colin Kaepernick, UAB's Joe Webb and BYU's Max Hall averaged just a shade over 300 total yards this weekend, and if they can do that to opposing secondaries individually, just imagine the havoc they'll wreak on the hearts of teen girls everywhere when you put them all together. (Want some ground guys? We got your backup singers right here: Nevada now has three 1,000-yard rushers after Luke Lippinccott's 162-yard performance against New Mexico State, joining Kaepernick and Vai Taua as the most prolific single-season trio in NCAA history.)

Mini-Major Meltdown Watch.
Chattanooga and Florida International were short on drama in predictably grisly blowouts at the hands of top-ranked powerhouses Alabama and Florida, respectively, but for fans of the really little guys there's always the Harvard-Yale fake punt and Bethel-Sterling bouquet affairs. Don't say we never did nothing for ya.

Profiles in continuing ineptitude.
One more out the cellar! New Mexico finally broke the seal on the win column by beating free-falling Colorado State, 29-27, on a field goal with 12 seconds on the clock to hand the Rams their eighth straight defeat. Still-winless Eastern Michigan, on the other hand, put up no kind of fight against Toledo, and hopeless Western Kentucky (mercifully) had the week off before resuming its quixotic journey for a 'W' this week at Florida Atlantic.

What should have been ...
How are the mighty haka-dancers fallen: We like it when Hawaii's good simply because the Warriors on television more, and their pregame psych-out routine is truly glorious to behold in HD. The Warriors aren't going to be ready for primetime again any time soon, however, if they keep letting lame-duck teams like San Jose State take them to overtime with bowl-eligibility at stake. Hawaii can scrape into the postseason with upsets over Navy and Wisconsin on the islands, but don't hold your breath.

... and what never had a prayer:
Nevada beat New Mexico State like a two-dollar, redheaded, rented mule in one of the Wolf Pack's patented late-night routs, rolling up 671 yards of total offense for Kaepernick & Co. in a 63-20 obliteration.

Player of the Week: Martevious Young, QB, Southern Miss.



For throwing a 60-yard touchdown on USM's first offensive snap, for following that up with three more scores (including a 95-yard bomb), for refraining from turning the ball over while being apparently determined to match points-happy Tulsa's total all by his lonesome in a 44-34 Golden Eagle win, for doing all this despite not taking over for injured starter Austin Davis until halfway through the season, and for attending the same fine institution as the good Doctor himself, we salute you, sir. (Also, being named "Martevious" doesn't hurt.)

(A Somewhat Arbitrary) Mid-Major Top 10
1. TCU (11-0) Even the Doc is getting in the Horned Frogs' corner.
2. Boise State (11-0) What, couldn't crack 60? It's Utah State! (Kidding. Kinda.)
3. Central Michigan (9-2) Did we mention the vast majority of quarterback Dan LeFevour's season-high numbers were accumulated in the first three quarters?
4. Temple (9-2) Even when the wins kept coming, we never really thought we'd see Temple in a conference championship game. But here the Owls go, if they can get past Ohio, and good on 'em.
5. Nevada (8-3) If any pollsters are set on dropping Boise State for an actual reason, now's your chance to hop on the Wolf Pack wagon.
6. BYU (9-2) Bumped for a convincing win over Air Force, a team we think is not terrible for a change.
7. Navy (8-3) Off this week, which should help with the upcoming time-zone hopping en route to Hawaii.
8. Utah (9-2) After Saturday's game with BYU, both Beehive State powers will somehow still be ranked in the top 25. Just you watch.
9. Houston (9-2) That's a nice victory margin, but it's still just Memphis.
10. MTSU (8-3) A decided pantsing of Arkansas State puts the Blue Raiders in the Sun Belt two-spot.

Stay Tuned.
On tap for Thanksgiving weekend: Northern Illinois at Central Michigan, Temple at Ohio, Nevada at Boise State, Southern Miss at East Carolina, UCF at UAB, Utah at BYU, and Navy at Hawaii.

• Most Realistic Upset: We're calling for Ball State to upset Western Michigan, because Western Michigan is not that good, and because the idea of Ball State following up an undefeated regular season in 2008 with a single, lonely win in 2009 makes us feel sad in the black voids where our hearts should be.

• Most Unrealistic Upset: Nevada at Boise State. The Broncos are favored by ten, but they've also got a vague facsimile of a defense. And forget Northern Illinois at Central Michigan. They're only 10-point underdogs, but they're not going to spoil LeFevour's final home game.

• Most Inevitably Gruesome Blowout: New Mexico at TCU. Seriously, it's not even fair what's about to happen out there.

Scoreboard.
Florida International was the only school carrying a mid-major flag against one of the big boys this week, and came back bearing the wounds of a 62-3 shredding in the Swamp for its trouble. After 12 weeks, mid-major programs are 19-92 against BCS conference schools.

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Holly welcomes your adulation and veiled threats at nastinchka-at-yahoo, etc.

Ari Fleischer Communications, a sports public relations firm headed by the former press secretary for President George W. Bush, has been hired by BCS officials to help remodel the tattered image of college football’s postseason system.
[...]
[New BCS executive director Bill] Hancock said in a statement the goal of the hiring was to help highlight the positive aspects of the BCS, which he called the best way to match college football’s top two teams, while preserving the bowl system.

It might seem slightly counterintuitive to hire the spokesman of an administration that ended in a state somewhat below "tattered" to un-tatter an unpopular system that's come under more and more fire each successive year of its existence. Let's not forget, though, what a public relations ninja Fleischer was in his days in the White House -- here, after all, was an ordinary-looking man who frequently bickered with members of the press corps, who once suggested publicly that citizens should "watch what they say, watch what they do," and who said adding additional information to the "mountain of evidence" that Saddam Hussein had accumulated and was planning to use weapons of mass destruction "is like adding a foot to Mount Everest" ... and who basically won. Fleischer was integral in selling the war in Iraq, and he was smart enough to exit the building before it self-destructed soon after.

So if anyone is equipped to deal with a few grandstanding Congressmen, a nascent playoff lobby and even a playoff-stumping president, it's one of the very few guys who got out of the Bush years relatively unscathed. And if Fleischer's firm is partially responsible for keeping Major League Baseball's head above water over the last few years, too, maybe there's some hope for the Series yet. I know I'm starting to like it more already.

Patient viewers may have caught the best part of the interview that didn't involve a frog trying to crawl out of Meyer's throat: Because of the impact Tim Tebow has made on college football, "it's almost like selflessness is now a cool thing."

At last, after the toil and strife of Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, Mother Theresa, countless obscure and impoverished humanitarians, teachers, clergy, parents and the fundamental moral basis of the overwhelming majority of human societies throughout the history of civilization, selflessness is finally "in" -- all thanks to Tebow. Now the Ayn Rand crowd knows on exactly which door to nail its next 95-page theses.

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Hat tip: SBN

Barring a colossal upset at the top of the polls this weekend, we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that undefeated TCU doesn't have a chance of overtaking Texas or the winner of the SEC Championship game for one of the two slots in January's BCS title game -- and the Frogs may not even make it even with the benefit of a shocker, depending on how the dominoes fall. Assuming TCU finishes off 1-10 New Mexico to complete a perfect regular season, here's why that should bring out the rhetorical torches ad pitchforks (again) against the BCS' "two-team playoff":

• Quality wins. The Frogs have as many wins over teams in the current BCS top 25 as Alabama (three apiece) and more than Florida and Texas (one apiece) combined. In fact, TCU's best wins -- at No. 18 Clemson and No. 19 BYU and in a home romp over No. 21 Utah -- give it as many wins over ranked teams as any team in the country, and puts the Frogs' overall strength of schedule within a hair's breadth of the Tide's, Gators' and Longhorns' according to BCS computer gurus Jeff Sagarin and Anderson & Hester.

• Dominance. It's easy to knock the Frogs' schedule, but they pound lesser teams into dirt at the same grisly rate as more storied heavyweights: The last six games (including the 31-point win at BYU and 27-point win over Utah) were all out of hand by halftime and eventually decided by at least four touchdowns; TCU has only trailed in the fourth quarter once, in the comeback win at Clemson, which has only lost one game since en route to the ACC title game. The average margin of victory (27.1 points per game) is right behind Texas' as the most lopsided number in the nation.

This is the biggest difference between TCU this year and last year's undefeated Mountain West darling, Utah, which was a master of the squeaker. The Utes won four games in '08 by three points or less (including a stunning, last-second comeback over TCU in which they were outgained by 141 yards), and employed an All-American kicker who was 11-for-11 on field goals in those four games. Against an arguably identical schedule, the Frogs are blowing the doors off and haven't left anything up to the kicker.

• No weak links. The lopsided scores are a direct result of uncanny across-the-board production. TCU only has one real star, defensive end Jerry Hughes, but is good at everything -- literally everything. The Frogs currently rank in the top 10 nationally in pretty much every conceivable facet of the game:

• Scoring Offense (No. 5)
  • Total Offense (5)
  • Scoring Defense (6)
  • Total Defense (4)
  • Rushing Offense (5)
  • Pass Efficiency Offense (9)
  • Rushing Defense (6)
  • Passing Defense (3)
  • Pass Efficiency Defense (5)
  • First Downs Gained (7)
  • First Downs Allowed (1)
  • Third Down Defense (3)
  • Kickoff Returns (1)
  • Sacks Allowed (6)
  • Time of Possession (10)
  • Blood-squirting Mascots (1)

For the general ethos, look no further than the nation's fifth-ranked running game, which has three running backs over 600 yards on the ground for the season -- two of them freshmen, running behind a largely rebuilt offensive line -- but none over 700 yards. Exceptionally efficient quarterback Andy Dalton has chipped in nearly 500 rushing himself.

• They're not a one-hit wonder. Not that anything outside of this season's resumé should explicitly count toward anything, but TCU has obviously established itself as one of the most consistent, bankable programs on any level. The Frogs are the only team in the country to win conference championships in three different leagues this decade, taking the WAC (2000), C-USA (2002, with a co-championship in a near-BCS run in 2003) and Mountain West (2005 and 2009); since hopping to the MWC, they've reeled off four 11-win efforts in five years, matched only by USC and Boise State. Under Gary Patterson since 2001, the program ranks right alongside the elite in terms of year-in, year-out excellence. This season is only the first time the Frogs have put it all together at once, without a hiccup.

None of which is to argue that TCU is necessarily better, has a better resumé or is more deserving than any of "The Big Three" obviously on a collision course for Pasadena. It's only to argue that any system that doesn't even allow the likes of the Frogs* the chance to compete for a championship on the field doesn't deserve to bear the term.

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Or Cincinnati, as we'll see later this week.

Depression. Arizona State coach Dennis Erickson: Your team has lost five straight games after Saturday's 23-13 loss to UCLA, and seven straight to teams from outside of the state of Washington, securing back-to-back losing seasons at ASU for the first time in 62 years. What do you tell your team to keep the locker room positive and psych them up to salvage the season with an upset over hated rival Arizona?

"The good news is, there's only one game left," Erickson said.

Uh, thanks for the pep talk, coach. Other terms used by Erickson to describe various aspects of the Sun Devils' performance over the last two seasons: "Horrifying" and "frickin' ridiculous." No wonder his charges looked like they were in cut-myself-just-to-feel mode after coughing up six turnovers and two defensive touchdowns to the offensively-challenged Bruins. For Devil fans, the longer the Erickson era drags on, the worse it's beginning to smell.

Anger. Les Miles has brought two division titles, two BCS bids, four straight bowl victories and a national championship to LSU. But bungling a two-minute drill in a game with nothing but regional pride on the line? Tiger blog And the Valley Shook has seen enough:

That was immediately after the game, before the video surfaced showing Miles clearly indicating to his offense to spike the ball with one second left over post-game audio of the coach insisting "I don't know who told [quarterback Jordan Jefferson] to spike the ball," which ATVS finds "inexcusable." Tiger message boards wholeheartedly agree, if the much-longer-than-usual barrage of "Miles is on the hot seat" posts is any indication.

The good news for Les, relatively speaking: At least the mob will have the "throwback" uniforms to complain about this week at Arkansas.

Acceptance. Seven losses in eight games, six straight losses to a hated rival, two consecutive losing seasons after 40 years without even one sub-.500 effort: Some fan bases would be levitating with rage at such a rapid descent. Michigan, clearly, is not one of those fan bases.

Immediately following the Wolverines' calamitous finale against Ohio State, the Big House Blog congratulated the team on a hard-fought loss and expressed hope that the effort was enough to impress potential recruits; Maize and Blue Nation offered props to the beleaguered defense, in the process making the first recorded use of the phrase "Great job Greg Robinson" in the history of the Internet; and Spawn of MZone even tossed up a congratulatory shot of some saucy-looking OSU coeds along with best wishes to the Buckeyes in the Rose Bowl. Has the whole world gone mad?!

In fact, it has: Just three posts later, Spawn of MZone's "faith in humanity is restored" by Detroit's second win of the season, a 38-37 thriller over the lowly Cleveland Browns. This is not a typo: The people of Michigan have now been reduced to looking to the Lions for gridiron inspiration. At long last, Rich Rodriguez, how much can one state be expected to take?

Denial. We haven't checked in with the Vanderbilt fan base at all this season, which at first glance seems awfully negligent of us -- remember, these guys did win a bowl game last year before returning to their familiar role as SEC doormats -- but on second thought, maybe we needn't have bothered after all: Going from "First bowl win in more than 50 years" to "winless in the SEC" barely seems to have raised a pulse in anyone associated with the Commodore program. A sparsely populated open thread for the Vandy-Tennessee game at Vanderbilt Sports Line seems more focused on potential success in the upcoming basketball season than anything else, and indeed, VSL has been all basketball since, with nary a hint of a post-mortem on the loss itself or on the dismal 2-10 season as a whole.

At least the commenter "Vandywatch" has maintained enough pride in the program to call for the head of one of the most respected coaches in the conference, Bobby Johnson:

"Put up a good fight." No. It was embarrassing. Our record since the Auburn victory LAST YEAR is 4 wins and 17 losses. Among those losses are several 'good fights' and Army. As I've repeatedly said -- IF this performance had occurred in a classroom, the professor would have been fired. Time to fire the coaching staff and bring a young, dynamic, exciting coach in here who can inspire his team, the fans and the community into filling 'little' Vanderbilt Stadium.

Yes, Commodores, one of your own fans just called for the firing of the coach responsible for half the bowl wins in your program's history. Yor team may have gone oh-fer in SEC games in '09, but let no one say you don't belong in this conference.

Elsewhere in Disillusion: Following Georgia's second-half self-immolation against Kentucky, Bulldog bloggers have visions of weedeaters. ... Arizona Daily Star columnist Greg Hansen bemoans what might have been in the Wildcats' double-OT loss to Oregon, and thankfully doesn't skimp on the melodrama. ... And speaking of double-OT losses (and melodrama), Notre Dame's loss to UConn was enough to make the Blue-Gray Sky get sentimental over the firedest coach in the country.

• Choose your late night cruising friends wisely. As suggested by his quick release and ongoing status as "Tennessee football player" when his alleged accomplices were summarily booted from the team earlier this month, Vol safety Janzen Jackson has been effectively cleared of armed robbery charges by Knox County prosecutors, who dropped charges against Jackson and the alleged getaway driver in the high profile stick-up. The investigation determined that neither Jackson nor the driver not only didn't have any advanced knowledge of a robbery, but were still unaware anything had gone down when they started to pull out of the parking lot.

Legal clearance opens the door for the hyped freshman's official return to the roster, possibly in time for a bowl game. Booted teammates Nu'Keese Richardson and Mike Edwards, meanwhile, are scheduled for preliminary hearings this morning on felony counts; the driver will still face charges for marijuana possession. [Knoxville News-Sentinel]

• Wolverine arrested, not charged. Even with a strong vote of confidence from his athletic director, this isn't exactly what Rich Rodriguez needed hours after capping a seven-game conference losing streak with a lopsided loss to Ohio State: An unnamed Michigan football player was arrested for sexual assault Sunday morning on a complaint at a campus party. There are enough details -- the player is 18, a freshman who didn't play at all this year but was apparently expected to start in 2010 -- that Wolverine fans can probably guess the alleged culprit. Note, though, that no formal charges have been filed. [AnnArbor.com]

• No "that's a lot of twinkies" jokes, please. Following Notre Dame's lead, "sources who have been briefed on the financial details" of Maryland coach Ralph Friedgen's contract told the Washington Post Sunday that Fridge's $4 million buyout won't save him from the chopping block on the heels of by far the worst season of his nine-year tenure. The Terps went down 29-26 Saturday at Florida State, their sixth straight loss and a possible prelude to the first 10-loss season in school history with another flop against Boston College in this weekend's finale. [Washington Post]

• This is not what we meant by "slingin' it." Along with his hair, ridiculous fashion sense, insistence on the deep ball and generally off-kilter flair, Miami quarterback Jacory Harris has wormed his way into out hearts despite (and in some sense, even because of) his status as the most interception-prone quarterback in the country. After this weekend, the cult of Jacory may also admire the sophomore's talent for pranking reporters: After passing for a career-high 348 yards with two touchdowns in a 34-16 win over Duke, Harris showed up to the postgame press conference wearing a sling on his throwing arm -- for no reason whatsoever. 'Cane coach Randy Shannon assured the room his quarterback -- who did play with a sore thumb under a layer of tape -- was "fine" and just "getting some of you guys." [Associated Press]

Quickly ... Oklahoma is probably headed for the Sun Bowl, which seems pretty generous at this point. ... Mike Leach says no way is he leaving Texas Tech any time soon. ... Charlie Weis' name still carries weight with the Kansas City Chiefs, apparently. ... And when did Mark Mangino get so nice all of a sudden?

Everybody was too busy writing Charlie Weis' obituary at Notre Dame to pay much attention to Randy Edsall -- his emotional postgame interview with NBC's sideline reporter immediately after the game, one of the best moments of the season, hasn't even been uploaded in any of the usual places -- but it's hard to imagine a much more uplifting counterpoint to the grim reality in South Bend than a beleaguered coach soaking in what he kept insisting was the biggest win in the history of the program he guided from obscurity.

Consider first where UConn has come from under Edsall, who brought a run-of-the-mill I-AA program into the I-A ranks in 2000, to its first bowl game in 2004, to its first co-Big East title in 2005 and now to a win on one of the most hallowed pitches in America, more recent indignities notwithstanding.

Then consider what UConn has endured as a team over the last month, toiling under the constant pall of the grisly homecoming murder of teammate Jasper Howard: Over the subsequent three games, the Huskies blew a fourth quarter lead at West Virginia in a game that wasn't decided until the final minute, then boarded a plane directly for Howard's funeral in Florida; blew another fourth quarter lead at home on an 81-yard touchdown reception by Rutgers' Tim Brown, one of Howard's best high school friends from Miami; lost its starting quarterback for the season; and scored twice as many points as any other team against undefeated Cincinnati on the road, pushing the Bearcats to the brink in a two-point loss that secured UConn's longest losing streak in three years. Before finally overcoming the Irish in overtime in South Bend, the Huskies had to endure watching two game-winning touchdowns negated by a pair of bogus holding penalties and then a game-winning field goal attempt sail wide on the final play of regulation, moments dripping with the "here we go again" doom Edsall referenced after the game.

That was where Edsall was when NBC's cameras caught him on the sideline after the final gun, struggling against the most deserving wave of tears any coach has ever choked back on national television. Here's to holding it all together when it counts, coach, and may all your International Bowls be sweet.

In a perfect world, the Doc would be given carte blanche to publicly torch the Bowl Championship Series in effigy and institute the elaborate, double-elimination battle royale of his dreams. But we live in the world we live in, so each Sunday the Doc looks at what the new BCS numbers mean for the rest of the season. Rooting interest: chaos. Always chaos.

• The more things change ... well, actually, we wouldn't know about that. We knew going into the weekend that there was infinitesimal chances of movement at the top, so to dispense with the formalities: The top seven is identical to last week's top seven, which was identical to the top seven the week before that. Florida, Alabama and Texas have occupied the top three slots in various orders in all six BCS polls this year and have no realistic expectation of relinquishing them, probably even after the Gators or Tide take a hit in the SEC Championship game. The only team that fell out of the top 10 was No. 9 LSU, which was probably overrated with no really quality wins, anyway (and remains so at No. 15 after its loss at Ole Miss, which somehow checks in 10 full spots below the Tigers, at No. 25, despite the head-to-head win, an identical record and a practically identical set of wins. But if we get into the injustices outside of the top 10 -- BYU is still in the top 20? For what? -- we'll be here all night).

The time is coming to roll out some moral outrage on behalf of undefeated TCU and Cincinnati for their pending snubs from the championship game, but by the system's logic, there's less and less point discussing their chances of crashing the Rose Bowl as the chances of any of the top three losing keep going down. (See below.)

The only relevant discussion left, then, is the jockeying for position for the last two at-large spots. TCU and the loser of the SEC Championship are pretty clearly locked into the first two spots, leaving Penn State/Iowa, Oklahoma State and Boise State in line for the last two. If there was any justice, the slots would fall to the two higher-ranked options in that quartet, Iowa and Boise State. But since the at-large process is primarily about tickets, ratings and other financial concerns, Penn State and Oklahoma State are the better bets -- if the Cowboys finish off sinking rival Oklahoma's dismal season Saturday in Norman. If the Big Ten is practically assured of filling one of those slots with the Nittany Lions or Hawkeyes, Boise's only opportunity probably lies with the Sooners knocking OSU from the running. Otherwise, the Broncos become something of a charity case, hoping against hope the Fiesta Bowl committee is more interested in their stellar record and ranking than the much less impressive track record of smaller conference teams when it comes to filling seats and pulling eyeballs.

• For chaos' sake. There are two possible scenarios for breaking up the inevitable Texas vs. SEC Champion showdown and lifting either TCU or Cincinnati into the BCS Championship game, and they're both pretty farfetched:

• Texas loses one of its final two games to Texas A&M or Nebraska.
 • Alabama or Florida loses its regular season finale to Auburn or Florida State, respectively, and that surprise loser rebounds to win the SEC Championship.

In the first case, Texas doesn't quite carry the cachet with its schedule (note that the Longhorns are still ranked below Cincinnati according to the computers) to hold onto one of the top two spots with a loss; if UT falls, TCU or Cincinnati will be waiting to fill the void, depending on whether the Bearcats move up with a solid win over Pittsburgh. The best outcome for the darkhorses is still a Texas loss.

A one-loss SEC champion is a tougher scenario: Even in the extremely unlikely event 'Bama or Florida falls this week, the redemptive hype of the SEC title game is still likely to lift the winner into the BCS Championship, even with a loss. At least in that scenario, though, there would be no end of controversy over the probable snubs, which is much better than the unchanging status quo we've been dealt for the last month-and-a-half.

Thanks to a Baton Rouge television station, however, we do know better:

That clip compounds the already searing indictment of LSU's horrendous clock management on the game-winning drive: On top of allowing 16 precious seconds to tick away before heaving up a desperate fourth-down pass with only nine seconds left, and apparently failing to have any plan for getting the field goal team onto the field or getting off a throw into the end zone when that pass was completed, Miles a) Vigorously signaled for his quarterback to throw the team's only remaining chance to win into the turf, and b) Proceeded to either forget what he was thinking in that crucial moment or outright lie about it, effectively making his sophomore quarterback the scapegoat for the boneheaded decision.

It's not the first time Miles has lost his head in the heat of a crucial moment or seemed to lose track of the clock at the end of a game. It was bound to burn a man whose brain seems to lie entirely below his sternum eventually. But to throw your own quarterback to the wolves -- intentionally or unintentionally, since it's not clear at all Miles was technically conscious when he was frantically instructing his team to spike the ball -- that's hardly the stuff of a $4 million man.

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Hat tip: Sports By Brooks.

The eerie calm reminds me of waiting for a devastating hurricane to come ashore after all the preparations have been made: The windows are boarded up, the pantry is full of supplies, the skies have taken on a greenish-gray hue, the wind is blowing mockingly and everyone is sitting on the porch, laughing nervously until the lights go out and everything begins to rock and howl in the throes of the storm. Weis had the same kind of chuckle amid the grim atmosphere at his regular Sunday press conference, where he insisted he planned to spend what will surely be his final week as Notre Dame's coach focusing on Stanford, trying to enjoy Thanksgiving with his family and refusing to consider resignation. Sometime after that, next Sunday or Monday, he'll be handed his walking papers and the epic storm of the '09 Notre Dame coaching search will land with full force.

I've joked before about having a "Charlie Weis is Fired" post in the can like the New York Times' pre-meditated obituaries of famous people, ready to toss up at a moment's notice when the time comes. The coming week, though, is going to amount to essentially the same thing, to the extent that all that will be left to say when the official word comes is "There it is." Stay tuned, kids, and make sure the pets are inside.

Teachers' Pet(s): Jeremiah Masoli and Nick Foles. Oregon and Arizona's rocket-armed quarterbacks put on a laser light show in the 44-41, double-overtime game of the week to reaffirm the Ducks as Pac-10 frontrunners. Masoli was responsible for all six of Oregon's touchdowns -- three passing, three rushing -- and finished with 345 total yards. Foles kept pace nicely with 314 passing yards and four touchdowns that earned the Wildcats the respect of an exhausted but rapt nation. (You were rapt, right, Harris Poll voters?)

Most School Spirit: While the vultures were circling the opposing sideline, it got a little misty as longtime UConn coach Randy Edsall struggled to hold it together while declaring the Huskies' overtime win at Notre Dame -- their first after a series of razor-thin, disappointing losses since cornerback Jasper Howard was murdered last month -- the biggest victory in school history.

Most Unlikely Couple: Charlie Weis and the Cleveland Browns? Still no word this morning on the fate of Notre Dame's top dog, but if the Irish brass are really waiting for the Stanford game to pass judgment ... well, despite the Cardinal's troubles Saturday at Cal, we can't imagine them not dispatching the Domers with ease next week in Palo Alto.

Most Creative: Mike Locksley. New Mexico's punch-happy head coach finally has one in the W column, but only after multiple turnovers, five lead changes and a field goal with 12 seconds remaining to put away equally hapless Colorado State. Honorable mention: UTEP, which once again found a way to lose to a one of C-USA's irredeemable bottom dwellers -- in this case, Rice, which took out the Miners 30-29 despite passing for just 55 yards with a long gain of 17 for the game. Our sincere congratulations to the Owls on their two-game win streak after an 0-9 start.

Mister Personality: Rick Neuheisel. It's probably not how he envisioned his team would get there, and it's certainly later than UCLA partisans were hoping, but the Bruins are bowl-eligible after extending Arizona State's puzzling losing streak to five games. (A nice, round number to correspond to the five fumbles the Devils coughed up to the Bruins in a 23-13 loss, ending their own bowl hopes.)

Most Popular: The Pac-10, for livening up an otherwise wobbly Week 12 slate with a pair of highly diverting, to-the-wire matchups in primetime, keeping things interesting into late night with the aforementioned Arizona-Oregon tilt and a thriller of a Big Game in Stanford.

Grape Job! Les Miles, that old so-and-so, didn't so much snatch defeat from the jaws of victory as he forced a crushing loss to Ole Miss down his own throat, sword-swallower style. This only bears out my theory, by the way, that Miles makes all sideline decisions with a 20-sided die he keeps tucked up under his hat. When you ride with the god of chaos, kids, buckle up. And have a grape day.

Drama Queen: Oklahoma has tried every trick in the book from cutting itself "just to feel alive" (Sam Bradford's shoulder) to sulking in the corner and refusing to score touchdowns (the Nebraska game), and now returns to its wheelhouse by losing a big game it could have handled in embarrassing fashion at Texas Tech. (We will take all this back once it comes out that Bob Stoops threw this game so the punditry would quit touting him as the next head coach at Notre Dame.)

Class Clown: The Big XII North. Stop me if you've heard this one before: With a win over Nebraska yesterday, Kansas State could have clinched the division title. Instead, with a loss in Lincoln, the Wildcats aren't even going to a bowl at 6-6 -- they have the raw win count to qualify, but are only allowed to count one of their two wins over I-AA patsies -- thereby reducing the season from "potentially special" to "over" in a matter of hours. Hilarious!

Most Likely To Succeed: Colt McCoy, the most realistic candidate left standing from the preseason's clean-cut Heisman triumvirate. Saturday's 32-of-41, 396-yard, four-touchdown performance lifted Texas a decisive win over outmanned basketcase Kansas, broke the Division I record for career victories and did nothing to dispel the assumption that the Longhorns will be the team to beat in Pasadena.

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Holly welcomes your adulation and veiled threats at nastinchka-at-yahoo, etc.

• Nevada piled up 574 yards on 61 carries in a 63-20 obliteration of New Mexico State, the highest single-game rushing total for any team this season, and became the first team in Division I-A history to produce three different 1,000-yard rushers in the same year, Vai Taua, Colin Kaepernick and Luke Lippincott. The Wolf Pack now own the top four single-game rushing performances of the year and lead the nation in rushing average by almost 60 yards per game over No. 2 Georgia Tech; they're 24 yards per game ahead of the best average of the decade (Nebraska in 2000). The Pack's 7.8 yards per carry for the season is also on pace to obliterate the best number of the decade (6.7 per carry by West Virginia in 2006) by more than a full yard.

On a related note, Nevada's eighth straight win represents its best streak in 18 years, which goes on the line Friday night at undefeated Boise State. Winner takes the WAC championship.

• Beleaguered Syracuse quarterback Greg Paulus completed 13 of 16 passes for 142 yards and a touchdown with no interceptions in his final home game, a 31-13 romp over Rutgers for Doug Marrone's first Big East win as the Orange's head coach.

• Texas Tech rang up 549 total yards in its 41-13 win over Oklahoma, almost 200 yards more than OU has allowed in any other game this year and one yard shy of the highest single-game total against the Sooners in Bob Stoops' 11-year tenure (Kansas State hit 550 last October). It was also the first time an OU defense under Stoops allowed 40 points to a team ranked outside of the top 12 at kickoff.

• Houston scored touchdowns on eight of its first nine possessions, seven of them on drives covering at least 65 yards, in a 55-14 win over lame-duck Memphis. UH quarterback Case Keenum was his typically prolific self with 405 yards passing, five touchdowns and no interceptions, and the Cougars rolled up 689 total yards despite touching the ball only once (and punting) in the fourth quarter. Nine different Houston receivers had at least three receptions for the game.

• Northwestern held Wisconsin to 99 yards rushing, 100 yards below the Badgers' season average, in the Wildcats' 33-31 upset in Evanston to secure Northwestern's first back-to-back eight-win seasons since 1994-95. Wildcat quarterback Mike Kafka passed for 326 yards, a new career high against Big Ten defenses, and two touchdowns in the win.

• North Carolina safety Deunta Williams intercepted three passes in the Tar Heels' 31-13 win at Boston College, following teammate Kendric Burney's three-interception effort in last week's win at Miami. For his part, Burney returned his only pick at B.C. for a touchdown in the first quarter, the second week in a row he's brought back an interception for a score. For the game, quarterbacks T.J. Yates, David Shinskie and Marc Marscovetra combined to throw eight interceptions between them, leading to 27 of the teams' 44 points in the UNC win.

• Texas A&M rushed for 375 yards, including a 97-yard touchdown run by true freshman Christine Michael, in its 38-3 win over Baylor, thereby avoiding its second consecutive finish in the Big 12 South cellar.

• Missouri receivers Danario Alexander and Jerrell Jackson combined for 19 catches for 315 yards with touchdown grabs of 63 and 70 yards, respectively, on back-to-back drives in the third quarter of the Tigers' 34-24 win over Iowa State. Alexander's 11 grabs against ISU gives him 42 receptions for 710 yards and seven touchdowns in the last four games.

• Kansas State rushed for 140 yards on 4.1 yards per carry at Nebraska, the best performance on the ground against the Husker defense this season, but didn't score a touchdown in a 17-3 loss.

• Georgia outgained Kentucky by 228 yards but was outscored 28-7 in the second half of the Wildcats' 34-27 win in Athens. Four of Kentucky's five touchdown drives began in Bulldog territory.

• Texas quarterback Colt McCoy hit 32 of 41 passes for 396 yards and four touchdowns in the Longhorns' 51-20 over Kansas, the fifth straight game and the ninth game this season in which McCoy has completed at least two-thirds of his passes -- but the first time he's topped 300 yards against a Big 12 defense.

• Penn State quarterback Daryll Clark passed for 310 yards and four touchdowns in the Nittany Lions' 42-14 rout over Michigan State, the second straight year Clark has exceeded 300 yards with four TD passes against the Spartans. The only other 300-yard passing effort of Clark's career was in this year's season opener against Akron.

• With leading rusher Darius Marshall on the sideline, Marshall still produced a pair of 100-yard rushers, Martin Ward and Terrell Edwards-Maye, in a 34-31 win over SMU that will likely cost the Mustangs a trip to the C-USA Championship game.

• New Mexico set a new season high with 467 total yards in its first win of the season, a 29-27 escape against Colorado State that wasn't decided until a 27-yard field goal by James Aho for the winning points with 12 seconds to play. The loss was the eighth in a row for the Rams after a 3-0 start that included upset wins over Colorado and Nevada.

• Southern Miss quarterback Martevious Young hit Johdrick Morris for a 60-yard scoring strike on the Eagles' first play of the game and added three more touchdown passes -- two of them covering 33 and 95 yards, respectively, to DeAndre Brown -- in USM's wild 44-34 win over Tulsa. The Eagles and Hurricane combined for 62 points in the first half but just 16 points in the second.

South Florida coach Jim Leavitt looked a little worse for wear following his team's 34-22 win over Louisville Saturday, but the St. Petersburg Times reports those are the good kind of facial scars:

Asked about the injury, Leavitt deadpanned that he "fell in the locker room," but his players revealed a familiar Leavitt halftime motivation: headbutting players while they still have their helmets on.

"He was fired up. He grabbed somebody -- I think it was (walk-on linebacker ) LaDre Watkins," safety Nate Allen said. "He headbutted him and fell backwards. I couldn't help but laugh, because that's the best one I've seen. ... We were fired up about that one."

Maybe Leavitt should get together with former opponent and fellow self-assailant Owen Schmitt to compare notes.

Whatever remained of the 'one-dimensional' charge against Masoli, though, flitted harmlessly away on the Ducks' two fourth quarter touchdown drives, on which he was 12-for-18 for 111 yards, converted a pair of third-down runs and connected on a do-or-die pass to move the sticks on fourth down just two plays before drilling the tying touchdown to Ed Dickson with six seconds on the clock. In overtime, he lobbed his third touchdown pass under pressure in the first frame and set up his own number on the winning run by firing a 23-yard strike to Dickson on the first snap of the second. Roughly half of Masoli's 345 total yards came in the fourth quarter and in overtime, and to all the other arrows in quiver, you can now add "clutch" after the first fourth quarter comeback of the season.

Still, that won't do much for him if it doesn't carry over in two weeks, when the Ducks get Oregon State in Eugene for the de facto, winner-take-all Pac-10 Championship game for an automatic trip to the Rose Bowl, one of the most improbable sentences typed in this or any other season. Even in their cozy, raucous home lair, the Ducks are guaranteed of nothing in the Civil War, but there's no questioning their resiliency after a night like this: Arizona was out with daggers to take the leap forward into the conference's elite, and plenty of would-be contenders -- UCLA in 2005, Cal in '06, Oregon itself in '07 -- have bitten the dust in Tucson against lesser Wildcat outfits than this one under Mike Stoops' watch. The Ducks come out licking some wounds in their secondary after being stung for 311 yards and four touchdowns by 'Zona quarterback Nick Foles, but this seemed like the kind of game only a Rose Bowl-worthy team comes out of at all.

California 34, Stanford 28. Cal running back Shane Vereen may never be mistaken for the spectacular blazer he replaced in the Bears' backfield, Jahvid Best, or the thundering Mack truck on the opposite sideline tonight, Toby Gerhart, and may never approach the broad star power of either. But Vereen shouldered as many carries against the Cardinal (42) as any back in the country has endured in any game this season, for 193 yards and three touchdowns en route to leading the Bears to their biggest win of the season over their most hated rival. At minimum, that buys him 24 hours of undisturbed sleep and at least one deep-tissue massage from a comely student trainer.

It ought to buy Cal a little more respect, too, for demonstrating more resiliency than the Bears have shown in years -- for a team with a reputation for extended collapses (2007) and random losses at the wrong time, the Bears have managed to rally this year first from back-to-back blowouts at the hands of USC and Oregon with three wins in a row, and now from another tough home loss against Oregon State (including the frightening injury that sidelined Best) to pick up back-to-back big wins over Arizona and now Stanford, breaking three-game winning streaks in both cases. That may not amount to hill of beans in this crazy mixed-up league as far as the final standings or bowl lineups go, but its a lot better than almost anyone would have guessed two weeks ago.

Harvard 14, Yale 10. When New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick went with the numbers instead of the conventional wisdom by going for it on fourth down with the lead and the ball in his own territory last Sunday in his team's eventual loss to Indianapolis, it led to a fascinating round of debate over probabilities, "gut feelings" and how to think about risk-taking in more unorthodox, effective ways.

I think it's safe to say Yale coach Tom Williams' ill-fated fourth down gamble in the Bulldogs' loss to Harvard today won't be inspiring any of those debates (emphasis added):

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP)—Yale's first-year coach Tom Williams says he's ready to take responsibility for the Bulldogs' eighth loss in the last nine games to rival Harvard.

Yale was ahead 10-7 Saturday with just 2:25 left when it failed to convert a fake punt on fourth-and-22 from its 26, and wound up losing 14-10.

"The whole idea was to keep our foot on the pedal, and not play scared," said Williams in trying to explain the call. "If anyone is looking for somebody to blame, blame this guy right here."

Presumably, Williams was referring to himself, and not some poor freshie doomed to be forced to cite a Euclidian proposition while being trimmed by would-be initiates of Skull & Bones. (Which would be fine if he didn't have to rely on townies for his ride back into New Haven.)

Harvard turned the fake -- a 15-yard run by safety John Powers -- into the go-ahead points less than a minute later, on a 32-yard touchdown pass from the very Harvardly-named Collier Winters to Chris Lorditch, which effectively shut the door on Yale and lifted the Crimson to 7-3 for the season. And still, I'm not sure that it's any crazier than the fourth-and-10 fake from his own 15 that Florida coach Urban Meyer busted out with his team trailing against Arkansas in the 2006 SEC Championship game -- except that play worked for a first down and led to a touchdown that put the Gators on top for good en route to the national championship. Like they say: If it works, you're a genius. (And in this case, a filthy rich genius. It was worth a shot, Coach Tom.)

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Ole Miss 25, LSU 23. It's generally bad form to undermine a tight, dramatic game by dwelling on a mistake in the closing seconds, but occasionally the comedy of errors is too staggering to ignore. So LSU coach Les Miles, grab your $3.75 million salary and step right up for the full-frontal clock management gaffe of the year, as narrated by CBS Sports' Verne Lundquist and Gary Danielson:

Miles has made his reputation as one of the SEC's elite coaches by being aggressive, flying by the seat of his pants and occasionally flouting conventional clock management, and what's ironic about the closing flub in Oxford is that he was on his way to confirming that reputation. Down 25-17 with three-and-a-half minutes to play, LSU drove for a touchdown to pull within 25-23 with 1:23 on the clock, and recovered an onside kick to give itself a chance to win in the final minute. After hitting a 26-yard pass from Jordan Jefferson to Brandon LaFell to move within range of the winning field goal, it looked like a miracle in the works.

Instead, the Tigers went backwards on consecutive plays, first on a sack for a loss of nine yards (followed by LSU's second timeout) that knocked them out of field goal range, and then on a third down screen pass for a loss of seven that backed LSU into a desperate, 4th-and-26 hole. And instead of following Clock Management 101 by calling their final timeout immediately after the third down play ended in-bounds, though, the Tigers let 16 seconds tick off before finally expending the last TO with only nine seconds and no timeouts remaining to get off the fourth down play and any other snaps that followed it.

So when Jefferson improbably completed a 42-yard pass to Terance Tolliver at the Ole Miss six on fourth-and-forever as the clock ticked down to one second, LSU had two options: a) Rush the field goal team (which should have been waiting on the sideline for just this situation) on for a winning attempt before the officials were able to move the chains, set the ball and begin the clock again; or b) With such little time to get a new 11 men on and the current 11 men off, hurry the offense up to the line to take a final shot into the end zone. It had to be kick or throw into the end zone, and the decision had to made pronto -- in fact, it should have already been made, during the timeout preceding the fourth down heave. Clock Management 101, Section 2: With almost no time and no timeouts, you must have two plays ready in the if the first play doesn't score.

The one option the Tigers definitely did not have at their disposal was spiking the ball to stop the clock: With only one second left, once Jefferson took the snap and put the ball into the turf, there would be no time left to kill.

Naturally, Jefferson and the offense scurry to the line, looking at each other and to their sideline in confusion as the officials set the ball, start the clock and ... end it. Jefferson inexplicably attempted to spike the ball, anyway, but the Tigers didn't even get off the snap before the clock hit all-zeroes.

So, coach: Why'd you let 16 seconds tick off before calling timeout after the loss on third down, leaving the team with no time to execute the two or three more plays it would need to convert the fourth down and get the field goal team on? What was the plan for the final play after those precious seconds were wasted? There ... was a plan, wasn't there?

Paraphrased: "We knew we were going to run out of time if we tried to attempt a field goal, so we were trying to attempt a field goal."

Basically, then, there was no plan. We read you, coach, loud and clear. Good luck with the oh-so-forgiving Louisiana media this week.

[UPDATE, 9:15 p.m. ET] Ah, I see, there was "a want for more time on the clock." Now it's all becoming clear.

UConn 33, Notre Dame 30 (Overtime). That's it. Don the hoods, light the fires, lead Charlie Weis down the long, spiral stairway to the dungeon beneath the Golden Dome and do what must be done. Might as well get on with it.

Athletic director Jack Swarbrick said this week there would be no decision on Weis' fate as Notre Dame head coach until after the Irish's season finale next week at Stanford, but it seems almost inhumane to leave a man bracing for the inevitable blow, as Weis will be if the situation remains "undecided" through the coming seven days.

Obviously, the thing is decided now, if it wasn't already: This loss means ND has dropped at least five games in three consecutive seasons for the first time in more than 20 years, and has no chance to finish in the final polls. The best-case postseason scenario, a consolation trip to the Gator Bowl, is out of the question, leaving another unsatisfying, third-tier bowl bid at best. Navy has two wins in South Bend in three years after a record 47-year drought in the series. Irish seniors went out in their final home game with a loss to an unranked, sub-.500 Big East also-ran, just as last year's seniors went out with a humiliating loss to Syracuse that initially unleashed the anti-Weis jackals. Weis has the worst winning percentage in Notre Dame Stadium of any Irish coach since 1975 -- "even worse than Gerry Faust," as the sympathetic NBC commentators noted immediately after the game, just before reluctantly agreeing on-air that Weis must be finished for falling woefully short of expectations with every conceivable advantage this year.

It's over; the only question is whether Swarbrick will wait until after the pointless finale to drop the ax, as promised, or go ahead and be done with it over the next two or three days.

When he was hired in December 2004, Weis assumed Tyrone Wilingham's chair with the swagger that would turn critics against him in short order when he composed his own epitaph: "You are what you are folks, and right now, you're a 6-5 football team. That's not good enough for you, and it's certainly not good enough for me." Weis had it all this year: An extremely experienced, talented team built entirely from his own highly-ranked recruiting classes, reared entirely in his program and staring down an usually favorable schedule that seemed to scream "10 wins." Instead, the Irish are a 6-5 football team for the second year in a row, headed for 6-6, and that's certainly not going to be good enough to keep Weis around into December. At the latest. It's been real, coach.

As promised earlier this week, a handful of very sad souls identifying themselves as members of the KKK showed up on Ole Miss' campus before the Rebels' game with LSU today to protest the school's official banishment of the traditional anthem, "From Dixie With Love," from the marching band's repertoire. School officials said this week there was nothing they could do to keep the Klan from showing up if the proceedings remained nonviolent, and that held up for about 10 minutes before university police went ahead and escorted the retro hate clowns from the premises -- possibly for their own protection, in the face of approximately 20 times as many counter-protestors rallied against them (emphasis added):

OXFORD — About a dozen hooded Ku Klux Klan members rallied briefly at Ole Miss before Saturday’s football game with No. 10 LSU.

The members of the Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan spent about 10 minutes waving flags, displaying Nazi-style salutes and occasionally gesturing at a group of about 250 hecklers that included young children. They were protesting the school's decision to drop a pep song that included "Dixie."

They came, they saw, they slinked away with their poly satin sashes between their legs as a crowd in "Turn Your Back On Hate" t-shirts sauntered off to a "Dixie"-free game. The song, stunningly, will not be reinstated.

Texas Tech 41, Oklahoma 13. You could see a rough season on the horizon for Oklahoma from the beginning, when All-America tight end Jermaine Gresham went down with a season-ending injury days before the opener with BYU, the rebuilt offensive line went starting a converted tight end at center and the franchise, Sam Bradford, didn't make it out of the first half before being stricken with the shoulder injury that effectively ended his college career. The seeds of the Sooners' demise were obvious enough, and the notion of matching the absurd heights of the record-breaking 2008 offense was probably folly to begin with, even if they were completely healthy.

But there was no way to predict just how low this season would sink -- with the lopsided loss in Lubbock, this is the reality for Oklahoma:

• The OU offense has been held below 2008's regular season low of 35 points on six different occasions, including all but one game outside of Norman (at Kansas, a 35-13 win). It's also been held below 400 total yards on six different occasions after hitting at least 436 yards in every regular season game in '08.

• Today was the third game in 11 in which the Sooners scored a single touchdown, not including the 10-3 loss at Nebraska two weeks ago, in which they scored none.

• Landry Jones' 13th interception on the season (most in the Big 12) gives him seven picks in the last three games, just one fewer than Bradford accumulated in either of the last two full seasons.

• The Sooners have one win over a team with a winning record, 42-30 over Kansas State, and are 1-5 on the road.

• The Red Raiders, 65-21 last year in Norman, are the second team in three weeks (along with Nebraska) to knock off OU after losing last year by more than 30 points.

That should be painful enough for Oklahoma partisans, so we'll skip for now one of the single worst afternoons ever turned in by a Bob Stoops defense -- Tech ran up 41 points and 548 yards against a Sooner D that ranked in the top 10 nationally in every major statistical category coming in -- for the real gut punch of the day: Oklahoma's fifth loss matches Stoops' first year in 1999 as the worst season in his tenure at OU, with Oklahoma State coming into Norman next week as a probable favorite to drop the Sooners to 6-6. The only silver lining at this point is that they can plausibly chalk this season's sobering slide up to a rebuilding year -- or at least they hope they can, because Stoops doesn't have another three seasons to wait on Landry Jones to finally lead a win over a decent team on the road.

Ohio State 21, Michigan 10. So that's it then: Michigan went out with as much fight as it could have reasonably expected to muster as a last-place, double-digit underdog against the conference champion -- the game was in some doubt well into the third quarter -- and now it can resign itself to another offseason of licking its wounds off its worst Big Ten season in more than 45 years. Unlike last year's catastrophe, which was foreshadowed right away in the opening loss to Utah, the tantalizing promise of a 4-0 start and top 25 billing in September makes the Great Collapse of '09 that much crueler. Quarterback Tate Forcier's interception parade in the fourth quarter today -- three picks in a span of six attempts, capping a five-turnover day for the freshman -- was a grimly appropriate finale to two gut-wrenching months.

There will be plenty of time for comparisons over the next nine months -- certainly the '09 Wolverines were better statistically than the '08 version, if only because they looked more like a typical Michigan outfit against the MAC fodder, and actually had a semblance of offense for most of the year -- but Michigan ends the season in the same place it ended last season, staring at a losing record and a new low in conference play, and this year is going to be much tougher than the last one for Rich Rodriguez: When the ABC broadcast team (ostensibly in Rod's corner) is openly discussing your possible termination as time ticks down, there's no question about the reality of the hot seat. Even with a true freshman quarterback, the minimum expectation was a return to .500 and a bowl game, rock-bottom in Ann Arbor in the 40 years preceding Rodriguez's arrival. He didn't get there -- he spectacularly didn't get there, with seven straight conference losses -- and the disapproving murmur of the last offseason is certain to become a deafening roar in 2010.

Maybe worst of all from a Michigan perspective: Ohio State's first-half malaise, burgeoning on calamity following an ugly midseason loss at Purdue, yielded to a five-game winning streak over the last month, back-to-back top-15 wins over Penn State and Iowa, an outright Big Ten championship and a reconfirmation of OSU as the league's premiere program. After six straight OSU wins, the contrast between the rivals has never been greater, and there's no end in sight.

Florida State's black-helmet motif against Maryland will be the talk of Tallahassee fashionistas, but the scene of the day in Doak Campbell was surely longtime defensive coordinator Mickey Andrews taking over the traditional spear-planting duties at midfield from Chief Osceola:

He could have really made the scene by riding in on Renegade, but after 25 years, Andrews has earned the right of refusal on the horse.

Considering the fate that likely awaits his defense in his final regular season game next week at Florida, I hope Andrews gets his kicks in today against the hapless Terps, or there won't even be bowl game to help absolve the worst statistical D of his entire tenure.

I don't have much of an opinion on the Buckeyes' much-anticipated "throwback" duds, but I know the ugliest vision for Michigan fans as they struggle to hang tight in the first half: A Big House allegedly swathed in almost as much scarlet and gray as maize and blue.

That, and starting running back Michael Shaw getting a little pushy with an out-of-uniform Buckeye before the game. At least someone in Ann Arbor still cares enough about the rivalry to disregard basic civility.

I dunno, sounds pretty lustrous to me, for another generation, at least.

What: Game day live blog. All games in play, all comments welcome and all colors accepted. Try to keep it civil, please.
When: First kick at noon Eastern; chat kicks roughly simultaneously. The blog will run throughout the day, through the primetime tilts -- although, as intriguing as midnight in Las Cruces may be, don't hold your breath for the midnight-oil tilt in the WAC.
Who: You and all your rowdy friends. Come loud, proud and keeping your head on a swivel. We're not responsible for what may happen if you don't.
How: Hit "Watch Now," enter comments into the available box and do your part to accelerate the slow, agonizing death of conventional journalism.
Why: Because lobbing snarky barbs at earnest adolescents never gets old, especially when your most terrible revenge fantasies are wholeheartedly approved by the vast majority of the populations of entire states. Football!

There's always the risk of getting too carried away by the last scene without taking the entire picture into account, but it's hard to classify Stanford's running game at this point as anything but "awesome," despite it being little more than "Toby Gerhart right, Toby Gerhart left, Toby Gerhart in their grill." Even before their breakout efforts against Oregon and USC the last two weeks, the Cardinal were averaging 205 yards on the ground over their 5-3 start; add to that the dominant efforts in 50-plus-point bludgeons of the Ducks (254 yards on 4.9 per carry) and Trojans (325 stunning yards on 6.5 a pop), and Stanford stands alone as the most physically intimidating attack in the country over the stretch run.

On the other side, though, probably no defense in the Pac-10 has been better against the run over the same stretch than Cal: Since being gashed by Oregon and USC in back-to-back losses in their first two league games, the Bears haven't allowed 100 yards on the ground in more than a month -- to a team or individual -- including holding Oregon State and Arizona well below their respective season averages the last two weeks. The best individual back Cal has seen, Jacquizz Rogers, was bottled up for 67 yards on less than three per carry in Berkeley; with a veteran front focusing on Gerhart, the Bears have a decent shot at holding the league's leading rusher around the century mark, if not beneath it for only the third time this year.

The problem with focusing on Gerhart over the second half of the year is the developing of redshirt freshman quarterback Andrew Luck and the emergence of the Cardinal offense as the most balanced attack in the country: For the season, Stanford averages 222 yards per game rushing and 223 passing, with Luck dropping 11 touchdowns to one interception over the last five games en route to establishing himself as the highest-rated passer in the conference. That's a crippling prospect for one of the worst pass defenses in the country: In the process of stuffing the run, Cal allowed at least 280 yards through the air in five of their last eight games, including all three of its losses. The Bears can pick their poison, but they'll have to swallow it either way.

As a 6-5 team with two wins over I-AA outfits and only one victory over a team with a winning record -- a one-point escape from fellow 6-5 mediocrity Iowa State in the Big 12 opener -- Kansas State probably has no claim to "disrespect" today at Nebraska. Still: You don't see too many 16.5-point spreads in games with the division championship up for grabs. The winner today in Lincoln is heading to Dallas as the North Division's sacrificial lamb at the altar of Texas' coronation in the Big 12 Championship game in two weeks, and the oddsmakers apparently think there's no chance the Wildcats will be that lamb.

If there's any hope for KSU at all, it's obviously in the ability of the Wildcats' straight-ahead running game to pound out a living on one of the country's best run defenses. The only player who remotely qualifies as a "star" for this team on either side of the ball is 6-foot-2, 227-pound JUCO transfer Daniel Thomas, the Big 12's leading rusher, who personally has churned out five 100-yards games and been held below 75 yards only twice for an offense that's made a pretty good living on the ground -- KSU has averaged 214 yards rushing in its four conference wins, including 266 yards in a 17-10 win over Kansas two weeks ago, and had the best day on the ground of any team this season against Oklahoma with 149 yards and three touchdowns on 5.1 per carry in a 42-30 loss in Norman.

If nothing else, the Wildcats don't want to have to resort to putting the ball in the air: Even with the emergence of Grant Gregory as the clear starting quarterback, they rank dead last in the conference in passing yards and are also near the bottom in terms of efficiency. This is an old-school, work-the-body type of offense that isn't going to come roaring back from a big deficit, especially on the road against the nation's No. 1 pass efficiency defense.

The hitch: Nebraska is also one of the strongest run defenses in the country, anchored by certain All-American defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh and less heralded linemates Jared Crick (12 tackles for loss) and Barry Turner (8 TFL), who haven't allowed a single offense yet to hit 150 yards or four yards per carry on the ground. That includes completely dismantling outstanding running games from Virginia Tech (86 yards on 2.3 per carry), Missouri (91 yards on 2.6) and Oklahoma (80 on 2.8). The Huskers' issue all season has been scoring enough points, and K-State's offense to date couldn't play more directly into their low-scoring hands.

Saturday's Pac-10 showdown in Tucson is ostensibly about Oregon finishing off its conference title run in the same place where a near-identical steamroller of an offense was abruptly stopped in its tracks two years ago. The parallels between these Ducks and the edition that came up short in 2007 are obvious and a little eerie: Like the '07 team, Oregon goes into Arizona as a solid favorite with one conference loss, a home win over USC that announced the Ducks' arrival as the new league heavyweight, a versatile quarterback at the helm of the league's highest-scoring offense and a clear shot to the Rose Bowl.

Last time, the Ducks fell apart in this spot when Heisman frontrunner Dennis Dixon suddenly went down with a torn ACL, sending the team into a funk that cost it that game against Arizona and its last two in the regular season, a whimper of an ending for an outfit that seemed to be roaring toward a national title shot. Those heights are out of reach for this team, but another sudden collapse -- for whatever reason -- would feel just as deflating with the Pac-10's first non-Trojan championship in eight years so clearly in reach.

Just as interesting, though, is Arizona's trajectory to this point, not in its path from preseason also-ran to legitimate conference contender -- the Wildcats will win the Pac-10 and go to the Rose Bowl for the first time in school history if they win their last three, beginning with Oregon -- but also in the long run of Mike Stoops' six-year tenure. 'Zona progressively improved from one season to the next in each of Stoops' first five seasons, a logical climb as the defense gradually improved and quarterback Willie Tuitama progressed along with a surrounding cast that grew up together as multiyear starters. This year, minus Tuitama as well as record-breaking receiver Mike Thomas, All-American left tackle/second-round pick Eben Britton and injured tight end Rob Gronkowski, who hasn't played a down of his junior season, this year should have been the first great regression under Stoops' watch.

Instead, so far, the upward track has kept right on rolling with a largely new cast:

The next logical step in that progression is exactly the Wildcats are now, with a shot right in front of them to confirm their move into the conference's elite -- or to confirm that they're still destined to flatline, after all, stuck as the competent but decidedly second-rate outfit they were in 2008.

Along those lines, the big asterisk that goes above the 2009 column is that it doesn't include two of the Wildcats' biggest, most defining challenges, at USC on Dec. 5, and against the best team in the conference to date this weekend. Much as they may secretly wish it, Oregon quarterback Jeremiah Masoli's knee isn't going to give out on him suddenly during a random cut, and few quarterbacks have shredded the Wildcats as thoroughly over the last four years as Masoli did in last year's 55-45 shootout in the Ducks' favor in Eugene, where Chip Kelly's spread option attack rolled up 504 yards on almost nine yards per snap.

Oregon is not a great road team -- it's last four losses are all on the road -- but the Duck offense is rolling at a ridiculous 475 yards and 42 points per game in seven Pac-10 games. Rebounding to hold the Ducks in check offensively would be the most promising sign that the "Mildcats" Stoops inherited in 2004 are close to coming full-circle.

How well do you remember Florida pre-Tebow? In case you blocked it out, Urban Meyer was still dealing with the mess of the Ron Zook regime. Four years and two (possibly three) national titles later, we are within sight of the Gators' transition to the post-Tebow era.

Tim Tebow's Florida finale is a play in four acts: (I) Florida International, this Saturday; (II) Florida State, his final game at the Swamp; (III) the SEC Championship Game against Alabama; and (IV) his final college game, whether that is the BCS Championship game or the Sugar Bowl.

What makes the FIU game worthy of inclusion in the finale? Because after four years, it is the closest thing fans will get to a glimpse of the post-Tebow era, when the torch passes from Tebow to heir-apparent John Brantley. In the other three games, Tebow will presumably play the entire game. FIU is so overmatched that it seems crazy to think that Tebow will play past halftime -- perhaps not even past the first quarter.

Here is an interesting bookend: Four years ago, nearly to the day, Florida played 1-AA patsy Western Carolina. After a season of valuable but still spotty responsibilities as a change-of-pace option for Chris Leak, Tebow finally got a sustained opportunity to run Meyer's open-throttle spread offense -- Tebow accounted for four touchdowns (two passing, two rushing), nearly 250 yards of offense by himself, and led Florida to a 62-0 romp.

I was in The Swamp for that game and -- with the BCS title game at the time a virtual impossibility -- remember being giddy at the prospects of this quarterback running Florida's offense for the next three years. Expect a similar effect for Brantley against FIU. There won't be the same messianic fervor, obviously. But there will be something almost as valuable: Confidence.

That creates an important, even cathartic event -- for Brantley, for Urban Meyer, for Gator fans, even for Tebow himself. Everyone needs to see that the program Meyer has assembled will be OK without him. There is still so much of the 2009 season left to play -- so much of Tebow's career to unfold -- that it feels weird to think about. But it's out there.

Before Tebow's final game at The Swamp, before his shot at the SEC title, before his shot at a third national title in four years, there is this moment of transition -- a pressure-free appearance for Tebow, in which he can soak in the adulation of the home crowd while watching the future of the Florida program he helped rebuild. That makes it even more important to take this weekend's game for the opportunity it is: To look beyond Tebow to the program's next step.

Don't discount fans getting to see a half or more of Brantley, who some consider the second-best quarterback in the SEC this season, despite having zero truly significant snaps under his belt. The presumption is that Florida can't possibly keep winning at this pace during life "A.T." What if the Gators thrive?

The offense will arguably be more balanced. Without Tebow's ability to act as his own fullback -- his own one-man play-action maneuver -- Florida will be forced to spread the ball around more. Consider what will surround Brantley next season:

• The single best player on Florida's current offense, Aaron Hernandez, will be back, if he scorns the NFL, presumably following up All-American status this year with a run at being a Top 10 draft pick in 2011.

• All three top running backs return: Jeff Demps, Chris Rainey and Emmanuel Moody. They are joined by top prep running Mack Brown, who might be better than all of them, and "the next Percy Harvin," Andre Debose, who lost his much-anticipated true freshman season this year to a hamstring injury.

• The offensive line may lose the Pouncey twins, but will be anchored by Xavier Nixon, who last week became the first true freshman to start at left tackle for Florida since the early nineties and could be the best freshman lineman in the nation this season. He will protect the right-handed Brantley's blind side.

There is a dumb joke to be made that Florida's offense can't possibly get less inspiring than it has been this season. But the fact is, even with diminished expectations, next season's offense should be better than this year's version -- even if Brantley himself can't plunge ahead for four yards on third-and-short like Tebow can.

Over these last four games -- certainly these final two games of the season (and of Tebow's career) at The Swamp -- the focus of Florida fans should be on Tebow and his legacy. Saturday's cupcake is a chance to foreshadow what happens when that legacy leaves the field. There will be life After Tebow, and it starts Saturday.

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Dan Shanoff is obsessively covering Tim Tebow all season long at TimTeblog. Other times, he can be found writing every weekday morning at SportingNews.com and all the time at DanShanoff.com.

But when BCS proponents trot out the line, "every week is a playoff," it is safe to say this is not the kind of week they have in mind, at least where the six unbeaten and two one-loss teams in the BCS top 10 are concerned:

This Week at the Top of the BCS Standings
1. Florida: – 45 vs Fla. International
2. Alabama: vs Chattanooga (No line)
3. Texas: – 26 vs Kansas
4. TCU: –31 at Wyoming
5. Cincinnati: Off
6. Boise State: –23 at Utah State (Fri.)
7. Georgia Tech: Off
9. Pittsburgh: Off

In fact, throughout this week's BCS top 25, there's only one game between ranked teams (No. 25 California at No. 17 Stanford), which doesn't have a direct impact on the Pac-10 title race without some dominoes falling at the top of the conference. Not including the Cardinal, seven-point home favorites over Cal, there are only four ranked teams favored by less than 10 points: LSU (+4 at Ole Miss), Oregon (–6 at Arizona), Penn State (–3 at Michigan State) and Wisconsin (–7 at Northwestern).

And only one of those games, Oregon at Arizona, has any chance of impacting a conference championship race, because the Pac-10 is the only one of the "Big Six" races still burning -- the others are either settled (Ohio State in the Big Ten) or effectively settled until "Championship Saturday" in two weeks, when the Big East (Cincinnati at Pittsburgh), ACC (Georgia Tech vs. Clemson or Boston College), Big 12 (Texas vs. the winner of Kansas State/Nebraska) and of course SEC (Alabama vs. Florida) will stage their championship games among participants that have effectively locked in their positions already. Barring a colossal, inconceivable upset -- which wouldn't even affect any of the major conference championship pictures, they're so etched in stone at this point -- it's cruise control at the top.

That leaves Oregon at (unranked) Arizona, the only two teams remaining in the Pac-10 that still control their own destiny for the conference championship, as the only thing resembling a "playoff." With its first big road win of the season in Tucson, Oregon can put itself in a position to lock up the automatic Rose Bowl bid with a win over Oregon State on Dec. 3; with the biggest win in Mike Stoops' tenure, the Wildcats can put themselves in the driver's seat with dates at Arizona State and USC still in front of them, opening the Stanford and Oregon State in a convoluted tiebreaker scenario if the 'Cats drop one of their last two. The Pac-10 is the one league heating up while the rest simmer in anticipation of their one big weekend.

A huge portion of the country is going to miss Arizona-Oregon, by the way, which takes a second seat to Texas-Kansas over a vast swath of flyover territory, as well as Cal-Stanford, which appears on the little-seen Versus network -- at the same time as Arizona-Oregon, just to make sure even Pac-10 fans can't get their fill of both. It's a good thing there's no playoff around to give Ohio State an opportunity to play for seeding or add national title implications to the convoluted and overwhelmingly West Coast-focused Pac-10 race. That would really devalue the whole operation, you know?

But don't take my word for it, now that the professionals have had their say. And quite a few critics, actually, are willing to play along with the film's "feel-good" vibe: The Washington Post admires "a straightforward lack of cheap sentiment that saves it from being either too maudlin or saccharine-sweet," and the L.A. Times lauds director John Lee Hancock for giving the film "as much humor as heart." The Austin Chronicle and Boston Globe both praise Sandra Bullock for saving the movie from "cuddliness" and "emotional garishness," respectively; USA Today likes it "strong performances" and -- hark! -- "strong football scenes." The real-life couple depicted in the movie reportedly loves it; Kenneth Starr reportedly cried at the premiere. (Why was Ken Starr at the premiere of a schlocky football movie? Why not?)

Other, let's say headier publications, on the other hand, found the film's redemption story less "feel-good" and more "insidious" and "racist" in its central theme of "wide-eyed black naif finds his way only through the hard work and benevolence of middle-class white patrons," and didn't hold back:

Chicago Tribune: "Oher, portrayed as a near-mute saint by Quinton Aaron, has been sidelined in his own story. ... at its queasiest 'The Blind Side' veers perilously close to the concept of poverty tourism."

Portland Oregonian: "Author Michael Lewis wrote an absorbing book about Oher, tackling issues of race, class, religion and the evolution of gridiron strategy. ... which might make some fret that his tale would be massaged into a facile, feel-good fable that substitutes cliché for reality at nearly every turn. Sadly, they'd be right."

The Onion (A.V. Club): "In the character of "Big Mike" ... the film suggests a gentle, oversized puppy in need of adoption. (The family that takes him in literally picks him up from the streets during a rainstorm, like a stray. All that's missing are the children pleading, "Mom, can we keep him?")

The Village Voice: "In every scene, Oher is instructed, lectured, comforted, or petted like a big puppy; he is merely a cipher (Aaron has, at most, two pages of dialogue), the vehicle through which the kind-hearted but imperfect whites surrounding him are made saintlier. 'Am I a good person?' Leigh Anne asks Sean non-rhetorically—as if every second in this film weren't devoted to canonizing her."

So there you have it: "The Wire," it is not. If that's your standard for racially-charged rags-to-riches stories, you might want to skip the theater and check Netflix again to see if "The Hurt Locker" is available yet. But hey, maybe the coaches' cameos in "The Blind Side" will be worth it.

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All reviews via Metacritic.

The Lowdown.
The thing that makes Lubbock special is that you have to really, really want to get there. It's nowhere near a major city; most Red Raider alums of our acquaintance make the five-hour drive from Dallas every game day, which has the effect of making the crowd that much more emotionally invested in the game.

Couple that with the relatively small size of Jones Stadium (around 59,000 capacity) and you get more of a personal feel to the victory vibes. It's a lot like a high school environment, and we mean that in the best way. Everyone you'll meet is fired up like it's their own kid playing out there. This feeling will only be magnified if you can manage to score a school ID and watch the game from the best seats in the house, the Double T on the grass. And make sure to snap a picture of the decrepit Double T scoreboard, as well, a source of ironic pride for many fans.

We assure all doubters, West Texas hospitality is not a myth. Lubbock has an exaggerated reputation for being unfriendly to visitors, but as with any school worth its tailgating cred, you've just got to behave and they'll open right up. Engage politely with a local and you'll find yourself stuffed to the gills with delicious barbecue before you know it. Added bonus: Lubbock's once-stringent blue laws have been relaxed, making beer available for purchase within the city limits.

What To Wear.
Parking will be harder to come by than in recent years thanks to new stadium construction, and it's a big campus, so be prepared to do some walking. T-shirts, jeans and boots are de rigeur, although girls are dressing up more than they used to. But whatever you throw on, pack some layers. Lubbock gets cold fast when the sun goes down, and high winds frequently kick up some dust, so bring sunglasses. And if you really want to blend in, doll up in your finest brigand wear and join the merry crew of Mike Leach's Pirate Academy.

Pregame Stops.
• Chimy's, 2417 Broadway. Homestyle Mexican food and killer margaritas.
• One Guy From Italy, 1101 University Avenue. Pizza joint heavily favored by students despite the terrifying jingle on the website.
• Spanky's, 811 University Avenue. Our Red Raider brethren swear, "Nothing settles an upset stomach better than fried cheese logs."

Postgame Stops.
• Lone Star Oyster Bar, 3040 34th Street and 5116 58th Street. Absolute dive that's not to be missed; try the Hot Shrimp.
• Blue Light Live, 1806 Buddy Holly Avenue. Live music and wiggling coeds.
• Cricket's, 2412 Broadway. Right across from campus with a nice beer selection.

What To Drink.
Our Texas Tech correspondent responds, in all caps, "KEYSTONE." Any manner of light beer will do, really, but if you're of a cocktail bent try a Raider Red, a sublime concoction of Big Red and vodka. Guns up!

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Tip of the tricorn this week to Seth, Skin Patrol, and the rest of the fine folks at Double T Nation.
Holly welcomes your adulation and veiled threats at nastinchka-at-yahoo, etc.

• Have you ever watched a fourth quarter comeback ... on Weeden? I'm not at Oklahoma State practices, obviously, but it's hard to believe after watching third-stringer Brandon Weeden bring the Cowboys from behind with two fourth quarter touchdown passes against Colorado Thursday night that the former minor leaguer has been consistently outplayed by top backup Alex Cate, who was 0-for-11 in his first start in place of injured Zac Robinson. OSU coaches still "stand behind" Cate, but it was Weeden who pulled the Cowboys' BCS hopes from the fire of a Buffalo upset and will definitely get the start if Robinson can't go next week at Oklahoma. [The Oklahoman]

The Colorado papers are eerily silent this morning on coach Dan Hawkins' decision to punt with a little over three minutes remaining and a four-point deficit, after which the Buffaloes never saw the ball again en route to loss No. 8 on the year, instead preferring to describe CU's effort on the road as "gallant." That and a prohibitive buyout will get Hawkins another week of patience before facing the executioner for judgment on his fourth straight losing season. [Boulder Daily Camera]

• It's Turner Gill time again. Already, rumors are swirling in Lawrence about Mark Mangino's potential successor if the controversy over his temperament forces the big man out at Kansas, and the folks in Buffalo are worried the Jayhawks could come after Turner Gill. The Bulls have fallen flat after the MAC title run that made Gill the toast of the coach-search circuit last December, but Gill is a known commodity in the Big 12 North after years as a successful player and assistant at Nebraska, and his daughter attends Kansas. He was also the quarterback of a team that put back-to-back 50-point beatdowns on KU in 1982-83, but that doesn't seem to diminish his chances if the job opens up. [Buffalo News]

• Aint it hard, to want somebody who doesn't want you? Steve Kragthorpe has officially lost the locals in Louisville, with the hometown Courier-Journal's Rick Bozich calling for Krags' dismissal and almost three-fourths of readers coming to the same conclusion in the Journal's online poll. The Cards can still salvage a .500 season and possible bowl bid with upsets over South Florida and Rutgers. [Louisville Courier-Journal]

• The Zach Attack is back! (In court, that is.) Cincinnati quarterback Zach Collaros has until Dec. 7 to begin a court-ordered underage drinking program or face potential jail time after being accused of showing a fake ID at a bar. Collaros is certain to take the lessons of underage drinking to heart, especially now that he has reached the age of maturity and sensibility at twenty-one. [Associated Press]

• College! Ow! Ohio State students did indeed brave the cold and traces of urine in Mirror Lake Thursday night/early this morning to splash about and yell incoherently in support of the Buckeyes on their trip to Michigan, and alcohol, and just life, you know?

No word on whether the Michigan flag on campus was removed prior to the revelry.

Quickly ... Arizona State will trot out its third different starting quarterback, Samson Szakacsy, against UCLA. ... Michigan's leading rusher, Brandon Minor, will be out against Ohio State. ... And with both Ty Willingham and now Dennis Franchione in the mix, the UNLV coaching search could be more fun than it has any right to be.

Speaking of parents, though, the Kansas City Star happened across a few who recall Mangino from his first head coaching job, as a 33-year-old high school coach in Pennsylvania who had a group of parents calling for his head before the end of his only season at the helm (emphasis added):

The Lincoln Wolverines had gone 7-3 and made the playoffs in each of the two previous seasons, but they would go 1-9 under Mangino. The bad record was no surprise, given how the school year began. Just weeks into the season, a group of disgruntled parents and players went to the Ellwood City School Board demanding that Mangino be fired.

"It was a really nasty situation," said Thomas Costa, whose son, Landon, was on the team. "This is a pretty easygoing town. There were just some things that shocked people — language, a harsh approach to people — that kind of rubbed people the wrong way. Every once in a while you run across someone who's gonna be in a position to influence your kids, and you just don't feel like they do it in a way that's appropriate. So you speak up about it."

Specific allegations included the familiar charge of verbal abuse, withholding recruiting letters and forcing injured players to clean urinals so they'd be "doing something." Mangino wasn't fired during the season but reportedly didn't finish the year as a teacher or even attend the team banquet on his way out of town.

That was almost 20 years ago, but the charges from parents and players at Kansas are exactly the same (give or take the urinals, with a dash of over-the-top callousness thrown in). The Star is already compiling the inevitable list of successors. At this point, there's not much he could say to recruits except -- in the absolute best case scenario -- "we upset Texas." And even if that incredible feat somehow goes down Saturday in Austin with the Jayhawks facing a 23-point spread off five straight losses, it leaves Kansas facing a tough question: Is it OK to hang on to a popular bully if he reels in the occasional big win?

The odds are so overwhelmingly in favor of Weis' ouster at this point, the online oddsmakers at Bodog.com have officially opened the wagering on Weis' replacement for 2010. One guess at the name with the best odds. Go on, take a shot in the dark.

Who will be the coach of Notre Dame Football for Week 1 of the 2010 Season if it is not Charlie Weis?
Urban Meyer: 3/2
Brian Kelly: 3/2
Jim Harbaugh: 3/1
Chip Kelly: 5/1
Kirk Ferentz: 10/1
Bob Stoops: 20/1
Jon Gruden: 30/1

Brian Kelly remains your man, but no matter how vigorously he protests and proclaims his love for Florida, obviously Urban Meyer's headstone is going to read, "He really wanted to be at Notre Dame." I like those odds on Jon Gruden as a sleeper, too.

And Bob Stoops, for the record, still has no idea what you're talking about.

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Hat tip: Jimmy Shapiro.

It's Senior Night for one of the better bunches of Cowboys in recent memory, one that came in on off a terrible year in coach Mike Gundy's debut season in 2005 but leaves with its goal of landing a BCS bid and finishing in the top 10 as the best team in school history still intact if it runs the table. The Buffs might make it tough tonight if quarterback Zach Robinson's still not ready to go after the killer hit he took last Saturday against Texas Tech; if he is ready to go for his home finale, it may get ugly. It may get ugly, anyway.

It may also be the last chance you get to see Dan Hawkins on national television as Colorado's head coach. Get your hits in while you can.

What: Thursday night live blog, Colorado at Oklahoma State. All comments welcome and all allegiances accepted.
When: Blog kicks with the opening kickoff at 7:30 Eastern, give or take a few minutes of pointless pregame banter. We'll take it through the closing gun, come hell or excruciating garbage-time interviews with a random member of the crowd by Erin Andrews.
Who: You and all your rowdy friends. Come loud, proud and keeping your head on a swivel. Cowboys are about; we're not responsible for what may happen if you don't.
How: Hit "Watch Now," enter comments into the available box and do your part to accelerate the slow, agonizing death of conventional journalism.
Why: Because lobbing snarky barbs at earnest adolescents never gets old -- just as long as you don't you dare try that junk with Mike Gundy, who is a man. Football!

With the emo portion of the grieving process behind us, the terrible details: Cause of death is an apparent heart attack, a surprise despite Uga VII's -- aka "Loran's Best" -- status as one of the fatter Ugas in recent memory. His absence means the Bulldogs will run out against Kentucky Saturday with no live mascot icing himself down in support of the Red and Black, a rare absence over the last 50 years; may his random barks will echo like a missing limb.

Uga's predecessors have traditionally been buried in Sanford Stadium; no word yet if he'll follow after only 23 games in his official capacity, or whether his successor, UGA VIII, would be announced in time for the bowl game.

It's never ceased to disappoint and slightly embarrass me, then, when some haphazard collection of lonely, misguided finks calling itself the KKK pops its head up -- as it apparently has this week at Ole Miss, where LSU's student paper reports a Klan group plans to rally in full garb before and after the Rebels' game with LSU Saturday to protest the university's ban of "Dixie" because students wouldn't stop shouting "The South Will Rise Again" at the end:

Shane Tate, the North Mississippi great titan for the Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, confirmed via e-mail the KKK will rally on Ole Miss’ campus in protest of the Ole Miss Chancellor Dan Jones’ decision to remove “From Dixie with Love” from the Ole Miss band’s song selection.
[...]
"We aren’t coming there to cause problems or cause trouble," Tate said. "Trouble has already been caused by a handful at Ole Miss, including the black student body president, who wants to shape Ole Miss into yet another liberal sodomite college."

"We're not coming here to cause trouble, we're just showing up in regalia commemorating a century of lawless hatred, violence and intimidation to spit out ridiculous slurs. We don't want no trouble." With any luck (this being an open college campus in the 21st Century), most passersby will laugh at the clowns without slowing down on their way to the stadium, since they don't deserve to be taken seriously enough to argue with, jeer at or otherwise engage in any way at all. With even better luck, they won't even show. But when it comes to this sort of business, I'm always unpleasantly surprised.

It's a shame, too, since this was the one week the proposed replacement for "The South Will Rise Again" -- "To Hell With LSU!" which was formally approved by Ole Miss' student government -- would have worked splendidly if the students hadn't insisted on trumpeting their completely fabricated "tradition." Ah, the shortsighted insolence of youth

Bottom of the barrel: Louisville (4-6) at South Florida (6-3)
The battle for the fifth-place slot in the Big East pits two distinct brands of disappointment against one another. On one hand, you've got USF, a puckish program still in its adolescence, following up an 8-5 season and a bowl victory in 2008 and a five-game win streak to open this season with a particularly gruesome twist on its traditional midseason slump -- namely, three losses in the past four weeks, punctuated by the stick end of last Thursday's 31-0 beating at Rutgers.

On the other, there's Louisville, a once-proud outfit fallen into serious disrepair under the stewardship of Steve Kragthorpe, whose precious insistence that he won't be fired this winter continues to charm knowing audiences across America. Our favorite spin to date:

I know there's people that don't like me, don't like way I do things. If they don't want to come support me, that's fine, but I think they need to come and support these players.

We'd be with you out of principle, coach, but we have to sympathize with Louisville fans: There's something about a 10-9 win over Syracuse that leaves us cold, too.

The rest of the worst:
• Colorado State (3-7) at New Mexico (0-10)
Winner of this rugged pillow fight gets to clamber out of last place in the Mountain West! Yes, when you're writing about teams that have combined to go 0-12 in MWC games that's something to get excited about! (Seriously, Colorado State, is everything alright? We had such high hopes for you after that 3-0 start. We know doctors if you need help.)

• UTEP (3-7) at Rice (1-9)
Honestly, UTEP could lose this game. It could. The Miners could lose any game and it would no longer surprise us, just as it would no longer surprise us, after watching them enduring the single worst beating any team has suffered this season at Texas and mixing losses to bottom dwellers Buffalo and Memphis with out-of-nowhere stunners over C-USA West heavies Houston and Tulsa, if they somehow wound up knocking off the Indianapolis Colts and then collectively levitated out of the stadium. The entire Miner team could turn into spotted toadstools on the sideline and be bagged en masse by border-hopping drug runners and it wouldn't faze anyone after what they've put us through this year.

• Florida International (3-7) at Florida (10-0) and Chattanooga (6-4) at Alabama (10-0)
Tra-la, tra-la, it's two more conference powerhouses killing time and maiming egregiously overmatched opponents before moving on to traditional rivals (Florida State and Auburn, respectively) to close out the season, games which will also not count toward or against their already-clinched SEC title game berths. Good night, this season is a yawner.

Western Kentucky Line Watch.
Tracking the odds against I-A's newest cubs.
The 0-10 Hilltoppers are off this week, giving them time to build on their closest loss of the season, 21-18 at Louisiana-Monroe, and find a replacement for lame-duck head coach Dave Elson before closing out the year at Florida Atlantic and at home against Arkansas State. We're sure a little rest is all they need.

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Holly welcomes your adulation and veiled threats at nastinchka-at-yahoo, etc.

For example: Did you know Urban Meyer wholeheartedly supports the BCS? It's true:

Number of seconds it took to find a more recent quote directly refuting Meyer's alleged support for the Series, in which the two-time BCS-winning Florida coach describes the BCS as "out of control"? Four:

Meyer, meanwhile, said college football could be heading toward a playoff.

"I think at some point in time it might happen," Meyer said. "I didn't believe that a few years ago, but I feel now the discussion is out of control. I can't imagine any guy that enjoys football not discussing that wherever he's at. So I imagine at some point that might happen now."

But why would simple accuracy in reporting high profile figures' actual opinions stop the BCS from promoting the most unique championship in sports? Just look at all the famous faces that have backed the Series over the years, and how the hip "new media" can take advantage of it:

See? Everybody loves the BCS! Everybody loves the BCS!

Come on, everybody, say it with me: Everybody loves the BCS! Everybody loves the BCS! The BCS is not feeling threatened by its opponents! Everybody loves the BCS!

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Just for the record: Satire, folks. Please heed the satire.

Matt Hinton: Connecticut (+6) over Notre Dame.
Why the heck not? This is the exact spot in which Syracuse stunned the Irish in South Bend last year, the shot that officially opened the Great Hunt for coach Charlie Weis' head, which the Huskies can finally end Saturday. Aside from the obvious talent gap, these teams aren't that far apart on the field: UConn's five losses have come by a combined 15 points, none of them decided before the final two minutes, including full-throated upset bids at Big East heavies Pittsburgh, West Virginia and Cincinnati and three quarters of defensive domination in a strange loss to North Carolina. This team has been full of fight despite losing three straight since Jasper Howard's murder, and frankly deserves a big win.

Meanwhile, the Irish have frequently fallen on the other side of their toss-ups: With the exception of hopelessly overmatched Nevada and Washington State, every game ND has played has come down to the final seconds, including skin-of-the-teeth wins over Michigan State, Purdue, Washington and Boston College, all of them in UConn's general weight class. Notre Dame has fallen behind quickly the last two weeks and failed to finish late comeback bids against Navy and Pitt; maybe the Irish's luck (and motivation) has run out, and UConn can get a bounce or two for a change at the expense of whatever flimsy shreds of hope remain for Weis' return in 2010.

Doug Gillett: LSU (+4) over Ole Miss and North Carolina (+3.5) over Boston College.
Two matchups that don't have huge lines, but I don't understand either of the favorites. In the first case, is there really any debate at this point over whether Houston Nutt or Les Miles is the better big-game coach? Vegas must have missed the fact that the Rebels have been utterly incapable of putting together back-to-back big games against quality opponents, or else the oddsmakers got spooked by LSU's listless performance against Louisiana Tech with "Pick Six" master Jarrett Lee taking center stage again for one night only. The Tigers are almost certain to be better with regular starter Jordan Jefferson back under center, and I have a hunch SEC interception "leader" Jevan Snead is due for another hiccup against the LSU secondary.

As for UNC-BC, the fact that the Eagles' 95th-ranked offense is going up against Carolina's' top-10 defense seems to have whizzed right by some people. Boston College does play a heck of a lot better at home than on the road, but with the Atlantic Division title officially out of reach, they're ripe for a pounding from the Tar Heels, hot again with back-to-back-to-back wins over division rivals Virginia Tech, Duke and Miami after a midseason slump.

Holly Anderson: Air Force (+10) over BYU.
Quick, can anyone think of anything impressive from BYU since its name-brand upset over ailing Oklahoma in the opener? Yeah, me neither. The Cougars were blown out by the only other winning team on the schedule, TCU, and waxed by the only other high-profile foe, Florida State, both at home.

They do boast a top-20 run defense, but the Cougars haven't faced anything like AFA's option attack yet, which has only fallen in overtime at Utah and Navy and by a combined 10 points against TCU and Minnesota. The Falcons also boast the best defense BYU Max Hall has seen outside of Oklahoma and TCU: Air Force is in the top 10 nationally in total and scoring D and leads the nation against the pass.

Speaking of bowl motivation, UAB is sitting at an improbable 5-5 with two games left to go, so ... why not UAB (+12.5) over East Carolina? It's not like anyone in Conference USA has been invincible this season, and the Blazers can thrust themselves into the C-USA East title race while ensuring a friendly crowd right back in Birmingham at the historic Papajohns.com Bowl, at minimum. Who could need more motivation than that?

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Kudos to Holly for nailing Stanford over USC last week. As for the rest of us: Our time will come.

The issues in Mangino's case seems to be a) This isn't 1964, and b) He seems to have missed the "nurturing father" element of the equation, according to a growing chorus of former players and parents who connect a pattern of verbal abuse over his nearly decade-long tenure. For example (emphasis added):

One story involved former Kansas wide receiver Raymond Brown during preseason practices. Brown's brother had recently been shot and was recovering in St. Louis. When players were asked during a meeting to describe their commitment to the team, Brown stood up and told his teammates and coaches about the incident. Brown said he was trying to get the message across that life was too short to waste. Shortly after in practice, Mangino and Brown got into a confrontation on the practice field.

"Don't yes sir me, or I will send you back to St. Louis so you can get shot with your homies," Brown remembers Mangino saying.

Brown said he looked around at other players and coaches, all shocked at what Mangino had just said. "We tell him all that as personal stuff, but he uses that to break down his players," Brown said. "It's not a motivational tool, it makes you not even want to play for him."

The Brown incident wasn't an isolated one. Other players recall Mangino mocking their religion, pointing out a player's alcoholic father or terminally ill relative as a way to push the team's buttons.

The allegations extend to Mangino putting his hands on an assistant coach after a game and failing to report injuries, besides failing to develop any kind of relationship with players before they graduate. Obviously, this is not what you'd usually associate with a "family atmosphere" in the locker room, nor a professional one. A former captain, linebacker Joe Mortensen, told the Lawrence Journal-World that he attributes a torn ACL his last year to being forced back into drills too early following knee surgery, and if Kansas officials asked his advice, "'I’d be like 'Let him go.'"

It's also coming out at a curious time, with the Jayhawks riding a five-game losing streak and staring at a losing season with likely losses to Texas and Missouri still in front of them. You can't blame Mangino for thinking, as he said earlier this week, that this wouldn't be happening if Kansas was 5-1 in the Big 12 and in the hunt for the division title, as it's been the last two years, instead of 1-5 and heading for the scrap heap. Mangino is responsible for the best two-season run in school history in 2007-08 and is two wins from setting a new school record.

And apparently that bought him a lot of goodwill over those years, at least enough to keep people thinking, "He must be doing something right." It's one thing to be a jerk who gets results. When the worm turns and losses to the likes of Colorado and Kansas State start piling up, though, all bets are off if you're just a jerk. If that doesn't get Mangino fired, it guarantees a round of professional anger management or "sensitivity training" or something along those lines, at minimum, unless a substantial contingent of his players and their parents are all discovered to be lying.

To the apparent surprise of the Minnesota football community, prohibiting alcohol sales in their new stadium somehow hasn't put a stop to college students drinking themselves into oblivion on game days. We know. We're as shocked as you are.

The Gophers aren't alone in this plight. But they are deploying a new approach to deter repeat offenders while keeping the student section packed -- Breathalyzer tests at the gate:

Modeled after a program at the University of Wisconsin, Check BAC (pronounced check back) allows student season-ticket holders who are ejected from a game for intoxication offenses to attend future games by submitting to blood alcohol testing. Students under 21 must be alcohol-free; those 21 or older cannot exceed a BAC of 0.08.
[...]
"If you want to go to a game again, you have to show us you're sober next time," said Sharon Dzik, the director of the university’s student conduct office.

While less cunningly named than Wisconsin's "Show and Blow" initiative, Minnesota officials do seem pleased with the program's progress, and we applaud the university for skirting more heavy-handed disciplinary measures -- especially when you recall that this is the school that made headlines for hosting an ill-fated bathroom tryst between a pair of drunk patrons during last November's finale at the Metrodome. We do wonder, though, how many students will take entering the stadium stone cold sober as a challenge to get completely plastered by halftime by more clandestine means.

For those who do, we may have spotted an incentive: Being diverted to the breathalyzer line actually sounds like a great way to avoid standing in the longer queues to enter the regular gates -- get thrown out late in the fourth quarter this week, and get your own special entrance next week! Quick puff, no waiting! Sign up today!*

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* Dr. Saturday reminds you to please binge drink responsibly.
Hat tip: Blutarsky. Holly welcomes your adulation and veiled threats at nastinchka-at-yahoo, etc.

I'm pretty sure he had a heart attack when he actually saw the ball leave his quarterback's hands, but that's sending coach Moore out with a confusing, haphazard and wildly successful bang. In related news, Brett Favre will immediately incorporate the Garrett Hiebert "Bouquet Toss" into the Minnesota Vikings' goal line repertoire, yet ironically fail to have fun out there compared to the jubilant Threshers.

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Hat tip: SBN

Other popular stories on Yahoo! Sports:
• Blatant hand ball sparks World Cup controversy
• Vilified ponytail puller breaks her silence
• Oops: Hot MLB prospect mistakenly called an 'idiot'

• Lady MacBowden. Bobby Bowden has made it clear enough that he plans to be back for a 35th season in 2010, age, attrition, decline and influential opponents be dadgummed. But he's also had the sense and tact to avoid ultimatums, bold declarations or any other moves that might antagonize the power brokers immediately above him who'll ultimately make the call. His wife, Ann, on the other hand, has no such qualms: "You know, we don't need the university as much as they need us ... They'll have to fire him for him not to go another year … If they've got guts enough to do it, let them do it."

With FSU staring down the barrel of its first losing season in decades, this may not be the ideal moment to challenge the boss' manhood. Mrs. Bowden also threatened to take her husband and "go to Europe or go on a long cruise or something," which I get the feeling would make everyone else associated with Florida State much happier than it would Bobby. At least the governor has his back. [USA Today]

• Bears may not be Bestless in Seattle. Cal running back Jahvid Best won't play Saturday in the Bears' trip to Stanford, thanks to lingering effects of a severe concussion from the frightening end zone tumble he took two weeks ago against Oregon State, but Best could be back against Washington on Dec. 5. At the very least, he's almost guaranteed to be back in time for a bowl game before deciding whether to take his wares pro. [San Francisco Chronicle]

• I see rhinestone jumpsuits in Ty's future. By far, the best name to surface in the nascent UNLV coaching search is ex-Stanford/Notre Dame/Washington architect Tyrone Willingham, who's also being floated for the San Jose State job. They're getting a good laugh out of that in Seattle, where Ty was bounced after last year's 0-12 catastrophe, but another name churning through the rumor mill has them slightly on edge: Husky defensive coordinator Nick Holt, late of USC and a head coaching stint at Idaho, may be on UNLV's radar, as well. [Seattle Times]

• Brewster shall return. Tim Brewster's boss, Minnesota athletic director Joel Maturi, gave his coach a vote of confidence, telling the Minneapolis Star-Tribune "I expect him to be our football coach [in 2010]" -- with a caveat: "I think you've got two more games to decide that," including the Gophers' second straight bowl bid under Brewster. [Minneapolis Star-Tribune]

Quickly ... Court dates have been set for three Tennessee players arrested for armed robbery last week. ... Urban Meyer dominates Google trends, but not for steering Florida toward another national championship. ... The Kansas City Star issues a subtle dig at Mark Mangino. ... And Dan Patrick interviews new BCS executive director Bill Hancock, who has one of the worst jobs in America.

OK, so the Undie Run, it is not. It is also not exactly, you know, sanitary, according to the Columbus Dispatch:

Last year, students in the College of Earth Sciences tested the water in Mirror Lake before, during and after thousands plunged in to psych themselves up for The Game.

"Interesting results from last year's study include a lake-wide temperature increase of approximately 3 degrees Fahrenheit during the course of the night and an ammonia spike around 1in the morning," said Steve Goldsmith, a postdoctoral research associate.

The temperature increase could be chalked up to warm-blooded people standing in a cold lake, Goldsmith said. But, yes, that ammonia spike means exactly what you think it means.

Urine.

But it's only a little urine, just enough to cause an eightfold increase in the lake's overall ammonia levels. That's still perfectly safe for swimming and the usual coed revelry, according to the professor overseeing the research, although she does recommend taking a shower afterward and advises, "don't open your mouth," which are helpful tips for life in general, actually. See? It's drunken, disgusting fun and learning.

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Hat tip: Deadspin

As with all matters relating to that particular publication, we can assume the Tebow Child does not approve -- and also that Hugh Hefner will be receiving a cease and desist letter from Florida any day now. Thou shalt not use Tebow's likeness in service of lust, or without the express written consent of the University of Florida and the NCAA.

For the record, the girl, Erin Drewes is not Tebow's girlfriend, never was and insists the original photo was photoshopped. Reality never lives up to the legend.

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Hat tip: Brooks, who has the NSFW versions of the pics behind the PG-13 versions. You have been, uh, warned?

• Buffalo (3-7) at Miami, Ohio (1-10)
You wouldn't know it to look at them know, but Buffalo used to be somebody. Was it really just last year the Bulls knocked off undefeated Ball State in the MAC title game, and Turner Gill was the trendy name to bandy about for bigger and better head coaching gigs around the country? Yeah, that was last year: The '09 iteration of Buffalo is 3-7, with one conference win, which may be enough to take the bloom off Gill's rose as the hot commodity in his profession, but in the miserable MAC East still isn't enough knock the Bulls all the way down to the division cellar.

No, that dubious honor belongs to 1-10 Miami (Ohio), which we would resent for making us do the parentheses thing except that we genuinely feel bad for the RedHawks at this point. They were shut out twice, 42-0 and 48-0 at the hands of Kentucky and Boise State, respectively, to open the season, and rank dead last nationally in turnover margin. Quarterback Zac Dysert has decent passing numbers, generally (he's put up four 300-yard games), but his 15 interceptions in nine games is one of the highest numbers in the country, and he's been sacked more times than any other quarterback. The offensive lines struggles are also apparent in the ground game: The RedHawks' two leading rushers are Dysert and Thomas Merriweather, and neither's season total clears 300 yards.

In other Z-themed quarterback news, Buffalo's Zach Maynard is having a similarly frustrating year. Although he'll also likely come close to the 3,000-yard mark by year's end, he's put up 13 interceptions, including two apiece in three of the last four games. But the Bulls at least have a faint semblance of a ground attack against Miami's 100th-ranked run defense, which should serve them well with leading receiver Naaman Roosevelt on ice with a knee injury.

• Central Michigan (8-2) at Ball State (1-9)
This is one of those games that looked a lot better in August than it does now. Ball State is, as we are so often pointing out on Mid-Major Mondays, bewilderingly, bafflingly bad. Whatever magic it was that led the Cardinals to an undefeated regular season last year deserted them just in time for the aforementioned MAC title game, wherein they were thoroughly pantsed by Buffalo, before being thoroughly pantsed by Tulsa in the bowl game. Fast forward a season, and last year's dominant Cardinals are this year's doormat, with only a two-point victory over 0-10 Eastern Michigan standing between them and a winless 2009.

Five of Ball State's games have been decided by a touchdown or less, but this is not a matchup that portends a respectable evening. The Cards' 109th-ranked scoring offense doesn't have a sliver of a chance of keeping up with Central Michigan and the all-purpose war machine that is Chippewa quarterback Dan LeFevour. The Rust Belt's answer to Tim Tebow and Mid-Major Monday's unofficial hopeless Heisman candidate of choice, LeFevour can beat them with his arm (over 2,000 yards passing for the fourth straight season) or with his legs (13 rushing touchdowns to date). He's also playing for masters who proved in last Wednesday's 56-28 rout over Toledo that they're not averse to running up the score. This one could and will get ugly, and it will happen quickly, but who doesn't appreciate a little blood on the turf on a cold Wednesday night?

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Buffalo and Miami kick off at 6 p.m. Eastern on ESPNU; Central Michigan and Ball State kick off at 8:00 p.m. Eastern on ESPN2.
Holly welcomes your adulation and veiled threats at nastinchka-at-yahoo, etc.

Because the proprietor of the blog You Are What You Eat ... Or Reheat is reasonably certain it's a portable bathroom rigged up by Auburn staff, and also that it is disgusting. Hard to argue, if true: Sideline bathroom breaks are unprecedented in the modern game, to my knowledge, which is why you see players occasionally trotting into the tunnel for no apparent reason. In ye olde days of Nagurski, perhaps, and I'm sure Terry Bradshaw attempted it at least once. But I doubt it was anticipated by the bigwigs who put together the SEC's massive TV deal.

Having played and endured most of the game's many potential indignities on a much lower level, however, I'll only add this: It beats the bottom of a pile-up.

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Hat tip: EDSBS. Dr. Saturday apologizes profusely to No. 93, Mike Blanc, who we're certain is an extraordinarily intelligent, well-mannered, obsessively hygienic young man captured on camera in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nothing personal, Mike! (Don't hurt me!)

Are you ready? Brace yourself:

Alabama
Florida (– 3.5)

There you have it: The experts say Gators by slightly more than a field goal -- and improvement over last year's title match, when Florida came from behind in the fourth quarter to beat 'Bama by 11 in Atlanta, covering the 9.5-point spread despite also representing the Gators' closest margin of victory on the season before squeaking by Oklahoma by just 10 in the mythical championship game. Both teams have endured much more harrowing escapes this season.

The most interesting bet leading up to this year's tilt may be the injury pool: Percy Harvin's absence due to an aggravated ankle injury against Florida State was a major factor in the Gators' lack of their usual explosiveness on offense in last year's game, especially in the running game, where the long was 14 yards by Tim Tebow. Of the stars this year, Gator linebacker Brandon Spikes and 'Bama receiver Julio Jones have both played through nagging ailments for most of the season. With a margin this narrow, first man down between now and Dec. 5 could take the line with him. No amount (or lack) of "style points" can change anything, coaches: Get those starters out of there.

Matt Hinton: Oklahoma (2000).
We have the idea now of the Sooners as one of the few true national juggernauts, just as they were for most of the second half of the last century, with seven top-10 finishes and six Big 12 championships in nine years. When Bob Stoops took over in 1999, though, OU was five years removed from its last winning season and more than a decade from its last conference title -- and that was in a different conference, the old Big Eight. Three coaches had come to Norman since the great, irascible Barry Switzer was forced out amid a wave of scandal in 1988, and the third, John Blake, had finished the Sooners' descent to the cellar with a 3-8 debacle in 1998.

In his first year, Stoops doubled that win total to seven and had OU back in a bowl game; in year two, sitting at No. 17 in the preseason, he took Oklahoma on one of the great three-week runs in history with back-to-back-to-back wins over Texas, Kansas State and Nebraska in October -- all by double digits, all over teams that finished the season ranked in the top 12 -- en route to an undefeated regular season, the Big 12 championship and a 13-2 Orange Bowl win over Florida State to clinch the national championship. Stoops hasn't fared as well in three subsequent trips to the BCS title game, but this year's injury-racked slide notwithstanding, Oklahoma's still standing as a powerhouse a decade after his arrival.

Doug Gillett: Wake Forest and Rutgers (2006).
Historically speaking, these two programs were a couple of the doormattiest doormats to ever march onto (or get blown off of) a I-A football field. Only five of Wake's 30 coaches prior to Jim Grobe finished their tenures in Winston-Salem with winning records, while Rutgers had been to only two bowl games in its 137-year history and was 19-39 through Greg Schiano's first five sesasons.

Yet both Deacons and Knights somehow charged to 11-win seasons in '06, the most in either school's history. Wake did so through a combination of luck (five victories by a touchdown or less, including the hilarious 9-6 ACC Championship win over Georgia Tech featuring zero touchdowns) and some very clutch performances by quarterback Riley Skinner, who took over after starter Ben Mauk was lost for the season in the first game. Rutgers ran out to a 9-0 start on the fleet feet of tailback Ray Rice and were ranked as high as No. 7 after their memorable Thursday night upset over eventual Big East champ Louisville. Wake finished with its first conference title since 1970 and an unlikely BCS bid in the Orange Bowl, Rutgers was one overtime at West Virginia from the Big East championship and finished with the highest poll finish (No. 12) in its long history.

Honorable mention: As much as we all like to chortle at Lou Holtz these days, as a Georgia grad I am honor-bound to remind everyone that on Sept. 9, 2000, he led a South Carolina team just off a 21-game losing streak to a 21-10 upset over the Bulldogs, the start of a completely unexpected 8-4 campaign that culminated in a tie for second place in the SEC East and an Outback Bowl drubbing of Ohio State. Yes, Virginia, at one time Sweet Lou knew what he was doing, and a good portion of the SEC (not to mention OSU coach John Cooper, fired after the Outback loss) paid for it.

Chris Brown: Kentucky (2006).
Rich Brooks's first three seasons at Kentucky were nothing short of disastrous, and his future wasn't looking up with a new athletic director looking over Brooks' shoulder. Quarterback Andre Woodson had been a woeful disappointment as a sophomore in 2005 and seemed likely to cede the position to touted redshirt freshman Curtis Pulley. In the opener, BCS-bound Louisville hung over 50 on the 'Cats, and it looked like another can't-wait-until-basketball year in the Bluegrass.

  By the end of the year, Kentucky had triumphed in conference wins over Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Vanderbilt, and upset ranked Georgia, finishing the year with a surprise 28-20 victory over Clemson in the Music City Bowl, UK's first bowl win since 1993. As surprising as the 'Cats' 8-5 record was, it was the performance of Andre Woodson that shocked the SEC: Under tutelage of longtime Tennessee assistant Randy Sanders, Woodson morphed into the SEC's leading passer and total offense leader, exploding with 31 touchdown passes (the next year he would throw 40), to just seven interceptions. This year, Kentucky is looking for its fourth straight postseason trip (and win) despite the glaring absence of a quarterback anywhere near Woodson's caliber. Here's to Rich Brooks and to schools being patient: It might have taken the old man a few years to right the ship, but for Kentucky standards (and for fans of the 68-year-old's, uh, throwback personality), it was worth it.

Holly Anderson: Mississippi State (2007).
Hardly world-beaters at 8-5, I know, but the perpetually sad-sack Bulldogs rebounded from a nationally-televised, 45-0 loss to LSU to open the season to upset bowl-bound Auburn, Kentucky and Alabama under first-year coach Nick Saban, and finished with a stunning comeback to beat Ole Miss, end Ed Orgeron's three-year reign over the rival Rebels and snatch a Liberty Bowl berth. The subsequent win in Memphis was MSU's first bowl triumph since 2000, and just listen to Sylvester Croom's postgame comments and tell me your heart doesn't stir a little:

Croom was fired a year later following a 45-0 beating at the hands of rejuvenated Ole Miss and new coach Houston Nutt. But the Bulldogs will always have 10-3 over Central Florida to remember him by.

Honorable mention: Is it too soon to say Temple? After one good loss (Penn State) and one bad loss (Villanova) to open the '09 season, the Owl have rolled to eight straight wins, are undefeated in MAC play, and barring some sort of gargantuan collapse against Kent State or Ohio U. in their last two games, are barreling to a showdown with Central Michigan for the MAC title game.

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Let us know what we missed! And check out previous entries in "Best of the Aughts": Best Upset, Best Scandal, Best Innvation, Best Villain, Best Game, Best Play.

(In case you didn't get the hint, this clip is not necessarily safe for work. You have been warned)

Several articles suggest parents of former players have met with Perkins and are organized with multiple complaints unrelated to the alleged poking incident. (One unidentified mother told ESPN,"a majority of parents I believe would tell you that they are not surprised by this investigation.") The Journal-World pulls out a two-year-old incident in which Mangino was accused of verbally berating a student for issuing him one of dozens of parking tickets he accumulated in a zone near his office as an example of Mangino's fury. (A tip from a campus parking-ticket vet, coach: Once the number climbs into the hundreds, they can be pieced together and worn as extra insulation on cold mornings. DIY!) He was characteristically terse Tuesday when he told reporters I may have lost some people around here, but not my players." The implication -- that Mangino is a ticking time bomb liable to go off on just about anyone beneath him on the ladder -- is clear enough.

But just as only Nixon could go to China, only Kansas City Star columnist and noted heavyweight Jason Whitlock could possibly bring the issue back to Mangino's weight:

I can relate to Mangino’s struggle. He’s three or four inches shorter than me, and he weighs anywhere from 450 to 500 pounds. He’s a public figure in a demanding, high-stress job.

The weight and the stress form a perfect recipe for depression. They can put your mind in a very negative place. They can make you moody and volatile.
[...]
In more than seven years of covering Mangino's Jayhawks, I’ve never heard anyone associated with the program describe him as "happy."

Mangino coaches from an angry place. It’s not surprising, to me, given his weight problem. ... At his age (53) and weight, Mangino cannot sustain the necessary energy level to positively influence his players. His team is being engulfed by his negative energy, a dark spirit driven by his excess weight.

"Negative energy driven by excess weight" is putting it much more nicely than some other people have, but it amounts to the same basic accusation: Mangino is an angry man who doesn't treat players -- or perhaps anyone else -- with respect, for whatever reason.

No one seems to be suggesting that might immediately cost him his job, especially off one of the best two-year spans in Kansas history in 2007-08, but for Mangino's sake, he'd better hope it doesn't come down to salvaging a winning season: The 5-5 Jayhawks are a staggering four-touchdowns underdogs Saturday at Texas, and close the season against Missouri, which bounced back from a rough month with its best win of the year last week at Kansas State. I wouldn't want to be in the locker room in Arrowhead Stadium after KU had just been dealt its seventh straight loss and its first losing record since 2004, anyway, and especially not with Mangino Rage simmering above a hot seat.

• Weis Watch. Another sign of Charlie Weis' impending demise: Notre Dame has blocked the university plane from appearing on flightaware.com (see for yourself), a proactive effort at cutting off the breathless surfers intent on tracking its path to Cincinnati or Gainesville or Vatican City or wherever ND's next coach is waiting. That comes on the heels of the athletic director assuring reporters that Weis' huge buyout won't affect whether he stays or goes and the two most notable Irish-centric newspapers both calling for his head almost simultaneously, completing the Holy Trinity of "You're Fired." [South Bend Tribune]

• Oh, to be a Knoxville lawyer. News leaked Tuesday that Tennessee freshman defensive back Nyshier Oliver was cited for shoplifting for allegedly walking out of a Dillard's with a $110 polo shirt just hours before the Vols' win over Memphis on Nov. 7, a relatively piddling misdemeanor that would usually pass without much notice if not for a) Last week's blockbuster armed robbery arrest involving three other UT freshmen, raising the legal antennae around Knoxville, and b) Coach Lane Kiffin's repeated statements just hours before the armed robbery news broke that his team had been entirely arrest-free over his 11-month tenure -- despite being fully aware of Oliver's shoplifting charge.

Kiffin may skate by charges that he blatantly lied on a technicality -- Oliver was cited, not arrested; his arrest warrant was issued Tuesday, and he won't be booked until Nov. 23 -- but he's certainly lost the "clean program" pitch for the next year or two. [Knoxville News-Sentinel]

• The good Cap'n a Cardinal? Hornswaggle! Weirdest coaching rumor so far in the early rounds of silly season: Mike Leach to Louisville? The Louisville Courier-Journal cites a radio interview with ex-Georgia and Marshall coach Jim Donnan, who thinks Cap'n Leach would be interested and would be "a good fit" if/when UL dumps current coach Steve Kragthorpe. That's better sourcing than CBS Sports' Dennis Dodd offers in his Leach-Louisville speculation, which seems based entirely on the pirate coach's no-buyout contract in Lubbock and the Louisville opening existing ... you know, probably, at some point in the near future. It's too strange to make up, frankly, although Leach has never lamented any extra attention. [Louisville Courier-Journal]

• Z-Rob still shaking out the cobwebs. It can't say for sure, but the Tulsa World believes that backup quarterback Alex Cate has been taking most of the snaps in Oklahoma State's preparation for Colorado Thursday night, though starter Zac Robinson is still expected to suit up and possibly be available for senior night in Stillwater despite being knocked silly by Texas Tech's Jamar Wall last Saturday. Think of it as an investment, Cowboy fans: It may be Robinson's last home game, but his presence is not mandatory for beating the sad-sack Buffaloes, and it can never hurt to get the quarterback of the future some live reps. [Tulsa World]

• No one snubs Urban's cubs. Urban Meyer will be "upset" if the Tebow Child isn't invited to New York for the Heisman ceremony for the third consecutive season: "Absolutely, yeah I’ll be upset. ... He's the quarterback of the No. 1 team in college football. I think the Heisman goes to the best player, and it’d be hard to argue that he’s not." Actually, it's fairly easy to argue: Florida is relying far more on its dominant defense to make up for a good-not-great offense averaging 50 fewer yards and 16 fewer points in SEC games than it did in 2008, and Tebow is well behind Ryan Mallett as the league's best statistical passer. But don't let semantics get in the way: Tebow will be in New York, because his exclusion from the proceedings will only hasten the horrors of the tribulation. The Downtown Athletic Club makes its decisions based on the relatively peaceful continuity of human civilization, not stats. [Palm Beach Post]

Quickly ... James Vandenberg is one poised quarterback. ... The victim in an alleged assault case against Auburn's Eric Smith is suing Smith and two unnamed Tiger players. ... Washington State linebacker Jason Stripling was arrested for assault and obstructing a public servant, both misdemeanors. ... Old hat Jerry Glanville resigns at Portland State. ... And yes, that is a 13-year-old middle-schooler being touted as "probably the most celebrated high school recruit in history" before enrolling in high school.

The major papers on the Irish beat, however, are tired of waiting to deliver their verdicts -- after openly speculating on Weis' potential replacement after Saturday's loss to Pitt (Bob Stoops has no idea what you're talking about, by the way), both the Chicago Tribune and the hometown South Bend Tribune almost simultaneously released that rare bird, the official, "Big-time Coach Should Be Fired Now" op-ed, within hours of one another last night and this morning. First up, Al Lesnar of the hometown rag says it's "time for Irish to make the change":

SOUTH BEND — Bag the bowl. Circle the wagons. Round up the usual suspects. There's no quick fix for the negativity surrounding the Notre Dame football program.

Charlie Weis' hand-over-heart promise to do better after last season won't cut it this time. Athletic director Jack Swarbrick doesn't need a GPS to get around the Joyce Center anymore, and he's learned how to navigate the world of college football.
[...]
Whatever the case, time for a purge.

OK, thank you, Al. And from the Windy City, columnist David Haugh says all the evidence is in," and Swarbrick knows it:

Nothing that happens in Weis' final two games possibly could alter any logical conclusion drawn by Swarbrick about the state of affairs in Year 5. In fairness to a once-proud football program and Weis, end the charade now, Notre Dame.

Through 60 games, Weis has proved to be nothing more than Bob Davie with better bling. Going 35-25 at Notre Dame wasn't good enough for Davie to return for a sixth season. Nor should it be for Weis.

Good luck to the both of you the next time you're on campus for a press conference, gentlemen, and remember to bring a jacket.

Typically, for all the heat they take across the country from the true believers, the local paper is one of the last on the pile when a coach is out the door and one of the clear harbingers of the angel of death, apart from the everyday chatter of disgruntled fans. Newspapers have to live with their calls for blood, and Swarbrick essentially cleared the way Sunday when he said Weis' $18 million buyout would factor in his decision, so they're not going out on a limb. It's more like the limb breaking.

Still, although I'm sure I'm being naive and too patient by ten (especially when claiming coaches are oh-so-totally-fired is one of the great temptations and guilty pleasures of this gig, when appropriate), but it's hard for me to imagine an automatic dismissal if the Irish beat UConn and Stanford the next two weeks. Firing Weis after a 2-0 finish would mean canning a coach with two BCS appearances on his resumé, two straight clear steps forward on the field the last years and a Jan. 1 bowl (at 8-4, the Irish would be a virtual lock for the Gator Bowl) on the horizon. As it currently stands, a win at Stanford would be the best of Weis' entire five-year tenure, which currently includes only one win (over No. 24 Penn State in 2006) over a team that finished the season in the AP's top 25. That's not what they usually mean by "going out on top."

Then again, maybe the fact that beating Stanford even conceivably represents "the top" is kind of the point. But Weis is going to get that shot.

"This is not a coach issue," Sanford said in his news conference Monday at the Lied Athletic Complex. "This is a system, infrastructure, commitment issue that I am concerned about.

"There's been more of a football commitment made at Reno from a facility standpoint than there has at UNLV. Our locker room is the worst locker room in college football.

"If people really want to win here, if they're going to hold the football coach and the football coaching staff here to a high standard, they need to put their money where their mouth is. I don't believe that's ever been done here. I don't believe it was done one bit during the time I was here."

It's hard to argue: Sanford's 9-14 mark over the last two years is roughly average for Vegas over the last three decades; the Rebels haven't had a winning season since 2000, haven't had back-to-back winning season since 1979-80 and have finished higher than a tie for fifth place in the Mountain West only once in a decade (a tie for third place in 2000). Sanford is the fifth straight Vegas coach to leave with an overwhelmingly losing record since the mid-eighties.

I'm sensing a theme for the next month: "Beleaguered coaches blame lack of resources for horrible records." To which you can only reply: Other teams are winning the Mountain West and Conference USA on MWC and C-USA budgets, aren't they?

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Hat tip: Bruce Feldman

Might as well take the bad news all the way, then, with a players-only meeting with the administration to discuss "concerns" about one of the most successful Jayhawk coaches in recent memory:

Kansas University athletic director Lew Perkins met Monday night with the school's football players to discuss concerns about football coach Mark Mangino brought to his attention by one of the current players and others with ties to the football program, the [Lawrence] Journal-World has learned.

Mangino was not present at the meeting.

"I can confirm an internal review is under way," Perkins said in a quote released by the school. "It involves a personnel matter, and as a result, is confidential. It would be inappropriate for me to provide further information right now."

Mangino is not known for being the nicest guy, or having the best sense of humor, or kowtowing to political realities. But he has been a winner where KU is concerned: The Jayhawks have seven winning seasons in the last 40 years, and three of them belong to Mangino since 2005, including the best season in KU history in '07. That's not the kind of record that gets the athletic director sniffing behind your back unless you've really rubbed someone the wrong way, which even Mangino admits he probably has:

"Not one bit," Mangino said Tuesday [in response to a question about whether he's lost his team] at his weekly media gathering. “I may have lost some people around here, but it’s not players.” Asked what he meant, Mangino said, "Take it for what it's worth. You decipher it and see."
[...]
Players interviewed Tuesday said that Mangino has not changed the way he deals with them this season. Mangino said he felt the reason that there are issues now is the Jayhawks’ five-game losing streak.

"This is what comes when things aren’t going well," Mangino said. “You’re going to find disgruntled people. It’s a fact of any organization, whether it's sport related, whether it's corporate, any profession you're in. … That's life. It’s how it works."

Mangino was asked if he thinks there would be an investigation into his behavior if the Jayhawks were 5-1 [in Big 12 play] instead of 1-5. "No," he said.

"An organized group of former players' parents" would beg to differ, according to the Star, which says the parents are "ready to air concerns" about Mangino, as well, about as strong an indictment of a coaches' behind-the-scenes work as there can be short of a criminal investigation.

That's all that's left to this story, actually: Back-to-back losses to Texas and Missouri to complete the seven-game slide to KU's first losing season since 2004, Mangino's sudden ouster, and then the FBI storms in. As rapidly as this seemingly charmed marriage has deteriorated since mid-October, we're well past the "surprise" phase, I think.

If they don't beat Baylor this weekend, the Ags will have to get their sixth win against undefeated, third-ranked Texas on Thanksgiving night. Sherman's track record suggests this isn't likely, as he's lost his five games against ranked opponents (including last year's 49-9 loss to Texas, the most lopsided Longhorn win in the long history of the series) by an average of 26 points.

That's only part of the reason for Sherman's increasingly shaky status, though, the other part being that his teams aren't necessarily a lock to win the supposed gimme games, either. Sherman's tenure at A&M began with an embarrassing home loss to Arkansas State last year, and he finished his debut season 4-8 with squeakers over awful New Mexico and Army teams. This season, of course, his record has been tarnished by possibly the most humiliating loss any team has suffered this season, a 62-14 debacle at Kansas State, which had face-planted at Louisiana-Lafayette in September and in again in a 66-14 loss at Texas Tech just a week earlier.

And then there's last season's loss at Baylor, which all but sealed the deal on an 0-5 campaign against the rest of the Big XII South. Behind do-it-all quarterback Robert Griffin, Baylor rolled up a 41-7 lead in the third quarter before taking its foot off the gas and allowing the Aggies a couple of meaningless fourth-quarter scores to bring the final to 41-21. The loss has already solidified itself, to Aggie fans at least, as one of the more miserable low points in a decade that hasn't been terribly kind to A&M to begin with; imagine once-proud Florida State fans covering their heads in shame as Duke sends in its backups to sit on a four-touchdown lead and you've got a pretty good idea what the drubbing in Waco felt like to Aggie Nation.

The Ags do have some reason to believe that revenge can be exacted this weekend in College Station. The Bears lost Griffin just three games into the season with a knee injury and have struggled to score points in almost every game since (40-point outburst at Missouri excepted); life has been just as difficult on the other side of the ball, where the Bears have allowed almost 400 yards per game and will be facing an A&M offense still holding at eighth nationally in total yardage despite its recent frustrations.

Again, though, the concept of "revenge against Baylor" is itself an unfortunate comment on the state of the Aggie program. Opinions differ as to just how hot a seat Sherman is occupying at the moment; neither of the two A&M bloggers we grilled back in the summer for the inside dope on Sherman's status seemed to think he was in any real danger of getting fired after only two seasons. Among their caveats, though, were a minimum-expectations bar set at 6-6 and the unacceptability of another 0-5 run in division play. If A&M drops two in a row to Baylor with Texas looming, 6-6 becomes a near-impossibility and Sherman will be 1-8 against the rest of the South Division over two years, which, if not enough to get him fired this year, would almost certainly make 2010 an eight-wins-or-you're-toast sort of season.

That's just Sherman, though; on a macro level, a loss would have much greater implications for the proud Aggie fan base. The Aggies finished third in their division in 2006, fourth two years ago, and dead last in '08; regardless of the heritage and tradition attached to the A&M brand name, that trajectory is pretty hard to ignore, particularly when a loss this weekend would all but assure them of another last-place finish. That, in turn, would prompt discussions (in places far beyond the gloating Longhorn message boards) of whether the title of "division doormat" should be given a new home. Nobody who's ever been part of the "12th Man" at Kyle Field wants to think of their beloved Aggies as such, but that's the destination for teams that can't hold their own against Baylor, however vigorous the post-touchdown date-kissing or midnight yell practice.

It eats at your soul. I don't coach football, I live it. ... When you put so much into it and you don't have success, it certainly eats at you. I've lost before. I'm not used to this, my staff isn't used to this. It gnaws you to the bone.

When the negativity starts coming from the head coach as well as the local newspaper in the span of a few hours, that is some heavy duty angst.

It is also, according to a forthcoming study from Ohio State that examined fans' anxiety levels during the cataclysmic OSU-Michigan game in 2006, the right underlying emotion to facilitate an explosion of the greatest euphoria in Ann Arbor if the Wolverines somehow manage to pull out of their doldrums to upset the Rose Bowl-bound Buckeyes and secure an improbable bowl bid this Saturday:

COLUMBUS, Ohio – For sports fans watching their favorite team play, the greatest enjoyment comes only with a strong dollop of fear and maybe even near-despair, a new study suggests.
[...]
"You need the negative emotions of thinking your team might lose to get you in an excited, nervous state," [researcher Siliva] Knobloch-Westerwick said. "If your team wins, all that negative tension is suddenly converted to positive energy, which will put you in a euphoric state."

That's why the fans of the winning team – in this case, Ohio State – who felt the most sense of enjoyable suspense were also those who at some point were most convinced their team would lose, she said.

Science has spoken: The more convinced you are you're going to lose, the better winning is. Do not attempt to argue with science.

And for the Wolverines, if they want to have any chance of enjoying the proceedings Saturday: Don't take heart. Buck down. Look on the dark side. There is no hope for you yet.

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Hat tip on OSU study: EDSBS