Mid-Manifest Destiny: TCU Spittin’ Blood And Sittin’ Pretty In The Top Five

• Let’s see some pinball points. Grimmer pockets of the internet wondered Saturday whether Frank Beamer had thrown the James Madison game to keep Boise State out of the title game for reasons of pure spite. This is both hilarious and plausible, but it’s time for a reality check: The Broncos took a three-spot plummet in this week’s BlogPoll, and voters whose opinions actually decide the games at year’s end are notoriously flighty. Time to put up some lopsided scores, many weeks in a row, and it starts with Wyoming.

• Which brings us to: The near-inevitable ascension of TCU. Without another head-to-head matchup in January (and please, let’s try to avoid that this year), it’s difficult to say whether the Horned Frogs or Broncos are the superior outfit. But Boise State took a (perhaps well-advised) weekend off after their Labor Day statement game, while TCU put up gaudy numbers against Tennessee Tech. They’ll have a Saturday-afternoon Big 12 date with Baylor to cement their case for mid-major supremacy.

• Get Well, Killer. Northern Illinois’ head coach Jerry Kill, a week out of surgery following the team’s first game, was hospitalized again over the weekend for what they’re calling dehydration. He’s listed in fair condition, and his duties are being performed by DC Tracy Claeys in his absence. Stay tuned to SB Nation’s Red and Black Attack for all the latest.

Our second area of concern is Navy, who could have conceivably gone undefeated with this year’s schedule, but lost to a crummy Maryland team in Week 1 and struggled against Georgia Southern in Week 2.

Finally, there’s Sun Belt favorite MTSU, struggling mightily in the absence of do-everything QB Dwight Dasher, the offensive linchpin whose eligibility status hasn’t moved an inch since his suspension, seemingly. The Blue Raiders already have one loss to not-good Minnesota, and just to make things more challenging, allowed eensy Austin Peay to pile up 33 points and 348 yards of offense on Saturday.

• Vengeance is -- [explosion]. Houston, you might recall, returned the following personnel to the 2010 squad: Quarterback Case Keenum, he of two straight 5,000-yard seasons, three receivers who each surpassed 1,000 yards in catches in ‘09, and two running backs who each recorded more than 100 backfield touches. They also experienced a nasty loss in El Paso last season that torpedoed their BCS-busting chances. It will not surprise you, therefore, to learn they racked up over 650 yards of offense en route to a 54-24 revenge thrashing of the Miners in Houston, and might have climbed dangerously higher had Keenum not sustained a concussion in the third quarter.

• Never abandon your BattleToad. Texas Tech neglected to hire interim head coach Ruffin McNeill on full-time after the ousting of Mike Leach, opting instead for the vanilla antics of Tommy Tuberville. And while Lubbock may be not be known for the Air Raid anymore, McNeill is plying his craft on the East Coast to great effect: With Saturday’s 49-27 East Carolina victory over Memphis, his Purple Pirates have rung up a perfect 100 points in just two weeks of play. (The Red Raiders have a “mere” 87, but that’ll come down in a hurry thanks to dates with the defenses of Texas and Oklahoma and the Law of Diminishing Tubbs.)

• Cowboys bridle Trojans’ horsies. Perennial Sun Belt power Troy has actually beaten Oklahoma State before, in 2007 back when the ‘Pokes were actually bound for a winning season. Both teams are rebuilding to some degree this year, however, and the Trojans lost a close one in Stillwater, 41-38.

• A tradition like no other. Though they’re ostensibly rivals and fight over the same recruits, Marshall has never beaten West Virginia on the football field. For four quarters Friday night, it looked an awful lot like that was about to change. A missed overtime field goal put paid to that notion, however, and the ‘Eers escaped, 24-21.

• Island time. What on earth are we to make of Hawaii right now? They took it right to a USC team that’s in a down cycle but never untalented, and now they need a fourth-quarter field goal to beat the lowliest football team in the service academies? Oh, WAC. You never cease to delight and entertain.

• Hyphenated justice be done. Akron, a school whose chief talent seems to be putting innocent consumers onto inescapable booster email lists just because they happen to like buying t-shirts with pictures of angry kangaroos on them, was first taken to overtime and then beaten by Gardner-Webb. It’s only fair, really.

• All right, now we’re just piling on. Ball State was supposed to be bad this year, but losing to Liberty is just uncalled for.

No mid-major team won its outing over a BCS conference school, but that whole James Madison episode makes up for just about anything, doesn’t it? After two weeks of play, mid-majors have amassed a 4-39 record against the Big Six.

Next: San Diego State, Navy, Hawaii

Friday night includes two potential upsets for mid-major squads over Big Six teams, Kansas-Southern Miss (it could happen!) and Cal-Nevada (yeah, probably not).

Saturday is rife with potential for victories over BCS teams, including UConn-Temple, Northern Illinois-Illinois, East Carolina-Virginia Tech, Washington State-SMU, BYU-Florida State, Hawaii-Colorado, Baylor-TCU, Tulsa-Oklahoma State, and Houston-UCLA.

Other matchups of note: Air Force-Oklahoma and Boise State-Wyoming.

And the worst of the worst, games that are just inhumane: Portland State-Oregon (they’re in-state rivals, but still), FIU-Texas A&M (FIU’s non-conference schedule this year is equal parts brave and foolhardy), and Utah-New Mexico (hey, mid-on-mid violence!).

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