College football news: Georgia getting healthy, DI split unlikely, Arizona State rolls

Four games took place Thursday night, and none of them finished with a single-digit margin. South Florida looked halfway decent on offense for the first time this season, but still managed to lose to Houston by 12 points. Meanwhile, North Texas knocked off one of the teams undefeated in C-USA play and became bowl eligible, as they beat Rice 28-16. The next game was a 12-point affair as well, as Louisiana-Monroe pulled off an upset of Troy to stay in the Sun Belt hunt.

The night game did not stay to the day’s 12-point plan, as Arizona State blew out Mike Leach’s Washington State squad to become bowl eligible. The Sun Devils won 55-21 on the strength of seven total touchdowns from quarterback Taylor Kelly

Running back Todd Gurley and safeties Tray Matthews and Josh Harvey-Clemons are expected to take the field against the Gators on Saturday after having missed the past several contests. Florida, meanwhile, will be without starting offensive tackle D.J. Humprhies. The loser of this weekend’s game will be all but eliminated from the SEC East race, and the health of each team will have as big of a role in the outcome as anything else.

The tension between the schools in the Big 5 conferences and the smaller Division I schools appeared to be on the verge of causing a group of schools to break off to form their own division with their own rules. According to Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany, there appears to be a viable solution that will allow the major conferences to compensate their student athletes for full cost-of-attendance while not forcing the smaller schools to do the same.

This is the same illness that Shaw battled through to lead the Gamecocks back from a 17-0 deficit at Missouri last weekend. Shaw was eased back in on Wednesday, took his normal practice reps on Thursday and is expected to play this Saturday against Mississippi State.

A Connecticut high school football coach is claiming that former Ole Miss and Arkansas head coach Houston Nutt reached out to him to get a feel for the recruiting landscape in The Nutmeg State. Nutt could have any of a number of reasons for making the inquiry, but it is worth noting that UConn did just fired Paul Pasqualoni on Sept. 30. Time will tell if Nutt really is pursuing the UConn job, but living and working in Storrs, Connecticut, would be quite the change of scenery for Nutt, who has been in the South since leaving Boise State in 1997.

The NC State Wolfpack is changing up their midfield logo for their contest with North Carolina and it...looks a whole lot like East Carolina’s midfield logo. NC State previously borrowed “This is our state” from schools like Mississippi State, but deployed it against...Clemson?

With DeLoss Dodds retiring, Texas continues their search for the next athletic director of the school, and reports are out on who is being interviewed. Arizona State athletic director Steve Patterson and West Virginia athletic director Oliver Luck are reportedly set for interviews, while Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith denied a report that he is as well.

Former Florida Atlantic coach Carl Pelini resigned not only due to reported illegal drug use, but for “other violations of university rules,” Athletic Director Pat Chun said.

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