College football Saturday, Week 3: Georgia-South Carolina and everything else

How can one football Vine look like so many different things? This is a football Rorschach test. It could be ...

-- Jumping on a bouncy castle.

The “#FireAlGolden” movement is growing weary of Miami dragging its feet and failing to fire Al Golden. C’mon already -- don’t you know how expensive these banners get?

There’s no word whether Al Golden has noticed this latest attempt.

Aaron Burbridge ... give yourself a hand, sir. How the heck did you manage to go COMPLETELY SIDEWAYS and still have the wherewithal to put a foot down?

This is the best catch we’ll see today. I’m confident of that.

Watching sports can be tough, especially when your favorite time isn’t playing all that well.

A missed field goal that would have brought the score to 6-5 (yes, UCONN is beating Mizzou 6-2) was all this guy’s heart could take.

You may have thought Lee Corso picking Alabama again this week would be boring, but Lee Corso is never boring.

Is he really playing there? Definitely not, but we can pretend.

Oregon are still looking a bit like sexy bees, but now they’re incorporating “Puddles” into the helmet!

Apparently one side of the helmet is PURE EVIL.

Western Michigan beat Idaho in September, which is good for them. They got VERY hyped about this:

Wait sorry, say that last part again?

TWIS should not be seen as proof that you are better or more balanced than any other college football fan. No, this works best when you can recognize the pain and anguish of others as something you yourself are entirely capable of. For example:

To be clear, I was simply suggesting that his organizational skills and game planning abilities might be better used somewhere else for the sake of our national interest, because I’m just as insane as all of you.

The Big College Football Trophy is a trophy SB Nation made up to celebrate the internet-friendliest things that happen on college football fields each weekend. We plan on making an actual trophy at some point and giving it away somehow. Here are this week’s top performers.

UMass-Vandy was a maelstrom of sadness. Vanderbilt, comatose without James Franklin, was sad because it really should’ve lost to UMass, a team that’s not good enough to stay in the MAC. UMass was sad because after a big lead, it lost when its kicker didn’t get the right angle on a chip shot 22-yarder from the far hashmark.

How each conference (and one big group of conferences) stacks up after three weeks of college football.

Last week: Defeated Miami (Ohio) 34-10

This year’s record: 2-1 (0-0 B1G)

Record at Michigan: 28-14

Contract: $3.25 million through 2017

Buyout: $3 million

For a coach who exorcised the demons of Appalachian State and eventually buried its chosen MACrifice this past weekend, Brady Hoke is in deep water. Most if it stems from Michigan’s catastrophic loss to rival Notre Dame in Week 2, a loss made especially bad by the fact that Notre Dame is canceling the series.

The Numerical is a weekly exploration of the best box score nuggets from all around major college football.

Even though Conference USA is looking more competitive than we thought -- in the East, WKU is prolific*, UAB has a pulse, and MTSU looks decent; Louisiana Tech and UTSA look salty in the West (and Rice and UTEP haven’t looked terrible) -- Marshall’s strength of schedule is still going to be one of the worst in the country. But the Herd can still prove themselves by whipping teams the way they whipped Ohio. The final score was 44-14, and it could have been much worse.

USC’s disastrous road trip to Boston to play Steve Addazio’s Eagles was a perfect illustration of what’s possible against an offense that’s loaded with experienced linemen, hard-nosed blockers at tight end or fullback, and just a few guys who can make a play with the ball in their hands.

For their own part, the Eagles mixed up a diverse game plan with a lot of different components, including a largely ineffectual passing game. Their ability to bring a diverse run game with zone, power, sweeps, and some pin-and-pull action, all complemented with QB options and misdirection, tested the Trojans’ mental capacities early on.

But he added a 68-yard touchdown run in the third quarter, and a 45-yard run in the fourth quarter that followed a 32-yard effort. Wilson was able to run for a school-record 245 rushing yards and three touchdowns, an average of more than 20 yards per carry.

But none of those performances were as impactful as the work of Wilson in helping Duke dismantle Kansas, 41-3.

We didn’t see this Saturday, when it actually happened, but this, via Sean Korte, is the worst fake punt in the history of fake punts. Watch it a million billion trillion times.

This happened in the second quarter of Miami’s 41-20 win, and at the time, the score was only 20-7. Arkansas State had the ball at Miami’s 41-yard-line, and were smart not to punt in enemy territory, but their execution was ... well ... confusing. Very confusing.

Sometimes, winning isn’t enough. This week’s Underdogs Poll shows that winning, and winning big won’t keep you safe. Like the College Football Playoff selection committee, the Underdogs Poll voters put heavy weight on strength of schedule.

One of the reasons BYU has kept increasing its lead in this poll is because of who the Cougars have beaten. UConn, Texas, and now Houston, and all in impressive fashion. Taysom Hill is as dynamic of a playmaker as you’ll find, and he’s putting up numbers (and Ws) against solid competition.

The bulk of college football’s non-conference play is just about over, and the rankings will start to get just a bit clearer by the week. Four ranked teams lost in Week 3 (last week’s composite No. 4 Georgia, No. 9 USC, No. 17 Virginia Tech, and No. 20 Louisville), hence the major shakeups this time around.

The four big rankings are out -- the two human polls and two long-running computer standings -- and we’ve combined them into one. See below for notes on these rankings:

You could sense the conventional wisdom changing a bit as the game approached: “Are we sure Texas Tech is going to beat Arkansas?”

We spend so much time in in the preseason looking at schedules and assuming certain results -- it’s a long time without football, and what the hell else are we going to do? -- but we had at least a little bit of warning that this wasn’t going to go as we assumed. Texas Tech has looked lackluster in creeping by Central Arkansas and UTEP, and Arkansas had stayed step-for-step with Auburn for a half and thoroughly eliminated Nicholls State, treating a bad FCS team like few actually treat bad FCS teams.

We don’t know if this is an actual LSU brawl, because the participants look like they’re 14 and we have no context to go with this amazing video. So the amazing video will have to suffice. (IT TOTALLY DOES.)

(Originally via Reddit. h/t to Old Row.)

Penn State beat Rutgers 13-10 Saturday, and a local columnist is unhappy about James Franklin’s lack of praise for his opponent. Or something.

Instead, he schmoozed the media and thanked them for covering the game -- even though they got paid to show up and probably received a mileage allowance for the gas and tolls. When he was done, he wished the beat writers a good night. Then, he doubled back to tell them to drive home safely.

Remember how last week, we were talking about the “disaster” the Big Ten had just experienced? Well oh ho ho, did the Big Ten ever recalibrate that whole horror scale after Week 3, one of the most rancid weeks from a power conference that we’ve seen in years.

Here are the ugly numbers from the B1G:

Arkansas’ gameplan against Texas Tech was the same as every other gameplan Bret Bielema has ever drawn up: run the dutch oven offense and dare you to breathe. The first move is controlling the clock by pulling the sheets over the opponent’s head with the run game. The second move is letting loose with the horrible fumes of a fully weaponized digestive system of an offense, chewing up yardage and processing it through the seven stomachs of the run game.

The resulting heat and stench has killed better teams than Texas Tech, whose undersized defense could not get off the field against the mammoth Razorbacks offensive line, allowed 438 yards rushing, and let Arkansas go 8-for-12 on third down opportunities.

Many a romance has been launched in the stands of college football games, and many of those romances are horrible decisions influenced by alcohol. We’re hoping this couple that enjoyed LSU’s 31-0 victory over UL-Monroe turns out great, but we’re not particularly optimistic (via @bunkieperkins):

The coordination required for a bleacher makeout session is not there from the start. But the ones who truly suffer are not the maker-outers, whose passion pushed them past the limits of balance, but the people stomped by the maker-outers, unwilling participants in this star-crossed love.

While the conference doesn’t explicitly state that it agrees that the play clock had not run out, the statement at least acknowledges that the referees followed the rules and guidelines to the best of their abilities.

Here’s a video of the play in question: