Probably the last post of the day, so here's some more links to help Saturday's kickoff come a little sooner ...

-- The folks at Cardchronicle.com do a Big East power ranking, and USF is No. 1 (they've got their Cards in there at fifth). USF has two weeks off from league play, but it's make-or-break time for Cincy, which is at Rutgers and then at home against Louisville. For the Bearcats to even split those two would validate their emergence as a real contender -- they probably have to win both to stay ranked.

-- Just to give the Nick Saban controversy a few more rounds, how's this, from Scripps' Ray McNulty, for a lead that tells you what the columnist thinks:

As if anybody needed another reason to despise Nick Saban, as pompous and arrogant and classless a blowhard as anyone ever to coach a college football team ...

He's not done.

It's kind of like Paris Hilton calling Lindsay Lohan a bimbo. Or Barry Bonds calling Mark McGwire a juiced-up fraud. I mean, we're talking about Alabama, which is little more than Ole Miss with indoor plumbing. We're not exactly talking about the Harvard of the South.

The New York Daily News chimes in and even bogarts a quote of mine from Nick Capogna.

-- Olin Buchanon at Rivals.com reminds me that I completely left out a great Leavitt quote from last week's postgame: "Somebody said we would get beat like a rented mule. I thought, 'Goodness, gracious that's kind of mean.' I didn't bring it up to our team, but I didn't think that way." Given the general treatment of rented mules, do you have to put down a deposit when you rent one? I mean, if the guy renting the mules complains that you just worked the poor animal to death, can you not just say "It's a rented mule. What did you expect?"

-- Among the national media at the West Virginia game was The Sporting News' Matt Hayes, who was my boss when he covered Florida for the Florida Times-Union -- gasp, a decade ago -- and I was the T-U's correspondent in Gainesville. Matt, who had publicly picked the Bulls to beat West Virginia, has a solid feature on USF linebacker Ben Moffitt and his son, Trevor, a regular guest in the postgame interview sessions.

-- Because everybody loves riffing on the "South Florida isn't even in South Florida" deal, I'll link to a recruiting update at ESPN.com, which considers Georgia running back Demetris Murray the steal of the class. I'll say this: if a high school running back sees the freshman running backs at USF and still picks USF, you have to like his confidence.

-- Another national trend? Spelling Ben Moffitt's last name with one T. Back my first year on the beat, it was wrong on USF's online roster and I spelled it that way -- Moffitt's big enough that he showed up in 12 newspapers with his name spelled incorrectly. It's mean to pick on stories from smaller papers, but the Daily Vidette -- is there any other kind of Vidette these days? -- references "Moffit" as the "heart and sole" of USF's undefeated start. Or this line: "Not only did they not have a program, but they had never been ranked."