3-point stance: The leading Ingram

1. South Carolina defensive end Melvin Ingram won SEC Defensive Player of the Week for the second consecutive week. He also won Special Teams Player of the Week against Georgia. Three awards in five weeks may put Ingram on a record pace. It’s hard to say– the SEC hasn’t kept track of who has won the most weekly awards in a season. The last two Heisman winners, Cam Newton of Auburn and Mark Ingram (no relation) of Alabama, won six and two, respectively. That makes Melvin the lead Ingram.

2. Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith said that tailback Boom Herron and wide receiver DeVier Posey made decisions “to go off the reservation” when they accepted too much money for their 2011 summer jobs. Does that mean that, after receiving five-game suspensions to start this season, they returned to the reservation only to decide to leave again? Did they just keep straying, and if so, where is Ohio State’s boundary? Which Native American tribe, and what is its translation of the word "knucklehead?”

3. It’s easy to forget that college football players are young and have lives. Oklahoma State offensive coordinator Todd Monken reminded me of that when he discussed the Cowboys’ three practices during bye week. “We’ve been going at it pretty good now for four weeks of camp and four weeks of the season, so I think their minds were on the weekend,” he said. “I’m sure for a month they had planned what they were going to do for the bye week.” The rested No. 6 Cowboys play Kansas this week.

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3-point stance: Skov will lead off the field

1. When Stanford lost redshirt junior linebacker Shayne Skov for the season to a freak knee injury in the first half of the 37-10 victory at Arizona, the No. 5 Cardinal lost more than its leading tackler. “Shayne was the on-field passionate leader,” head coach David Shaw said. Such is the respect that the defense has for Skov that he merely will shift to become the off-field passionate leader. “He’ll be pissed if they don’t play at a high level,” Shaw said.

2. Georgia became a sexy preseason pick in part because the Bulldogs play an SEC schedule that excludes No. 2 LSU, No. 3 Alabama and No. 14 Arkansas. However, there's another team that may ride an unexpectedly soft schedule into a BCS berth. No. 11 Florida State plays an ACC schedule without No. 13 Virginia Tech, No. 25 Georgia Tech and North Carolina. If the Seminoles win at No. 21 Clemson this week, they may cruise until they play No. 15 Florida on Thanksgiving Saturday.

3. The good news is that Kentucky’s red zone defense is outstanding. Opponents have driven inside the Wildcats’ 20 five times and come out with four field goals and no touchdowns. The bad news is that the Wildcats have given up four touchdowns, all on passes between 24-28 yards. “We can’t allow people to throw the ball over our heads,” Kentucky coach Joker Phillips said. Next up: Florida, with a rejuvenated passing game under new offensive coordinator Charlie Weis.

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3-point stance: Expansion will take its toll

1. So this is the state of intercollegiate athletics in the Big 12: the regents and the presidents at Texas and Oklahoma are telling each other how great it will be to join the Pac-12 while Longhorns coach Mack Brown is describing the price that move will extract from the players and their families. Remember Brown’s words when the move happens, and Oklahoma president David Boren and Texas president Bill Powers describe how their student-athletes will benefit from a league that spans three time zones.

2. After reading the allegations that the NCAA delivered Monday to South Carolina, it’s difficult to decide what’s more problematic: a) the athletic department allowed 12 student-athletes to receive some $47,000 in extra benefits; or b) the benefits, in the form of housing the players in a hotel at a rate of $14.59 per night, didn’t set off an NCAA alarm in any athletic official’s head. That rate may work for a cheap apartment -- it works out to about $450 per month -- but the Whitney Hotel (AAA rate: $99) is no apartment.

3. Once it became clear that the weather delay at the Oklahoma State-Tulsa game would last hours instead of minutes, how do you keep your 160 athletes, coaches, managers and others fueled? One of coach Mike Gundy’s state trooper escorts took assistant strength coach Tyler Buckminster to a local grocery, where they picked up 8-10 loaves of bread, and a shopping cart full of peanut butter and several flavors of jelly. “I guess if you are hungry enough, you’ll eat whatever is available,” Gundy said Monday.

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3-point stance: Offenses have advantage

1. Football may be cyclical, as coaches maintained all these years. Surely, defenses will catch up to the way that offenses have spread the field. But this is one long cycle. If anything, offenses this season have a bigger advantage than ever. No one could have watched the second half of the South Carolina-Georgia game (60 points scored) or the last 72 seconds of the Notre Dame-Michigan game (21 points scored) and think that things will cycle back to how they used to be anytime soon.

2. For years, experts (ahem) have predicted that someday, the statewide hegemony of Florida, Florida State and Miami would end. Someday may have arrived last year when UCF went 11-3. Or maybe this year, when five Florida teams are 2-0. The Knights spanked Boston College 30-3 on Saturday, FIU beat Louisville 24-17 on Friday and No. 20 USF defeated Notre Dame, 23-20. Not to mention No. 5 Florida State and No. 16 Florida. Miami, at 0-1, can rejoin the party Saturday by upsetting No. 17 Ohio State.

3. South Alabama makes its big-boy debut Saturday at North Carolina State. The FCS Jaguars have gone undefeated in 19 games against an array of two- and four-year schools below the FBS since 2009 (biggest win: fellow future Sun Belt member Georgia State). Jags head coach Joey Jones, a Mobile native, former Alabama wide receiver and successful high school coach, has generated interest. South’s average crowd of 19,647 in two home games this season would have finished second in the Sun Belt last year.

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3-point stance: Bowl game defines a season

1. Regardless of your opinion on whether 6-6 records are bowl-worthy, no teams’ seasons are defined by their bowl results quite like these. Louisville beats Southern Mississippi to go 7-6? Charlie Strong has a successful rookie season. Air Force takes advantage of a slew of Georgia Tech mistakes to win, 14-7 in the Independence Bowl on Monday night? The Yellow Jackets (6-7) lose five of their past six games and face a very long offseason.

2. Leave it to Sue Paterno to crush the rumors of her husband’s ill health. Joe Paterno is fine, Sue said Monday during Outback Bowl week, and the two of them have not discussed the possibility that he will not coach in 2011. Paterno, who turned 84 last week, has been quoted as saying he plans to coach five more years. That’s been his stock line for 25 years, which is also about how long he has had to deal with rumors of his impending retirement.

3. Most coaches schedule a walk-through at the stadium on Friday. By Monday afternoon, both Wisconsin coach Bret Bielema and TCU coach Gary Paterson already had taken their teams to the Rose Bowl. They did it to take pictures and, of course, to minimize the jitters that will overtake the players when they come out of the end zone tunnels on Saturday. And they did it because who wouldn’t visit the Rose Bowl as soon as you could?

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