Alabama 26, Auburn 21. When Alabama escaped an upset bid by Tennessee last month, I argued that every championship team at some point has to win those kinds of games, when the offense is stagnant, the situation looks bleak down to the closing seconds and the only "style points" are relative to losing. After Tennessee and the fourth quarter comeback against LSU and the epic touchdown drive to put away the hated Tigers today, count Alabama the reigning master of pulling out games that, technically, it probably should not win.

I don't know if 'Bama fans will protest that characterization, but this one carried the stench of impending doom almost from the opening kickoff. Auburn followed the same script Utah wrote for its Sugar Bowl upset over 'Bama last January, with nearly identical results. Just like the Utes, the Tigers came out fast, flooring the pedal with a surprise end-around that broke big for a 67-yard touchdown on their fourth snap from scrimmage, immediately followed by a shrewd onside kick and a subsequent touchdown drive that put the Tigers up 14-0 before 'Bama had even had a chance to catch its breath -- or, you know, get its offense on the field.

They weathered the Tide's counterpunch in the second quarter and struck big again to back on top in the second quarter. They literally took the Heisman frontrunner out of the game, limiting Mark Ingram to a long run of eight yards and relegating him to the sideline in the second half in favor of freshman Trent Richardson, who didn't fare much better. They pressured Greg McElroy, dropping him three times. They held the Tide to a pair of field goals to preserve the lead following an interception and punt return on consecutive drives that set up the 'Bama offense in Tiger territory and threatened to turn the mounting momentum. With the lead in the fourth quarter, they forced the struggling Tide attack to start its final two drives at its own three and own 21, respectively.

The Tigers held 'Bama to fewer yards than all but one other defense this year, gained more yards against 'Bama than all but one other offense and outgained 'Bama by more than a yard per play. They hit every note in the script, ticked off every line on the checklist ... and still lost. Whatever else they may be missing in the way of panache, you can't accuse the Tide of lacking resiliency.

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Cincinnati 49, Illinois 36. It's a shame for his sake that Tony Pike had to sit for all or most of the last four-and-a-half games, because it's obvious he'd be surging right about now as an All-American and Heisman candidate if he'd been in the pocket shredding defenses at a record pace instead of Zach Collaros as Cincinnati closes in on a BCS berth. As far as his own personal standing is concerned, Pike's absurd afternoon in his first full game back in the fold -- 32-of-46 for 399 yards and a school-record six touchdowns, with four different receivers bringing in at least six catches -- is just another prolific footnote in an offense that can do no wrong regardless of the triggerman.

It's not like anyone was paying rapt attention after the Bearcats went ahead 21-7 in the first quarter, anyway, effectively ending the only chance this game had to be interesting outside of Ron Zook being summoned to midfield by a messenger in grim reaper garb bearing a pink slip. In fact, the only drama at all was ABC color analyst Bob Griese's cryptic aside in the first half that America's Next Top Coach, Brian Kelly, told him before the game that "something will be decided in the next 7-10 days" about his future at Cincinnati -- although Griese seemed entirely in the dark as to whether Kelly was referring to a possible contract extension at Cincinnati, a prospective offer from Notre Dame specifically or a break with UC generally over his longstanding issues with facilities and support. It's not clear who's making the decision, or what they're deciding -- did Griese ask a follow-up question, by any chance? -- but it does put Kelly on the clock for a move that could make his career.

Whether Kelly is or is not bound for South Bend, he very likely already knows it, and the Bearcats' effort in the de fact Big East championship game next week at Pitt probably won't have any bearing on his fate with the Irish. It will mean everything, though, to the Bearcats' wrapping up the only perfect season in school history with another BCS bid, and -- just like Rich Rodriguez in his surprisingly contentious exit from West Virginia after blowing a national title shot against Pitt in the season finale two years ago -- how they handle the storm this week and show up next Saturday with all of the season's tangible rewards on the line could play a big part in how Kelly is remembered at Cincy if he really is on the way out.

The most interesting aspect of the Heisman Trophy is always the players it excludes as a matter of course. With the field of favorites rapidly narrowing down the stretch, Alternate Heisman Reality looks at some of the more deserving candidates off the beaten path. Today: Michigan defensive end Brandon Graham.

Generic Profile. Former five-star, all-world recruit turned two-time All-Big Ten pick at a high profile powerhouse and likely first-rounder in next April's draft.

By the Numbers. Graham leads the nation with an absurd 25 tackles for loss, including 9.5 sacks, after leading the Big Ten with 20 TFLs as a junior in 2008. In the Wolverines' biggest games this year, he notched two tackles behind the line against Notre Dame; two at Michigan State; three-and-a-half at Iowa; three-and-a-half against Penn State; and four apiece against both Wisconsin and Ohio State, dominating his half of the line of scrimmage on a weekly basis despite constant double teams.

All of Graham's sacks came in the last eight games, with multi-sack games against Iowa, Delaware State and Wisconsin.

Intangibles Ho! He kept playing hard and steadily increased his production as the season wore on, even as the chances of making anything remotely worthwhile out of the season More impressively, Graham set weekly records in the "plus" category of MGoBlog's weekly play-by-play reviews of the Wolverine defense, which graded every excruciating snap of every game all year and usually amounted to "Brandon Graham is the only beacon of hope for mankind in an otherwise cruel and doomed world." Short of opposing Big Ten coaches taking out an ad for the guy in the Chicago Tribune, that's as powerful an endorsement as a defensive end can earn in my book.

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Game day nostalgia

They're hardly the first to notice, but the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette does a fine job today on the ripple effects that, in retrospect, made Pittsburgh's last visit to West Virginia in 2007 one of the rare turning points that helped shape the current national landscape -- if the sad-sack Panthers don't hold the Mountaineers to a season-low nine points as 29-point underdogs in Morgantown in the final hours of the regular season, WVU goes on to the BCS Championship game instead of LSU, coach Rich Rodriguez probably doesn't jump to Michigan in the ensuing weeks, LSU's Les Miles might move on to Ann Arbor instead, Tiger assistant Bo Pelini takes Miles' seat in Baton Rouge, Nebraska hires former Husker quarterback Turner Gill instead of Pelini, we never hear Charles Barkley's insights on the plight of black coaches, etc.

Imagine a world where Jim Tressel averted his reputation for big game flops by winning his second national title over the Mountaineers in New Orleans, or where Rodriguez won his first title by beating OSU, thereby established his alma mater as a perennial power. It's hard to recall another single game at the spoke of a wheel spinning that many long-term contingencies.

None of them would have seemed as unlikely at the time, though, as Dave Wannstedt taking Pitt into tonight's return date in Mountaineer Stadium as a 9-1, top-10 outfit headed for a winner-take-all showdown against Cincinnati next week for an automatic BCS bid, especially when you consider that neither of the hyped freshmen who led the offense in that win, quarterback Pat Bostick and running back LeSean McCoy, has taken a snap for the Panthers this year. Wannstedt, veering toward the more intense sectors of the hot seat after three straight losing seasons, is 18-5 over the last two years and suddenly occupies one of the most secure seats in the Big East at the head of a rising, increasingly stable program; Rodriguez, meanwhile, is under more intense fire at Michigan than Wannstedt ever was at Pitt, and West Virginia fans still don't seem to have quite come around to his successor, Bill Stewart, who couldn't eke a Big East championship out of Pat White's senior season and has four losses to unranked teams in two years. We're still less than four years removed from White and Steve Slaton mercilessly gashing the Pitt D en route to outscoring the Panthers 90-45 in back-to-back blowouts in Wannstedt's first two season, but if anyone needs another tide-turning win tonight, this time it's the Mountaineers.

Inside the day's key match-ups.

The biggest star in the 68th edition of the Iron Bowl is obviously Alabama's thundering tailback, Mark Ingram, but with his nasty defensive counterparts, it's much easier to imagine the Tide winning without a particularly Heisman-worthy afternoon from Ingram or receiver Julio Jones than it is to picture Auburn pulling off one of the upsets of the year without its best effort on offense: The fact for the Tigers and the most generous defense in the SEC is that the offense has had to hit 26 points and 400 yards in every one of their seven wins, and has fallen short of those marks in every one of their four losses.

No team has achieved either this season against 'Bama: Only two opposing offenses, Kentucky (301) and Tennessee (341) have managed 300 yards on the Tide, and only Virginia Tech and LSU have reached the end zone twice with the game still in any kind of doubt. Four of 'Bama's last six opponents haven't reached the end zone at all, and Tennessee only got there after a late fumble by Ingram in the process of trying to put the game on ice. This defense is always gunning for the shutout.

If there's any play-caller who can crack that code, it's Gus Malzahn, who has yet to be shut out of the end zone in four years as a I-A offensive coordinator at Arkansas, Tulsa and now Auburn, and has only been held below 20 points five times in 54 games. For a self-ordained spread guru maintains a hyper pace at the core of his philosophy, Malzahn has been flexible enough to play to the Tigers' strengths in the running game: Auburn has kept the ball on the ground on more than 60 percent of its plays for the year, relying mostly on 1,200-yard workhorse Ben Tate and freshman Onterrio McCalebb but mixing in a liberal dose of Wildcat sets with receiver/quarterback Kodi Burns, options, misdirection and reverses to wide receivers, to great effect: The Tigers have improved from 69th nationally in rushing offense to 11th with the same personnel, and haven't been held below 100 yards on the ground.

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Making the morning rounds.

• This pity date has gotten way out of hand. There's an old episode of The Simpsons wherein dim loser Ralph Wiggum takes a token valentine from Lisa way too far, eventually humiliating her with unexpected and unwanted expressions of his love on live television. For some reason, I kept thinking of that episode every time ESPN showed this couple Thursday night ...

... which was plenty of times given Texas' stunning defensive collapse against A&M, which included busted coverages, busted tackles and a busted ego for a unit that came into the game ranked in the top 10 nationally in yards and points allowed. This morning, the Austin-American Statesman tries to get to the root of the trouble, without much luck, and the New York Times' Pete Thamel wonders how such an effort -- especially if it's replicated in any meaningful way next week by Nebraska -- might fuel the critics of the Longhorns' virtually assured trip to Pasadena. (Longhorn fans have their own questions, such as: Why on earth didn't Mack Brown offer Christine Michael a scholarship?

• Mass exodus. (Get it? Mass? Cuz ... ah, never mind.) Whatever his own fate, Charlie Weis can still have an impact on Notre Dame's immediate depending on what he says this week when he meets with Jimmy Clausen and Golden Tate about the juniors' prospects for entering the draft in April. Weis called the 5'11" Tate a "clone" of longtime Panthers star Steve Smith, but at that height, he'll have to turn in a blazing speed in workouts to have a shot at the first round. [Associated Press]

• Say it's so, Joe. On the other side of the Irish-Trojan rivalry, USC's Joe McKnight looks like he's leaning toward staying in L.A. for his senior season despite the best individual season for a Trojan back (he should go over 1,000 yards rushing Saturday against UCLA, on more than six yards per carry for the season) since Reggie Bush and LenDale White exited the premises four years ago. If McKnight is back in '10, prepare for the Heisman hype, an interesting development for a guy who's been considered a slight underachiever compared to his outsized recruiting hype. [Orange County Register]

• Your campus statue will just be you, if that's alright. In the more immediate reaches of Heisman hype, for those of you who care about such trivialities, it's been a good week for Alabama running back Mark Ingram, who landed Sports Illustrated's annual Heisman-hyping cover and gets the full-on treatment today from the hometown Tuscaloosa News:

Pending another big effort today in the Iron Bowl, I'd say we've got an official frontrunner for the stretch. [Tuscaloosa News]

Quickly ... Starting linebacker A.J. Jones will miss Florida's games with Florida State and Alabama with an injured knee. ... Dan Hawkins' surprising removal from the hot seat Thursday mean that, for the first the first time in years, there's not a pall hanging over one of the coaches when Nebraska and Colorado get together in Boulder. ... Even in one of Auburn's strongholds in the state, only a couple Mobile Press-Register staffers have the guts to pick the Tigers to upset Alabama. ... Just one more way that Paul Johnson has completely flipped the script in the Georgia-Georgia Tech series. ... A view of C.J.'s Pub in South Bend, where Jimmy Clausen was allegedly punched in the face last weekend. ... And can Tennessee fans still begrudge Charles Woodson his Heisman after he donated $2 million to a children's hospital? Don't answer that.

Texas 49, Texas A&M 39. The short take on the Longhorns' rocket-fueled escape from College Station is "Colt McCoy remains awesome" -- the senior had the defining game of his season with 478 total yards, five touchdowns and a career night as a runner. With some more perspective and a dash of pessimism, you might add, "And it was a good thing he did," with Texas A&M lighting up the previously impenetrable Longhorn defense for its worst game of the season in pretty much every way imaginable -- the Aggies obliterated previous season highs against the 'Horns by 15 points, 117 total yards and 2.4 yards per play and went almost three full quarters without a punt to close the game.

So it was a rough night for the Big 12's best defense, or as rough as it can be en route to a double-digit win over a hated rival to close the first 12-0 regular season in school history. If any Texas fans are looking to sober up, though, they should compare tonight's sudden Aggie outburst not only to the Longhorns' exemplary efforts this year, but also to the defenses on teams the 'Horns are most trying to emulate in the long run:

Against Texas A&M, the Longhorn defense ...
• Allowed more points (39) than any eventual BCS champion has ever allowed in regulation. The only teams to score more than 39 against an eventual BCS champ are Kentucky (43) and Arkansas (50) in upsets over LSU in '07, but both came in multiple overtime sessions. Only three teams (Ole Miss vs. Florida in 2008, Kentucky vs. LSU in 2007 and Alabama vs. LSU in 2007) have managed 30 points against an eventual BCS champ since 2001.

• Allowed more yards (531) than any eventual BCS champion has ever allowed in regulation. The only 500-yard games against a final No. 1 this decade were Arkansas' triple-overtime shootout with LSU in '07 (fueled by a pair of soon-to-be first round draft picks, Darren McFadden and Felix Jones) and USC's 574-yard effort against Texas in the 2006 Rose Bowl, and Jarrod Johnson, Christine Michael and Jeff Fuller aren't exactly Matt Leinart, Reggie Bush and Dwayne Jarrett.

• Allowed more passing yards (343) than any eventual BCS champion since the '05 Longhorns allowed 369 to Texas Tech, on twice as many passes (64) by the Raiders' Sonny Cumbie as Johnson threw (33) tonight. None of the last three BCS champs has allowed 300 yards passing in a game, and no eventual BCS champ has ever allowed four touchdown passes in one sitting.

• Allowed more yards per play (7.6) and per pass (10.4) than any BCS champion has ever allowed in a game.

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Given his 16-32 record and characteristically manic attempts at defending himself and taking stock of his regrets over the last month, it was easy to assume the sand had run out of Dan Hawkins' hourglass after four straight losing seasons at Colorado. A good guess as the Buffs wrap up their fourth straight losing season, but also a wrong one as of this morning, when Hawkins got the official go-ahead to return to the CU sideline in 2010:

University of Colorado officials decided to bring back football coach Dan Hawkins for a fifth season Thursday with no stipulations for changes in his coaching staff and without setting a target number of wins for next season.
[...]
Citing a need for stability and continuity and the results Hawkins' players have produced in the classroom, athletic director Mike Bohn said he and Chancellor Phil DiStefano chose to give their football coach another year to show improvement in the Big 12 standings.

The upshot: A "renegotiation" of Hawkins' contract (currently in place through the end of the 2012 season) is likely on the horizon, to "[give] the school more flexibility," in the words of the Boulder Daily Camera -- i.e., to reduce the $3 million buyout if Colorado fires Hawkins without cause, rumored to be a major stumbling block for any designs the cash-strapped university had on parting ways with Hawk.

The situation next year will resemble Greg Robinson's awkwardly lingering death rattle at Syracuse last year in that both captains were invited back for a final, futile attempt to raise the ship from depths to which it hadn't descended in decades, despite no discernible progress in any major area. In a make-or-break year, the Buffs lost their first two games to Colorado State and Toledo; watched two of their more talented members, cousins Darrell Scott and Josh Smith, both jump ship for UCLA; and sit four points against Kansas away from sole possession of last place in the Big 12 North with no prospects of forthcoming improvement. This is the guy already best known for his "This is Big 12 Football! Go play innermurals! rant, so it tells you all you need to know about the surprise of his return and the grim prospects of its long-term success that he's only just now become the easiest coaching target in the country over the next year.

Our weekly tailgating guide takes its show to the Iron Bowl for the second Thanksgiving in a row, a new location but the same old hate.

The Lowdown.
Take a look back at our Tuscaloosa Iron Bowl preview from last year to remind you what makes this game special:

The thing about this rivalry is the lack of geographical boundaries involved. Tide and Tigers live, work and worship side by side all across the state. They have every opportunity to get their hate on every other day of the year. But come Iron Bowl Saturday, it's still got to ratchet up somehow.

Auburn is a family town. Auburn games are a great place to take your kids, even given their practice of loosing a predatory bird in the stadium 20 minutes prior to kickoff. Just not this Auburn game, at least not until the little tykes can throw a decent right cross. The Loveliest Village on the Plains will, for one weekend, be transformed into the mouth of hell. (We mean this in a good way. Seriously. If you've never seen an Iron Bowl, pack up the leftovers tomorrow and hit the road.)

The Auburn-Alabama game lived for many years at the ostensibly neutral site of Birmingham's Legion Field, but we vastly prefer the heightened tensions of the home-and-home series. Make no mistake, Auburn takes its relatively newfound homefield advantage seriously. Very, very seriously:

"It is difficult, even impossible, for Auburn people in this generation to understand what Dec. 2, 1989, meant to Auburn people in that day," said Housel, the foremost historian on the subject. "And it's a good thing they don’t understand because that's what Dec. 2, 1989 was all about - so they wouldn’t have to understand, be forced to go to Birmingham, be forced to play your biggest game of the year on your opponent’s home field, be forced to go to a place where you weren’t really wanted. ..."These kids don’t know," he added. "Thank god they don’t know.”

Getting the Tide to actually come to Auburn for the first time was the Tigers' Berlin Wall.

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May all your turkeys be fat and your naps be peaceful. And when your hated rivals arrive in town for the weekend, remember to keep repeating to yourself: "These savages are our guests."