• This field is a place of violence, not communion. A commenter wondered after Cincinnati's win over Louisville Friday night just what was up between coaches Steve Kragthorpe and Brian Kelly after the game. The Cincinnati Enquirer answers -- Kragthorpe and a few Louisville players weren't feeling very tolerant towards the Bearcats' pre-game team prayer around the Cardinal logo:

Brian Kelly said today that Kragthorpe "confronted" him about [the prayer] before the game.

"It turned into a situation where a couple of their players came down onto the field and had to be restrained by some of their players," Kelly said. "Steve and I talked about it before the game. We disagreed about the manner in which it was handled but kept it professional and moved on."
[...]
Asked what he said to Kragthorpe after the Louisville coach confronted him, Kelly said, "Let’s just put it that we disagreed on what happened."

The coaches did shake hands after the game, though rather tersely. Kragthorpe was probably more concerned with the bit about "disrespecting the logo" or something than the actual prayer -- praying before ramming into people at full speed is a locker room tradition -- but he can expect to be getting a glut of surveys from the ACLU and Al Franken's never-ending senatorial campaign, anyway.

• My friend Tony Knuckles would like to have a word with you, coach. His team dominated the second half with 28 unanswered points, but Pete Carroll was the bane of gamblers who took USC minus-24 at Stanford: The Humanitarian generously called a timeout with three seconds left that allowed the Cardinal to eschew a field goal and throw an 18-yard touchdown pass instead on the last play of the game, cutting the final margin to 22 and apparently losing a lot of people a lot of money. Hey, the Trojans only had 10 men on the field; even with three seconds left in a runaway, that's less than Perfection. Should have taken them at minus-21 when you had the chance, anyway.

If nothing else, Scott Wolf thinks Stanford's feistiness in the first half and late gamesmanship, on top of last year's monumental upset, will make for a good rivalry between the ultra-competitive Carroll and Jim Harbaugh in the long run, if both of them can resist the lure of the NFL. The Cardinal offense moved the ball more effectively against USC than any offense to date, including Oregon State, and exposed an old form of kryptonite: the dreaded running quarterback.

• We missed you this week, ya bums. West Virginia didn't even play Saturday, but with a week off to stew over the Mountaineers' loss to Cincinnati, the West Virginia/Southeastern Pennsylvania press still came out swinging over the increased emphasis on passing and balance at the expense of the vaunted running game, especially in short yardage, which the Charleston Gazette notes cost WVU in both overtime losses to Colorado and Cincinnati. Both the Gazette and its partner in Pittsburgh, the Post-Gazette wrote on Sunday that, rather than balance the offense, coordinator Jeff Mullen's scheme has left it stuck in neutral in all facets:

A year ago, the only complaint about West Virginia's offense was that on those rare occasions when an opponent was able to shut down the running game, the Mountaineers weren't proficient enough in the passing game to do much about it.
[...]
Fast forward one year to a new offensive coaching staff and the problems have been compounded. Quite simply, there have been far too many times in West Virginia's first nine games when the Mountaineers haven't been able to either run or throw the football. Not only has the average rushing output declined dramatically -- from 297 yards per game last year to 215 this season -- so, too, have the passing numbers, from 159 to 135.

If heads have to roll, Mullen himself says he should be first, and West By God Virginia wholeheartedly agrees.

Quickly ... Quarterback Jonathan Crompton is "enthused" to be getting the most irrelevant start in Tennessee history against Vanderbilt. . . . Joe McKnight had to be helped off the field after USC's win over Stanford because of an aggravation to the toe injury that's bothered him for the last month. . . . Blake Gideon is recovering from a concussion after a vicious hit from Kansas RB Angus Quigley, and Roy Scott blames his aching knees on the media. . . . Clemson DT Dorrell Scott is out against Virginia this Saturday, a must-win for the Tigers' chances at making a bowl game. . . . Marshall's Mark Snyder is feeling the heat. . . . Georgia's defense steps up and allows Kodi Burns his best game of the season. . . . And what I said about coming around to Oregon's uniforms? I take that back.