Lame game(s) of the week.

Bottom of the barrel: Syracuse (3-6) at Louisville (3-6)
Aww, twinsies! Tied for seventh in the Big East on account of having three wins and zero conference victories apiece, the Orange and Cardinals entered the season with ... well, not great expectations, but strident hopes of some semblance of a turnaround. Cardinal coach Steve Kragthorpe had to know it would take a respectable trip to the postseason to save his job after bowl-less seasons, but as the season winds down all he's got to show for it is another losing season on the horizon and some gallows humor about Jon Gruden.

As for Syracuse, remember those halcyon days of summer when Greg Paulus came to town and Doug Marrone was going to turn this team around on a wave of gutsy media darlingdom, and then this happened? Stop me if you've heard this one before, but Paulus is still a gamebreaker, still not in a good way, and 'Cuse has only a surprise upset of Northwestern to its credit in terms of quality wins.

But hey, Greg Paulus was a basketball player! Have you guys heard about that?

The rest of the worst:
• Florida State (4-5) at Wake Forest (4-6)
Shouldn't Wake Forest be 5-5? The Demon Deacons always feel like a 5-5 team no matter the caliber of football, and they're a good bet to get there Saturday. With one-man offense Christian Ponder finished for the season, there's absolutely no reason anymore to keep Florida State on your radar until some riled-up alums try to force Bobby Bowden out in December. The 'Noles' backup quarterback, E.J. Manuel, has completed one of four passes this year, and their best runner (Jermaine Thomas) hasn't even cracked 500 yards on the ground after nine games. The once-vaunted Seminole D is ranked 105th in the country, sandwiched cozily between Memphis and North Texas. And if FSU pulls the upset in Winston-Salem (Wake is a four-point favorite), it will mark four straight defeats to Wake Forest, automatically triggering the "Manchurian Candidate" mechanism in Deion Sanders and Peter Boulware. You know that's not going to end well for anybody.

• Kentucky (5-4) at Vanderbilt (2-8)
Race you to the bottom of the SEC East! Our money's on Kentucky, which has one conference win that somehow wasn't over Mississippi State, to hang onto that coveted No. 5 slot. (Which, yes, does mean the Wildcats lost to Mississippi State already, a possible flaw in our methodology if MSU hadn't taken out Vandy, too.)

• Western Michigan (4-6) at Eastern Michigan (0-9)
Sorry, but Dan LeFevour has very nicely filled our MAC-tion quota for the week with six touchdowns Wednesday night against Toledo. We're calling this one the On The Dole Bowl, because you'd have to feel pretty charitable to tune in. (What are we going to do when LeFevour graduates and we have no way of keeping all the vaguely bad directional Michigan teams straight?)

• South Dakota State (7-2) at Minnesota (5-5)
There is such a team as the South Dakota State Jackrabbits. That is all.

Western Kentucky Line Watch.
Tracking the odds against I-A's newest cubs.
After a largely uneventful week, the Hilltoppers find themselves 21-point underdogs to Louisiana-Monroe, which (like WKU) has also been doubled up by Sun Belt frontrunner Troy in the last month but about half as badly. So, uh, you know, lame duck head coach Dave Elson will have that to talk about with ULM's Charlie Weatherbie before the game. Hey, keep your head up, kid; Weatherbie's been on the wrong end of the chopping block in his day, and look where he is now.