Designated Read: IMPORTANT THINGS FIRST

Here is an Eastern Michigan cannon being fired during a game against Ball State, which is as close as we're allowed to get to the joke we really want to make.

Here is an Eastern Michigan cannon being fired during a game against Ball State, which is as close as we're allowed to get to the joke we really want to make. (ZUMAPRESS.com)

• By all means, enjoy yourselves. And just like that, less than a week before the season, we have a new leader in Favorite Offseason News Thing. Good hustle, Ball State!

This will cause some locker room jokes. #Ball State players Jonathan Newsome, Toney Williams tried to shoplift "male enhancement pills"

— Doug Zaleski (@DougZaleski) August 24, 2012

Ball State, as you may know, is named "Ball State." This'll be fun.

• #Menphis things afoot. We'll let Matt Stevens and Kyle Veazey catch you up, but real quick: Joe Schad says Mississippi State receivers coach Angelo Mirando resigned while under NCAA investigation; Dan Mullen does not care for Joe Schad, and the investigation in question leads back to Memphis (the city), which is already under NCAA scrutiny for Jovon Robinson-related reasons. Hey, Tim Brewster! Neato?

• Nuh-uh, Nittany Lions edition. Graham Spanier insists he totally broke up with Penn State first, you guys.

• Sing to me, O Muse, of Central Florida at Akron. ESPN has put put a whale of a press release detailing all the college football goodness it will bring your way this fall. Memorize it.

• Roster blotter. Tennessee's Da'Rick Rogers gets hit with an indefinite suspension and tagged with an "unlikely to return" from his head coach, disappointing many but surprising no one who's been following the career of Da'Rick Rogers ... Also indefinitely suspended, Auburn's DeAngelo Benton ... Notre Dame transfer Aaron Lynch will sit out the 2012 season at USF ... and Storm Klein has been reinstated at Ohio State.

• And now, a list of freshly anointed starting quarterbacks. Notre Dame: Everett Golson! Auburn: Kiehl Frazier! Oregon: Marcus Mariota! Florida: Jacoby Brissett and Jeff Driskel!

Misc.

a fun Akron football photo

visits Georgia practice

what, exactly, was done to Nick Saban

its perhaps inevitable but no less welcome conclusion