With the regular season two-thirds complete, we have a good feel as to which teams are for real and which ones are pretenders. In a number of cases, new assistants and coordinators are making their mark behind the scenes, helping propel their teams up the polls and conference standings.  

It's time for these guys to get their due. Here are some of the new assistants making the biggest impact across the college football landscape.

Chad Morris – Offensive Coordinator, Clemson: Of all the hires this off-season, Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney may have made the best one when he hired Chad Morris away from Tulsa. Morris, a high school coaching legend in the state of Texas, coached just one year with the Golden Hurricane prior to heading to the Palmetto State. All he has done since he arrived is engineer one of the biggest offensive turnarounds in recent memory.

Clemson ranked 88th nationally in total offense in 2010, averaging just 24 points per game. This year? Clemson ranks 17th in the nation in total offense, with an average 473 yards per game. Plus, the Tigers are scoring 38 points per game.

The Big East is expected to extend invitations to as many as six schools over the course of the next week. For real this time. We think. No, seriously, we mean it!

On Tuesday the Big East presidents and athletic directors from all members not named West Virginia, Syracuse or Pittsburgh (and TCU for what it's worth) gathered in Philadelphia for their annual fall meetings. For the most part this was business as usual, but there were some key items on the not-so-secret agenda with the ideas of expansion and realignment continuing to be a major story in the Big East, perhaps more so than other conferences. The Associated Press is reporting that the schools to receive invitations, when the time is right, will be Boise State, Navy, and Air Force for football-only membership, and Houston, Central Florida and SMU for all-sports membership. Commissioner John Marinatto did not release the names of the institutions that will receive the first wave of invites but seemed confident that within the next week the Big East would have some new members to formally announce (he did not say whether or not separate announcements and invites would be made or if this would all come together at the same time in one lump some.)

By now, what you have read is absolutely nothing new. We have been sitting and waiting for the Big East to take a formal approach to this for a while, and there has been plenty of speculation about which schools will be invited. We also know that there has been a struggle in the City of Brotherly Love between Villanova and Temple, which appears to be leaving out one of the more desirable overall athletic programs from the Big East with the Owls (compared to some of the other candidates).

If you thought last week was crazy with the finish to Wisconsin and Michigan State, this week was just as wild. Oklahoma State and Brandon Weedon curb stomped the Heisman campaign of RG3, Georgia Tech shocked Clemson, Georgia got the monkey of it's back in Jacksonville, South Caroina survived it's first full game without Marcus Lattimore, for the second straight week Wisconsin got beat in spectacular fashion, Oklahoma rebounded by taking Billy Snyder to the woodshed, and in the finale Stanford and Andrew Luck outlasted Lane Kiffin and the USC Trojans in triple OT. Heisman dreams were put on hold this week in the case of RG3 and Russell Wilson. Who would benefit from their fall from the poll?

Here is what you'll see each week in the Bloguin Heisman Poll:

-The Top total vote getters and quotes from bloggers in support of their candidates.
-A list of all players that receive votes in the Bloguin Heisman Poll
-Poll Notes that look at some of the interesting facts, figures, and trends of the poll.
-The BHP Roll Call of voters, the links to their respective blogs and their twitter accounts.

Without any further adieu, the Bloguin Heisman Poll...

Some are calling it the “Matchup of the Century.” Others, “Saban Bowl V.” And still some, “The Game That May End the World As We Know It.”

Whatever your preference, Saturday night, in Tuscaloosa is not only the biggest regular season game in years, but maybe in decades. Rarely has a game featured this much talent on the field, this much intrigue off of it, and this much coaching personality on the sidelines. LSU and Alabama. Saban and Les. No. 1 and No. 2. Who’s your pick?

Whoever it is, here are 10 key stats which could dictate Saturday’s winner:

As is the case every year, CBR headquarters saw its fair share of trick-or-treaters from the college football world stop by last night. We picked out a few of our favorites.

Nick Saban: An Enema

The Nicktator doesn't really do "fun," which makes coming up with a Halloween costume a tall order. His friends – make that "acquaintances" – often tell him, "Nick, you're as fun as an enema." Ergo...

It's Crystal Ball Run's first year in existence. There's a one-versus-two match-up in the regular season. That happens about as often as Les Miles strings together a coherent sentence. (Seriously, check out this doozy.)

Coincidence? We here at CBR think not.

In the buildup to this weekend's titanic clash between the Alabama Crimson Tide and LSU Tigers, we plan to give you copious preview coverage and analysis of the latest and greatest Game of the Century.

With that in mind, here are a few of the major storylines we've identified surrounding the game.

With the playoffs just around the corner and all the cupcake games out of the way, now is the time we find out which teams are for real and which teams are just playing around. This past weekend was gut-check time for eight FCS opponents, as they went head to head with not just playoff implications on the line but also with potential National Championship hopes hanging in the balance. There is no doubt who the power brokers are at the FCS level, and that has played true so far this season as all four games this weekend involved teams from the CAA, MVFC, or SOCON conferences.

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Every Monday you can stop by 100 different websites to check in on the top college football performers of the weekend.

But only at Crystal Ball Run to we skip over the good (not to mention the bad), and go straight to the ugly.

Regie Eller does exactly that, with this edition of "Not Good, Not Bad, Just Ugly."

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We will once again go through the motions of making the selections as if the season ended today, using the BCS rankings as a tiebreaker to determine conference champions. The highest-ranked team in each conference will be selected as the conference champion.

Step 1: BCS Championship Game

The first thing that happens is that Nos. 1 and 2 in the BCS rankings are selected to play in the BCS Championship Game. As of now, that would be LSU and Alabama. But we'll again use some common sense for this exercise and go with LSU (No. 1) and Oklahoma State (No. 3), since LSU and Alabama play each other on Saturday.

• LSU to the BCS Championship Game.
• Oklahoma State to the BCS Championship Game.

Baylor quarterback Robert Griffin III could only do so much.

Drive after drive, the Baylor Bears (4-3, 1-3 Big 12) could not close, leading to a 59-24 defeat at the hands of the Oklahoma State Cowboys (8-0, 5-0 Big 12).

When your quarterback is responsible for 452 total yards and leads your team to 622 total yards, you expect a more competitive game. The problem for Baylor is that there were 1223 yards and 83 points between the two teams – only 24 of them belonged to the Bears.

RG3 is one player. On the other side, there was Joseph Randle, Brandon Weeden and then some guy named Justin Blackmon.

Oklahoma State moved it with ease all day long. Randle set a career-high rushing total for 152 yards and four scores Saturday afternoon. Quarterback Brandon Weeden completed 13 of his 24 passes to Blackmon for 172 yards and 2 touchdowns, also a career high.

Looking at the scoreboard alone is a bit misleading. On Baylor's opening drive the Bears were stuffed on fourth-and-goal. Later in the first half, the Bears were stopped again on fourth-and-one.

Take a look at Baylor's first four drives of the game: 16 plays 69 yards, 7 plays 49 yards, 13 plays 63 yards and 11 plays 40 yards. The result: zero points.

After Oklahoma State's fourth drive, it was 21-0. The Cowboys would never look back.