NOTE: THE TIEBREAKER THIS WEEK IS: "How many points will Texas Tech and Oklahoma combine for in their game?"

Am I the only one or does any other channel surfer stop upon coming across a service academy playing in a football game and start rooting for it to win? Maybe it’s because they so often are underdogs. Likely it’s probably more than that, knowing that many of the players are on the brink of putting themselves in harm’s way to protect our nation.

It’s nice to see the names of three seniors from service academies ranked among the nation’s top 100 rushers.

Army’s Collin Mooney ranks 11th in the nation with an average of 117.3 yards per game. He’s averaging 6.05 yards per carry.

Navy’s Shun White averages 8.39 yards per carry, the best figure among the top 100 rushers in the country. He ranks 39th with 87.3 yards per game.

Eric Kettani, also of Navy, ranks 58th with 71.5 yards per game and averages 5.38 yards per carry.

Thanks in advance for your service, officers.

Texas Tech 42, Oklahoma 38: The single most impressive score produced by a team in the 2008 college football season was produced by Texas Tech, 63-20 victors over a good Oklahoma State team. The Cowboys aren’t the Sooners, but still, that was impressive. Tech’s the play here because the Red Raiders have a better defense than Oklahoma.

Iowa State 33, Kansas State 31: Ron Prince’s purple reign ends. He never meant to cause you, the K-State fan, any sorrow. He never meant to cause you any pain. He only wanted to see you laughing in the purple reign. Purple reign, purple reign.

Utah 28, Brigham Young 27: These teams plus TCU make the Mountain West the most underrated conference in the country. The games in this series tend to be close ones.

Pittsburgh 28, Cincinnati 24: During his first three seasons, Pittsburgh’s Dave Wannstedt looked like just another NFL coach who couldn’t make a successful transition to college football. His record was 16-19. Turns out he was in the process of reversing a losing culture all the while. Cincinnati has the home-field advantage at Nippert Field in trying to defeat Pitt for the first time in the eight-game history of the series.

Maryland 24, Florida State 21: The Terps seek to move to 7-0 at home by giving Florida State coach Bobby Bowden his fourth loss of the season. Not to worry. A look into the future shows that Bowden will move one game ahead of Penn State’s Joe Paterno by defeating him in the Tidy Bowl in the year 2025. Both coaches announce in the postgame press conference that they think their teams will be even better in 2026.

TCU 17, Air Force 14: Many believed Horned Frogs coach Gary Patterson has such a great feel for defense that he can turn around even Kansas State’s inept tacklers. Meanwhile, Air Force is the least-aptly named football team in the nation. The Falcons average just 86.6 passing yards per game and 279.7 rushing yards, good for fourth in the nation.

Congratulations to Dale Bourne of Eudora, who was the Week 12 winner in the Kream Keegan contest. Dale correctly predicted all six games and was closest to the tiebreaker, saying that Colt McCoy would throw for 311 yards against KU (he threw for 255). Will you be this week's winner? Sign up using the entry form below.

(The contest is currently closed. Good luck to all who entered.)