College Sports | featured news

Notre Dame is No. 1 in The Associated Press college football rankings with nothing left to do but wait to find out who its opponent in the national championship game will be.

For four straight plays in the waning minutes, Notre Dame's defense was backed up to its 1 with its perfect season in peril. And on four straight plays, Southern California got nothing.

No. 3 Notre Dame stayed undefeated with an uncharacteristically easy victory at home and then had the rest of the night to watch as the teams in front of it in the national championship race lost. The Fighting Irish hammered Wake Forest 38-0 on senior day in South Bend, Ind., on Saturday.

Kansas State has finally grabbed the No. 1 ranking, and I say “Congratulations! Well done! No, really!” The Wildcats have never been ranked No. 1 in football or played for a national title, so good for them.

Notre Dame’s impressive win on the road against Oklahoma Saturday meant the Irish should be considered BCS championship contenders with just a month or so left in this 2012 college football regular season. Confirmation of that was unveiled Sunday night in the latest BCS standings when the Irish, previously ranked No. 5 in the BCS, jumped up two spots to take the No. 3 ranking.

The ACC announced Wednesday that Notre Dame will be joining the conference for all sports except football and hockey. Notre Dame, which had been a partial member of the Big East since 1995, will play five nonconference football games per season against ACC teams as part of its agreement to join the conference.

What does a 39-point win on a Saturday get you on a Tuesday? Answer: dropped from No.1 in the Associated Press college football poll. Well, it was fun while it lasted. USC's 49-10 blowout win over Hawaii on Saturday in the Coliseum was not enough for the Trojans to hold their preseason spot atop the AP poll.

Clear sailing on the field, but NCAA storm clouds are gathering again. Chased by demons of past sins, pursuing the ghosts of past greatness, the top-ranked USC football team began the 2012 season by swathing the rollicking Coliseum with one chilling word.

USC went 8-5 in 2010, then charged back to 10-2 last season. And when star quarterback Matt Barkley decided to stick around for his senior season instead of entering the NFL draft, the Trojans were set to make a run at No. 1.

Penn State football was all but leveled Monday by an NCAA ruling that wiped away 14 years of coach Joe Paterno’s victories and imposed a mountain of fines and penalties, crippling a program whose pedophile assistant coach spent uncounted years molesting children, sometimes on university property.