Even though the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl doesn’t have the star power of a BCS game or the Cotton Bowl, this year’s game could be one of the best pre-New Year’s Day matchups. Utah State finished the regular season at 10-2 and unbeaten in WAC play. The Aggies were just a couple of plays away from a 12-0 record, losing to Wisconsin by two points and to BYU by a field goal.

Johnny Manziel’s Heisman coronation capped a wild year of college football in 2012 filled with twists, turns and unexpected results.

Perhaps we should have known 2012 would be different from previous years when Alabama helped start things off with a familiar opponent (LSU) and a different result (a 21-0 rout on the arm of a quarterback ) in the BCS Championship Game.

As 2012 comes to a close, Athlon will count down the top individual performances in each major sport from the year, culminating with a full list of the top 50 performances of the year.

With the 2012 college football regular season in the books, it’s time to take a look at the year in review. Several freshmen made an impact in the national and conference title races, including Heisman winner Johnny Manziel. The redshirt freshman wasn’t the only quarterback making a splash in their first season, as Oregon’s Marcus Mariota and UCLA’s Brett Hundley each averaged over 250 yards of total offense.

With all of the BCS conferences finished with regular season play, it's time to take a look at the 2012 college football season and hand out some hardware. At the midpoint of 2012, all signs pointed to West Virginia's Geno Smith as the runaway Heisman favorite, while Oregon and Alabama appeared to be on a collision course for the national championship. And what a difference a couple of weeks can make. The Ducks were bounced out of the top five by Stanford, while the Crimson Tide lost to Texas A&M, yet rebounded back into No. 2 in the BCS standings.

Single-game, single-season and career records. School, conference and national benchmarks. Remarkable performances and embarrassing moments. The good, bad and ugly makes college football the great sport that it is today. Here are the 20 most intriguing, most important and most interesting college football stats of the 2012 season: 

Which bowls should you tune into? Athlon ranks and previews all of the matchups from the must-see to the ones you can avoid. Although Alabama and Notre Dame is clearly the biggest bowl game, with 34 other contests, there are plenty of other quality pairings to watch this postseason.

Ranking the 35 Bowl Games: Must-Watch to Must-Miss

This is not a sentiment often noted with the BCS: Good thing the championship game is more than a month away.

Otherwise, good luck topping the game of the year in Atlanta. Every play and every decision was magnified in the SEC Championship Game. Every time a running back fought for an extra yard (and it happened a lot) a national championship seemed it was at stake.

This week will mark the final chance for award contenders to make their final pitches to voters across the country.

Heisman contenders Johnny Manziel, Manti Te’o and Braxton Miller have finished their seasons, so Collin Klein will have the opportunity to make the final statement. And he’s not just vying for the Heisman.

College football's bowl season is inching closer, and it's never too early to take a look at what the matchups might look like. With 13 weeks of results in the books, the bowl picture for nearly every team is starting to clear. 

The post-Week 13 bowl projections are a mixture between how things would look if the season ended today, projection of Week 14, and considering the results so far this year. 

For all the complaints of losing the tradition of rivalry week, the Thanksgiving holiday was a turn back the clocks kind of weekend.

Notre Dame wrapped up a chance to play for its first national title since 1988. And elsewhere, Ohio State and Michigan re-energized their rivalry with a Woody and Bo-type matchup with Urban Meyer and Brady Hoke on the sidelines.