It's Week 4, and strange to think that, just like that, we are a quarter of the way through the college football regular season.
We're really getting into conference play now, and not the bullshit previously scheduled games that were supposed to be out-of-conference games like we've seen the past couple of weeks. Doesn't apply to everyone, as we'll see on at Big Noon, but there's a good mix of conference and non-conference games, depending on how compelling you find the matchup. Probably not very.
A 7:30 start on ESPN for Friday Night has to be making Stanford wondering if this juice is worth the squeeze, they gotta go all the way to Syracuse for what is now an ACC matchup. Fortunately, they had the bye, but I don't know if they'll enjoy having to make another cross-country trip to Clemson next week. Luckily, they don't have to face that task the rest of the season.
Fox Friday College Football gives us another ranked matchup this week. #24 Illinois heads to #22 Nebraska to open Big Ten conference play, and obviously both have won the first three games. Nebraska is a 7-point home favorite as freshman QB Dylan Raiola will face his toughest test with Illinois' defense.
The CW also has an After Dark on Friday as the Cougs come off their upset win in the Apple Cup, will host San Jose State as a 12-point favorite.
Big Noon Kickoff has a stinker this week, they opted to head to Columbus as they bend the knee to the Big Ten and even send Joel and Gus to give their esteemed commentary of #3 Ohio State likely beating the brakes off of Marshall. OSU -39.5, God Bless.
You'll be hard pressed to find and interesting noon game. NC State, without Grant McCall, heads to #21 Clemson (-18.5) on ABC. Florida heads to Mississippi State after both suffered embarrassing losses last week. Gators are 6-point road favorites on ESPN.
Business will pick up in the later afternoon window with some much better games. First up, 3:30 on ABC, #16 LSU got taken to the end by South Carolina last week, they go back out of the conference this week as the host UCLA out of the Big Ten, who have already been blown out at home by Indiana. This is the traditional SEC on ABC game this week. The SEC was supposed to still have this time slot as their feature game of the week, but there's little evidence that that's actually happening.
On CBS, we have old Rose Bowl rivals who are now Big Ten rivals as the weirdness of conference realignment takes hold in a ranked matchup. #11 USC heads to the Big House to play #18 Michigan. USC seems to have a better defense and combined with Michigan's sputtering offense, the over/under is only 43.5. The Wolverines are changing starting quarterbacks, to the bench goes Davis Warren, into the fire goes junior Alex Orji, who has thrown just 7 passes in 12 games over 3 years, but is more effective as a runner. This will be a stylistic difference of offenses compared to USC's passing attack with Miller Moss. This is a CBS game with Brad Nessler and Gary Danielson at 3:30. USC -5.
#17 Notre Dame returns home on NBC hosting another MAC team, so they better watch out for Miami of Ohio. They were pissed off last week and took it out at Purdue to the tune of 66-7. ND -28
Shout out to #23 Northern Illinois getting into the rankings, they host Buffalo on ESPN+ as 13.5-point favorites.
Over on Fox at the same time, they have a much better game than their Big Noon, that starts at 4pm ET/3pm CT, both teams are ranked here as week, #12 Utah goes to #14 Oklahoma State, their first matchup as conference rivals, and are good bets to be the two teams we see in Dallas on championship weekend. Utah is expected to get Cam Rising back, OK-State's QB Alan Bowman was Walter Camp player of the week throwing 5 touchdowns against Tulsa. Two quarterbacks in their 7th year of eligibility.
Headed to the night games, Game Gay is in Norman as #15 Oklahoma opens it's SEC existence by hosting a buzzworthy #6 Tennessee and their quarterback Nico Iamaleava. The Sooners are runners and playing complementary football behind true freshman running back Taylor Tatum, and quarterback Jackson Arnold. However, it's taken the Sooners a while to get going, they were taken late into the 4th quarter by Houston and Tulane, that's probably not going to be copacetic playing Tennessee who have been averaging 63 points per game so far against shoddy opponents. Tennesse -6.5
Can Florida State find a win? They welcome Cal to the ACC in Tallahassee on ESPN2 as 2.5-point favorites. Mike Norvell might need to go into witness protection if they go to 0-4.
Texas A&M has managed to sneak into the ratings at #25, not terribly sure why, but they have the number and they're hosting Bowling Green who played #10 Penn State to the end last week (James Franklin has called out the faculty again, or maybe he does that on Twitter every week).
NBC Big Ten Saturday night has Iowa @ Minnesota. Iowa is favored by 3 and the over/under is 35.5
On ESPN+, not to be overlooked, but we have a new #1 team this week, which is Texas. Quinn Ewers got hurt last week, and they're not going to rush him back, so Arch Manning will get his first career start against and undefeated UL-Monroe, but the Longhorns are 44.5-point favorites.
Coach Prime is back on Fox this week, in prime time, for the first time in over a year, they finally had a win to feel real good about over their in-state rival, on the road, at Colorado State 28-9, though I think they'd like to have some more points on the board. They're only 2-point favorites at home to Baylor though, who had a worse record than the Buffs did last year, but they are likewise 2-1, and giving up less points. Colorado is playing their first Big 12 game since 2010, when this whole realignment mess truly began. It may be a rainy homecoming for Colorado in Boulder.
Finally, we go to After Dark, I think teams like BYU are hoping this new Pac 12 works out so that they don't have to play 8:30 local starts, which is what they're doing with #13 Kansas State, who probably ain't thrilled about it either. K-State had the extra day off after playing Friday last week, they will be 7-point road favorites on FS1.
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