Another college football
weekend is upon us, and if I’m being honest, it’s one of the poorer Saturdays I can
remember in terms of the on-paper schedule. There are no games between ranked
teams, #1 Clemson at Syracuse (who just got Seagal'd at Maryland last week) is
the ABC Saturday Night Game, and College Gameday is going to Ames, Iowa, for
the first time ever because the Cyhawk Trophy is up for grabs. Nothing against Ames,
but come on… if Iowa-Iowa State is among to the two or three best games of the week,
then you know it’s a pretty bad on-paper schedule. I love college football almost
more than I love my wife (ALMOST BABE! ONLY ALMOST!) so I’ll be watching, but the weakness of the on-paper schedule isn’t unique to this Saturday so far in the 2019 season. I mean, it’s a crime that we’ve only had three games
between ranked teams so far this year. Plus, Fox’s “Big Noon Kickoff” so far has featured
FAU at Ohio State, Army at Michigan, and this week, Ohio State at Indiana. Wow!
Can’t wait for that one!
The college football schedule
is an atrocity. The NFL makes sure that each and every week, they’re putting
quality games on the field that the fans want to see. I'm sorry, but nobody wants to watch
Arkansas State at Georgia this weekend, not even 'Dawg fans, and certainly no one wants to go. No
one in the history of humanity has ever said, “You know the matchup I’ve been
dying to see? New Mexico at Notre Dame! Let's get on Stubhub. No matter the price, it's a bargain!”
Listen, just elect me the
college football scheduling czar and let me fix everyone’s September scheduling
woes. I promise I'll eliminate all this Chattanooga at Tennessee BS that no one wants to see.
I like Nick Saban’s idea of
playing ten conference games and then two others against Power 5 opponents, but
can we at least get every SEC and ACC team playing nine conference games? Guys,
it’s time. Every other league does it. And the fans don’t want to go/stick
around for Sandwich Tech at LSU or Directional School Nevada at Florida. They
really don’t. Let’s get it together for our fans. And don’t give me the “SEC is
a gauntlet” argument. Please. Not when you’ve got schools in your league losing to
Georgia State and Wyoming.
So here’s the proposal:
every Power 5 League plays nine conference games. If you want to play more,
great! But at least nine. Then, you know what, the other three games have to be
against other Power 5 opponents. That way you’ve got 12 legitimate teams on
your schedule each and every season and you’ve now given your fans a reason to
want to go to the games. That way you don’t have lunacy like the Alabama
athletic department tracking students on their phones to make sure they stay at
games that no one wants to go to or sit through for four quarters.
“But Matt! But Matt! But
Matt, if Alabama doesn’t pay Weber State a million dollars to come to Tuscaloosa
and get their ass kicked, then how are they going to fund their athletic
department? You know that million dollar check and ass kicking basically pays for Weber
State’s entire athletic department budget for a year, right?”
Uh yeah, if Weber State can’t
fund their athletic department without Alabama subsidizing them, then that’s
Weber State’s problem, not Alabama’s. I shouldn’t have to pay with a wasted Saturday
because the folks in Ogden, Utah need their athletic department paid for. Plus, aren’t
there better uses of a million dollars of athletic department money than
shipping it out West to fund someone else’s athletic department? I can think of
a few… like maybe the players on Alabama’s roster get that? And then you invite
Texas or Ohio State into your stadium in place of Weber State and make ten
times what you would’ve made had you kept that crappy school that no one wants to see on the schedule.
Some of you reading this right now
are probably thinking to yourselves, “Wait a second, why should
Alabama players get paid by the school when they’re already getting paid to be
there by the boosters?” Oh whoops, I’m not allowed to say that. Everyone on
college football does everything on the up and up. Definitely everything is
above board. No one cheats in college sports! No one!
Now, I guess we’ll move
onto the Week 3 slate….
Chattanooga
at Tennessee
I can’t believe this game
is even being played. Tennessee benefits in no way here. If they win, great, they
paid Chattanooga a million dollars to come to Knoxville so the Vols can get a meaningless
victory. If they lose (oh my god), then Jeremy Pruitt gets fired as he’s walking
off the field. Wait a second, maybe that is a benefit….
Prediction: Tennessee
#20
Washington State vs Houston (at NRG Stadium in Houston)
Not technically a Houston
home game since this one is at the Texans’ stadium, but for all intents and
purposes it is. If you’re at your house tonight drowning yourself in Natty
Lights, stop doing that and flip over to ESPN at 9:15 for this one, because this
game is going to be a fireworks show. 70-63 is in play here. I’ll take almost Tennessee
coach Mike Leach here to squeak this one out because Houston’s defense is about
as sturdy as a wet paper bag.
#6
Ohio State at Indiana
I know I know, I cited
this game earlier as an example of the crappy football schedule, but I’m grasping
for straws here folks! There’s not a lot to choose from!
The Buckeyes are 18 point
favorites here in a series that they lead 74-12-5. They’ve won 23 straight
against the Hoosiers and haven’t lost to them since October of 1988. They’ve
tied Indiana (1990) more recently than they’ve lost to them. I’d love to see Ohio
State lose here, or at least have Indiana make it competitive, but I don’t see
any way the Buckeyes don’t win by four touchdowns unless the Ohio State bus
gets struck by a meteor on the way to the stadium.
#2
Alabama at South Carolina
Incredibly, this is
Alabama’s first game against South Carolina since the Tide lost in Columbia as
the #1 team in the country back in 2010. (This is another reason why the SEC
needs nine or ten conference games. Alabama hasn’t played South Carolina in
almost an entire decade? Tennessee beat Auburn on the road last year, but they
won’t return there for another 12 years? What? Madness.)
This is our first SEC on
CBS game of the season, but I think it’s going to be a dud. The Gamecocks lost
their veteran quarterback Jake Bentley before last week’s game, and even when
he played, South Carolina looked really bad against UNC in their opener. I don’t
think this is a great Alabama team, at least not yet, but they should still go
in there and take care of business. The only potential issue I see here for the
Tide could be if the weather is so hot and humid that Nick Saban sweats his
hair plugs out. But even that shouldn’t slow them down. Plus, Saban has played
games in brutally hot temperatures before (like at Texas A&M in September)
and those plugs held strong. So he should be fine.
Prediction: Alabama
Stanford
at #17 UCF
Good on Stanford for
traveling all the way across the country to play this game against a legitimate
opponent. The Cardinal always challenge themselves out of conference; this
year, for example, their non-conference schedule was Northwestern (Big Ten),
the best Group of Five team (UCF), and a team they play every season that also happened to make the 2018 college playoff (Notre Dame).
With all that said,
getting credit from me for traveling to play an opponent has no bearing on how
this one will play out on the field tomorrow. Or will help the Cardinal after
last week, where they allowed USC with a freshman quarterback to go on a 42-3
run to end the game. Sure, quarterback KJ Costello will be back for Stanford,
but before he got knocked out of the game against Northwestern two weeks ago, he’d
only guided the Cardinal to 10 points. It’s not like he was lighting it up out there.
So I’m not sure how much of an upgrade it really is.
Prediction: UCF
Pittsburgh at #13 Penn State
Pittsburgh got blown out
by Virginia in Week 1 and then beat Ohio by ten last Saturday. So I’m not sure
how good they actually are, though I’m guessing not that good. Meanwhile, Penn State
has scored 124 points in two weeks against… Idaho and Buffalo. Great. Who
cares?
Fun, crazy fact here: Syracuse
and Dino Babers were the last ACC team to beat Clemson, all the way back in
2017 at the Carrier Dome. The ACC team and coach before that? Pittsburgh and their
current coach, Pat Narduzzi, in 2016. He did it with Nathan Peterman at
quarterback! Does that have any bearing on how tomorrow will turn out? Nope!
Just thought I’d mention it.
Prediction: Penn State
#24
USC at BYU
Clay Helton really is going
to go 3-0 isn’t he? I can’t believe I’m going to say anything nice about a team
that Helton coaches, but wow, that beatdown against Stanford last week was impressive. Frankly, it’s about time the Trojans put it on someone, considering
they have significantly more four and five star recruits than everyone they
play (And yes, I know Bubba in Bulls Gap is reading this right now and saying to
himself, “Stars don’t matter, the only thing that’s important is HOW MUCH DAMN
HEART YOU HAVE! DALE JONES AT TENNESSEE!” Bubba’s wrong, but I appreciate his contribution
here).
They’re going to be 3-0 because that BYU team
is really pretty mediocre. You know, the BYU team that Tennessee had all but
defeated until the Cougars inexplicably completed a 60+ yard pass to set up the
game tying field goal that sent the game to overtime? Unlike the Vols, USC
actually has the capability of playing well at the line of scrimmage, as they
showed last week. They should be able to overwhelm BYU.
And when that happens… I mean
good lord, how can Tennessee lose to a team last week that’s going to get blasted
tomorrow by a squad that’s got Clay Helton, a traveling tube sock salesman, running
the program?
Prediction: USC
#19
Iowa at Iowa State
As mentioned before,
College Gameday will be here for this one, the first time they’ve ever been to Ames,
Iowa. Who in the world is going to be the “celebrity” guest picker? Are there
any famous Iowa State grads I don’t know about? Famous Iowans? Or are they just
going to put a corn husk out there and let it pick games? To be fair, the corn
probably has about as much college football knowledge as Lee Corso does at this point.
Onto the game, I’m going
to pick Iowa State because their head coach Matt Campbell should be the first
guy Tennessee calls if (or more than likely, when) they fire Jeremy Pruitt.
Let’s face it guys. Tennessee,
at least at this point, isn’t going to get the top name that everyone always
throws out for them. Whether it’s the lack of want to pay for a name like that,
or the fact that the program is in ruin (and has been for a decade-plus) and isn’t
attractive right now, not getting the flashy name is pretty much exactly how it’s gone down there during the last
three coaching searches. So why not Campbell, who is young (he’s only 39) and
has made a nothing program in Iowa State relevant (he won 8 games in both 2017
and 2018). Winning 8 games at Iowa State is like winning 11 at Tennessee; it’s
really impressive and it also never happens. Drive to his house in Ames or whatever
corn-fed Iowa town he lives in with a briefcase full of millions of dollars of
cash. Ring the doorbell, and when he answers, hand him the case with an
attached note that says, “Please, please, save our god forsaken program. Here’s
millions of dollars. Also inside is step by step instructions for how we want
you to do a blood sacrifice of a goat to the football gods, since apparently we’ve
pissed them off, which is the only reasonable explanation to the decimation of
our football program over the last twenty years.” Then Campbell takes the
money, does the blood sacrifice, goes to Knoxville, and returns the Vols to
glory. Everyone wins. Except the goat.
Prediction: Iowa State
#9
Florida at Kentucky
UK finally broke their 31
game losing streak to Florida last season with a 27-16 victory in Gainesville. Not that last year means anything for tomorrow, of course.
Kentucky lost
their starting quarterback Terry Wilson to a season-ending injury last week. Meanwhile,
for Florida fans, it must feel like their quarterback has a season-ending injury
every time they watch Feleipe Franks attempt to play the position, because that’s
the only way someone could have that much experience and still play that badly every week.
Sawyer Smith will make
his first career start tomorrow at QB for the Wildcats. Sawyer Smith. Yes, that’s
his name. He sounds like one of those rough kids you went to middle school with
who all the sudden stopped showing up to school and was never heard from again.
Regardless, I can’t imagine that his first career start is going to go all that well for him. A fast defense with a ton of pros... yikes. Even if
Feleipe Franks throws three picks and misses 10 open receivers, the Gators are
going to win this game.
Prediction: Florida
#1
Clemson at Syracuse
#5
Oklahoma at UCLA
These are our two marquee
night games? Really? The combined score here is going to be 150-14. Syracuse’s
crappy defense is exactly the medicine that Clemson needs to jumpstart their
offense. Meanwhile, UCLA lost to San Diego State last week. How are they going
to slow down Jalen Hurts and OU? They’d struggle against them even if Superman
was their middle linebacker.
Prediction: Clemson and Oklahoma
Enjoy football this
weekend. Let’s get this damn schedule fixed.
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