College Football Week 6 Thread

Keep it to sports my friends.

So did that Alabama-Georgia game last week live up to expectations? Yowza! The thing about college football is that it is insane. Crazy things happen all the time. There’s such a joy in watching the sport for this.

Top 10 games of the week, in order of when they start and using the Athletic’s rankings of college football teams from 1-134. This is not a strong week of games, I am sorry to say. Good day for hiking, especially since my Ducks are playing Friday night.

1. #48 Syracuse at #23 UNLV, Friday, 9, FS1. Well now. UNLV’s QB walked away from the team last week over unfulfilled NIL promises and UNLV responds by beating the living shit out of Fresno State. So how do they handle the extremely rare scenario where people are paying attention to them? Where they have a Power 4 team coming to play them at home? Where they are favored by a touchdown in said game? If this opponent was anyone better than Syracuse, I’d probably say this is an excellent upset shot. Might still be actually. If UNLV does win this though, watch out, they could win the Mountain West and go to the college football playoffs, which would be utterly insane for this program and its desultory history. (Sat update: sounded like a hell of a game that Syracuse pulled out in OT, but I was watching the Ducks of course)
2. #25 SMU at #27 Louisville, 12, ESPN. Welcome to the game of the week! I had somewhat high hopes that Louisville would beat Notre Dame but no team starting Oregon transfer and bad QB Tyler Shough can be good. SMU is a program on the rise and could make a splash in a bad ACC. Might be a pretty fun game to throw on given the options.
3. #9 Missouri at #29 Texas A&M, 12, ABC. Theoretically this could be a good game at Kyle Field but the problem seems to be that A&M isn’t a good football team. There was no real harm in them losing to Notre Dame in week 1, but they have had to fight to defeat Florida, Bowling Green, and Arkansas in the last three weeks, winning all of those games by less than 2 TDs. A&M is favored by 2. Take Missouri.
4. #28 Iowa at #5 Ohio State, 3:30, CBS. I’ve seen this game before. Iowa doesn’t score many points (though they are better offensively this year almost because it would be impossible not to be) and people wonder if they can take on the big boys and then the big boys eviscerate them. Ohio State is favored by 20.5 and I’d take the Buckeyes on that.
5. #20 Ole Miss at #38 South Carolina, 3:30, ESPN. This has trap game written all over it after Ole Miss completely failed at home against Kentucky. How will the Kiffins recover from a very disappointing loss on the road to an OK opponent? Rebels are favored by 9, which is probably about right, but this could be worth a peek.
6. #32 Rutgers at #30 Nebraska, 4, FS1. I know Washington isn’t very good this year, but Rutgers looked real strong handling them. Meanwhile, while Nebraska’s win over Colorado looks better now, they still haven’t won two quality games in a row in about 20 years. This is probably going to be boring to watch but in a week when a match between two mid-range Big 10 teams is the 4th best game of the week, it’s something I guess.
7. #4 Tennessee at #46 Arkansas, 7:30, ABC. Meh. Vols in a landslide.
8. #45 Duke at #49 Georgia Tech, 8, ACC. The 10th best game of the week is a battle between two OK at best ACC teams. Duke is undefeated which is impressive. But then they haven’t played anyone. Tech beat Florida State in that glorious first game of the year, but since hasn’t looked good and FSU just sucks.
9. #8 Miami at #43 Cal, 10:30, ESPN. This week of games is so bad that Gameday is in Berkeley, just to check off a place they haven’t gone before. The only thing Cal has going for it here is an east coast team in Miami starting a game past their bedtime. I wouldn’t worry too much if I was a Hurricanes fan. I don’t think your team is actually that good, but I do think it is better than Cal. Even Florida State beat Cal, if barely. Though how bad is Auburn to have lost to Cal……
10. #33 Arizona at #36 Texas Tech, 11, FOX. This could be your classic late night super fun game. Texas Tech looked very shaky early in the year, but has come on of late. Arizona seemingly has underperformed but both teams have only one loss and neither was in conference. Plus, Arizona has one of the most fun players to watch in the country in their wide receiver McMillan. If you are up late, you could do much worse than this. Including actually being in Lubbock.

As for my Ducks, they should stomp a bad Michigan State team at home Friday night. At least that’s what better happen……