Nothing was going to make week two look all that appealing following the Best Opening Week Ever™ but that’s all behind us now as college football provides us with some beauties this time around. There are numerous high-profile games on the docket this week and that includes two of Notre Dame’s opponents facing each other.
Let’s go!
Enemy Watch
South Florida (-14) at Syracuse
Boston College (+6) at Virginia Tech
Old Dominion (+21.5) at NC State
Navy (-6) at Tulane
Army (OFF) at UTEP
Duke (+6.5) at Northwestern
USC (+8.5) at #7 Stanford
The Cardinal have been waiting for two weeks to try and send the creaky USC ship into full sinking mode. If you recall, the Tree had a bye last week. This is the 3rd meeting in just over a year with the Trojans having lost the last 2 and 6 out of the last 8 games in the series. It’s a bit of an interesting situation–do we hope Stanford becomes our “biggest” game of the year at the expense of a possible dud in L.A. to end the year? If USC loses this game we might see Clay Helton on track to be fired before the year is over.
Syracuse got Lamar Jackson’d last week and I’ve been on the USF is sneaky good bandwagon for a while. I’m not sure I’d be willing to bet a couple touchdowns with the way the Orange can move the ball.
Duke and Northwestern was somewhat of an important game last year. Now, both are coming off a pair of the ugliest losses on the season. The Blue Devils especially, who looked like a possible trap game-type of matchup, are looking a lot more like a Duke team pre-David Cutcliffe. Perhaps the magic has worn off with the old man.
Raised Eyebrow Game
Pitt (+6.5) at Oklahoma State
I noticed this game in the summer and thought it was such a weird and unusual matchup with some intrigue. Now, we have Okie Light ready to be about as pissed off as a team can be following their stolen victory by officials against Central Michigan. Yet, Pittsburgh is seemingly trending in a real positive direction and this could be a big win for Narduzzi & Co.
Double Raised Eyebrow Game
#6 Houston (-7.5) at Cincinnati
Greg Ward is playing which is good because Houston’s lone loss last year (Diaco!) came without Ward and this had the potential to get a little shootout-y on the road against a decent team.
National Spotlight
#2 Florida State (-2.5) at #10 Louisville
#25 Miami (-3.5) at Appalachian State
#22 Oregon (+3) at Nebraska
#1 Alabama (-10) at #19 Ole Miss
#3 Ohio State (-2) at #14 Oklahoma
UCLA (-3) at BYU
Derwin James is out 5 to 7 weeks for Florida State and that opens the door even further for Lamar Jackson to put on a wonderful show and Heisman moment. He’ll also face Clemson in a couple more weeks. We should get some clarity on Jackson’s ceiling by then. Anyone buying the Cardinal as a legit National Title contender? Remember, they also face Houston later in the season.
This weekend begins a pretty rough 6 to 7 week stretch for Miami which will define their season. They looked okay last week and haven’t played a team worth a damn quite yet. Going on the road to a really good App State has plenty of upset potential.
Ole Miss has Alabama right where they want them–lurking in the bushes with a loss already and not that menacing. Of course, that’s why Nick Saban was such a ball of fury last week after whooping a decent Western Kentucky squad. He knows the Tide have to be completely on their game to revenge 2 straight losses to the Rebels.
Speaking of laying in the weeds there hasn’t been much talk about Ohio State yet this year. Especially compared to last year when it was OMG DRAMA all day for an attempted title defense. In my preseason predictions I felt like if Oklahoma lost to Houston (check) they would come back and win this one at home against Ohio State. I guess I’ll still stick to that but I don’t expect the Buckeyes to lose the rest of the year.
“Syracuse got Lamar Jackson’d last week and I’ve been on the USC is sneaky good bandwagon for a while. I’m not sure I’d be willing to bet a couple touchdowns with the way the Orange can move the ball.”
Since Syracuse is playing USF, I’m assuming that you didn’t mean that Southern Cal was sneaky good?
Go ahead and give Lamar Jackson the “Tate Forcier/Denard Robinson September Heisman” award if he wins against FSU. That’s going to be a fun game I won’t see.
I find the Saban tirade this week hilarious. It’s a page straight out of the stuff you’d read about old time coaches like Rockne or Leahy or Stagg or even Bryant–you’re playing like a straight-up death machine, everyone in the world is telling you there is no way you could lose, so you tear up every little detail that went wrong (in a boring blowout win, of course) to get your guys locked in just before playing the team that’s been your foil the past two years. I don’t know why that angle hasn’t been mentioned more in the SporpsMedia, it’s so obvious. And any time Lane Kiffin gets blasted on national TV is fine by me.
If not, I think the USC is sneaky good bandwagon might be completely empty these days.
Does Devin Gardner not get his name on the September trophy too?
Was Kiffin in on it? I haven’t watched many of the videos, maybe he was just a victim but the whole thing does sound a bit contrived.
Too bad that OU vs Ohio State is on at the same time as the Irish, most intriguing game of the year so far and I’ll barely see it.
I dumped cable and need to find a way to watch the game. Any recommendations?
It doesn’t look like NBC Sports plans on live streaming it. I was looking at Roku, but it says that a Cable subscription is required to watch NBC (they also have MSU as their site background). I was also thinking about going old school and getting an antenna. Any ideas appreciated.
Hang out at Target, until they ask you to leave (probably around end of the 1st quarter). Head over to Best Buy (they will have you leave by halftime). Great time to go to WalMart, grab some snacks & catch the 3rd quarter. After WalMart suggests you leave, hope there’s an h.h.gregg/Fry’s/Sears close enough to see the 4th quarter.
This deserves to be green! Wait…
As a last resort, you can try this site: http://atdhe.ru/football
They have a lot of, shall we say, unauthorized streams of sporting events. Be warned, though – be very careful while you’re trying to get the game going, as some of the feeds will try to do shady things like download malware. Just use common sense. I used it once to watch the Little Giants MSU game (damn it) when we were traveling and couldn’t get the game on TV.
Cool. Thanks. Love the Best Buy idea, I have actually done that before, not an entire game, but for an entire 4th Q and OT. The ones that have the living room setup with chairs and couches are great.
Little known fact: broadcast HD quality via antenna is actually much better than you get through cable or satellite. Cable and satellite companies significantly compress the HD signals so that they can beam 9999+ channels to your box.
Go with an antenna and I guarantee you’ll be amazed at how great it looks! (of course, you won’t be able to get away games that way)
Another option: Take a look at SlingTV: https://www.sling.com/. They offer three different channel packages that run over the internet and it’s a heck of a lot cheaper than cable! Plus, there’s no commitment, so you can just pay for it during football season and ignore it the rest of the year.
I concur with antenna HD, NBC looks sweet!
Much appreciated! I ordered an antenna from Amazon, should be here tomorrow.
No good spot to put it, but I just saw the Chefs released KeiVarae Russell already. Pretty big waste of a 3rd round pick.
So this is weird. Russell says all of the terminology he learned at ND directly contradicts what he’s being taught in the NFL.
http://www.kansascity.com/sports/nfl/kansas-city-chiefs/article100292512.html
I take that to mean the verbiage is very different. It is not as if ND taught him wrong stuff, but that Russell is having a hard time adjusting to the words that are used to describe what the Chiefs to on defense.
Or maybe BVG is using the terminology differently than EVERYONE else – which would explain a whole lot.
I smell a sub-thread being born:
BVG:Tackle::Every Other Defense:Properly Snapped in Chin Strap
You mean the Chefs don’t run the ND defense, where we stop covering everyone 15 yds down field?
If you watched the first half of their game against the Chargers, you might have thought(/prayed) BVG took a new job in KC.
You mean the BVG that coached for years in the NFL?
Couldnt be that KVR has an overblown opinion of himself, who shouldn’t have gone into the draft, as many of us thought?
No, he means the BVG that was run out of town at Auburn as DC and as the head coach of Georgia Southern.
Though it is certainly likely that KVR’s confidence was a wee bit unwarranted.
Sure, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t know NFL terminology
True. In all seriousness, not meaning to bag on BVG (because I have no idea if this is a good thing or bad thing), but I seem to remember that even NFL coaches and personnel thought his schemes were on the…”advanced” end of the scale. You could interpret that as meaning high quality, or you could interpret it at too difficult, probably depending on if it worked or not. But perhaps that’s the root of the “terminology” difference–if he’s throwing in extra things, it may not be that it’s different per se, it’s that KVR was overloaded and had things mixed up.