On the heels of a highly interesting week 5 this week in college football leaves a lot to be desired. The up side is that we are now in that portion of the season where there are games on 5 days a week.
Most of these Tues/ Wed games tend to be pretty bad, but hey it’s college football in the middle of the week. What else do you have to do on an average Tuesday night? I'll take a Sun Belt game over whatever the wife is watching any day.
Below are the games that I am most interested in this week. If you want the full TV Schedule for the week it is available here.
*All times listed are EST.
Tuesday 5 October
Troy at Middle Tennessee 8:00 ESPN2
Blue Raider QB Dwight Dasher will make his season debut after serving a four game suspension for violating the NCAA's "preferential treatment rules." Check it out even the small schools have boosters and stuff. Give Dasher a look, he’s pretty fun to watch. Not to mention this one could very well decide the Sun Belt Championship.
Wednesday 6 October
UAB at UCF 8:00 ESPN2
UCF has two close losses to NC State and Kansas State. They should roll against the Blazers.
Thursday 7 October
Nebraska at Kansas State 7:30 ESPN
The Huskers get their final tune up for the Horns on the road in the Little Apple. The Huskers looked bad in their last outing against South Dakota State and the whole country knows they have had Texas on the brain since the final gun sounded at last year’s Big 12 Title Game. Any chance they get caught slipping against K State? They might.
Friday 8 October
UCONN at Rutgers 7:30 ESPN
I don’t know that I’ll be making a real concerted effort to tune into this one. Rutgers just got beat by Tulane for crying out loud. UCONN rolls.
Saturday 9 October
Texas Tech at Baylor (Dallas) 12:00 FOX
The entire 12:00 slate is every bit as bad as this game. What gives with these early games every week? I can’t even call this one interesting but I might tune in briefly just out of curiosity. Tommy Tuberville version 1.0 had a major setback last Saturday when Iowa State hung 52 points on the Raiders.
Meanwhile Baylor was busy beating Kansas 55-7. When was the last time Baylor roughed up Tejas Tech? It might happen on Saturday. By the way why the hell are they playing this game at the Cotton Bowl? Is it really to draw more Texans to the State Fair? Expect a relatively empty stadium, these two fan bases don’t tend to travel in mass. Then again there is fried beer on site.
Alabama at South Carolina 3:30 CBS
South Carolina has looked pretty good this year but they aren’t good enough to beat Bama. Tide rolls. Again.
Michigan State at Michigan 3:30 ABC/ESPN (Regional)
Sparty is playing good football thus far and Michigan has Denard Robinson. If the Wolverines had some semblance of a defense they might be a contender. This should be a highly entertaining shootout.
Pittsburgh at Notre Dame 3:30 NBC
For Notre Dame this game is now absolutely HUGE. With a win the Irish will enter the second half of the season at 3-3 with some momentum and a more manageable second half schedule. A good bowl bid will still be feasible. Take a loss and we’ll be on here next week debating whether or not the team can even scratch their way to a 6-6 finish to become eligible for a terrible bowl game. Those are two very different scenarios and it all hinges on this game.
Pitt is a lot like Boston College only with a slightly better defense and two quality backs vice one. They also have Jon Baldwin at WR but nobody to throw to him. The Irish defense needs to have another strong showing and keep the Pitt ground game in check. Meanwhile the offense needs to take a step forward and reduce the number of self inflicted drive killing mistakes. The Irish are more than capable of winning this game and if they don’t it won’t be because Pitt was the better team. I don’t even want to think about the level of wailing that will be going on next week if this one ends badly.
The Irish will win. They have to.
Oregon State at Arizona 7:00 Versus
Arizona has survived close calls with Iowa and Cal to jump out to a 4-0 start. Oregon State meanwhile has taken 2 losses to TCU and Boise State. This could end up being a very good football game. I’ll give the edge to Arizona at home.
LSU at Florida 7:30 ESPN
The Les Miles lucky streak stops in Gainesville. The Gators will be looking to bounce back from an Alabama beat down and might drop one of their own on LSU as a result. That could be entertaining.
USC at Stanford 8:00 ABC/ESPN3.com (Regional)
USC got knocked off by Washington for the second consecutive year last weekend and we all know what happened to Stanford in Eugene. The Trees will get back on track by pounding on USC. This one will be worth watching just to watch Harbaugh scream at Kiffin from the opposite sideline.
Florida State at Miami 8:00 ABC/ESPN3.com (Regional)
Both of these teams are undefeated in the ACC and carry one ugly non-conference loss into this game. I’ll stick with my Jacory Harris two pick rule. If he throws 2 or less the Canes win.
What do you think?