Week One Matchups of interest - is this year's slate uninspiring?
Since we're under four weeks away from the kickoff of this football season, I took a brief glance at the week one slate of games. Usually, the season starts off with a marquee matchup - or two, or three. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder - but, this season's opening weekend doesn't appear to have a great deal interest. Curiosity = yes, overly compelling games = no.
That's my perspective - what's yours?
Games of note:
Nebraska at Minnesota (Thursday, August 31st - 8:00 pm EDT)
Florida at Utah (Thursday, August 31st - 8:00 pm EDT)
Colorado at TCU (Saturday, September 2nd - noon EDT)
West Virginia at Penn State (Saturday, September 2nd - 7:30 pm EDT)
LSU at FSU (Sunday, September 3rd - 7:30 pm EDT)
Are you psyched for the start of the season? Any games you'll follow / watch (besides Michigan) that aren't on the list?
P.S. Slippery Rock hosts Wayne State the opening weekend - an evening contest on Saturday, September 2nd.
LSU/FSU is the only real game of interest. It sucks.
Got to tune in for the $5 bits of broken chair game.
Agreed. I'm interested to calibrate how those teams will be this season, so I'll be tuning in (also, it's on trivia night, so I would be watching at the bar anyways).
Fsu and lsu
penn state
and hoping Utah smacks down Florida. All else seems to be a bad week 1. Outside of noon on that Saturday.
Oh, and praying OSU has a real Fing nail biter against Indiana and or loses. F THEM!
Gambling makes all games fun for the entire family.
im hoping for a big CMU victory!!!!! LSU/FSU is a pretty big deal. Intrigued by Colorado and somehow hoping they both beat and lose to TCU
I hope utah plants florida.
CMU plays Michigan State at 7pm on Sept. 1. The Chips have three wins against Sparty since 1991 so hopefully they can make it four.
Sparty will be exposed week 3. Washington will have them and their fans tapping out for the year.
August 9th, 2023 at 10:47 AM ^
It's a great rivalry of true equals!
The Gators playing at Utah should be fun to watch for any UF haters like me. Here's to hoping Cam Rising is a full go and the "Fire Billy Napier" watch gets started early this season.
The LSU/FSU game is the 'marquee' matchup of the weekend (GO NOLES!). I'm hoping purple faced Brian Kelly shows up again.
The last two minutes of that game last year were amazing. Hell, the whole 4th quarter with both teams trading touchdowns. Then, with just over 2 minutes, 24-17 FSU:
- LSU gets a key stop on D, forcing a punt. LSU fumbles the punt return!
- 1st and goal FSU. Just need a field goal to put the game out of reach. 3 straight run plays and... Fumble!
- LSU ball at their own 1 yard line. Drive 99 yards for TD with one second left. Down 1. PAT to tie it...BLOCKED! Game over.
Wow. That's what college football is all about.
Totally agree. That was a bananas finish and why I love college football because you get 3-10 batshit crazy games like that a year!
Blocked and it still hit the crossbar. Nearly went over.
Remember, that’s not opening weekend. College football starts the week before. Weak slate this year in Week 0, but that’s the opening weekend.
Max, I think technically - week 0 - and the college season - begin with ND playing Navy in Dublin on Saturday August 26th.
There are six other games that day. Respectfully, none of them seem noteworthy.
Nice to see Navy get a win.
100% agree. But it's still college football and it is the opening weekend, so I was just pointing that out to OP, that what he/she called opening weekend is actually the second weekend of football. :)
max - thanks for correcting me...
This one could be the matter vs. anti-matter annihilation.
Only if Josh Gattis was still the OC at Miami (FL).
Miami will thump their chest, win or loss... then pay $5M for guys who really "care about academics" who will show up and underwhelm as they wait for the next great coach to go 5-7.
Oddly, I’m glad we don’t have as many big matchups in week 1. Without a preseason, I always thought it weird that teams would voluntarily schedule a tougher matchup.
For us as fans, it’ll have been ~8 months since we watched a college football game. So we’ll watch anything. I’m ok with making week 1 a defacto preseason game. I’ll watch as many games as I can.
The bigger problem, albeit another rant for another day is the SEC traditional of “sabbatical Saturday” the week before rivalry week. I’m ok with Alabama playing Mercer the first week of September. But in November? Come on.
On Saturday November 18th - these are the OOC matchups with SEC teams:
Florida International @ Arkansas
New Mexico State @ Auburn
Georgia State @ LSU
UL Monroe @ Ole Miss
Chattanooga @ Alabama
Southern Miss @ Mississippi State
Abilene Christian @ Texas A&M
Tickets are available through the secondary market for all of these games. And, six of the seven can be had for $11 or less (plus fees).
SEC Cupcake Week going strong, realignment be damned.
Well, those cupcakes just mean more.
you mean like in 1998 when we opened with 2 big fat Ls after our undefeated season? @ND and against Mcnabb? That, my friends, is why UNLV is the 2nd course.
August 10th, 2023 at 11:52 AM ^
Freshman year. Watched Notre Dame at Chrysler I think. And McNabb was the start to my "why can't Michigan tackle a mobile QB" era. They'd hold Ron Dayne to 0 yards, and then some QB would be made from teflon and slip by them. That year ended great. Remember the "We want Henson chants" during the first home game.
ALL COLLEGE FOOTBALL IS INSPIRING!
seconded
It's far better than the Week 0 lineup and it's college footbaw so I will be watching. With interest.
Too bad WVU has been slipping, if they were decent that game against Penn State would be tremendous fun.
LSU @ FSU is the only compelling option.
But at this point in the season, Nebraska @ Minnesota appeals as well. Nebraska could be anything year, so I'm curious to see what shows up. And we still wonder if Minny is actually good or not?
As Bamf_16 says above, after 8 months any CFB sounds amazing. 2 conference mates with questions squaring off is more than enough for me.
Your screen name is inspirational - and, I believe the attached link - with video - pays homage to the Underhill clan. Irwin Fletch is truly notable.
Thanks for the link! :-)
Looks better than anything played on Sunday
Week Zero is inspiring and the schedule is absolute dreck.
Worst OOC national schedule that I can remember. Other than LSU game there isn't another that excites me. The rest of the month are pretty lame as well.
Middle Tennessee State at Alabama (730p/SECN): Sure watching JJ McCarthy, Cade McNamera (Iowa), Joe Milton (Tennessee), and Alan Bowman (OKST) play football is cool; but watching one-time Wolverine walk-on QB#6 take on Alabama is next-level. Go Ren Hefley!
Duke’s Mayo Classic - North Carolina at South Carolina (730p/NBC): Are you not excited about the s3xiest post-game in all of sports?!??
LSU-FSU should be interesting; those are two good teams with clear flaws and so it'll likely be a close game even if you come away feeling like neither team is quite as good as the hype.
Colorado vs. TCU will be interesting because there's a good chance that TCU, even reduced as they are from last season, could run Colorado off the field. I think there's just been a metric ton of hype around a CU team that was bad last year and then arguably got worse this year because they have basically no continuity and are relying on a ton of up-transfers and a first-year-in-FBS coach to hold it all together.
Florida is likely going to go around .500 again this year and I'm already starting to hear about how you need to give Napier 3 years, how he inherited a trash fire, etc. That may all be true but dude is likely going to be a .500 coach at Florida heading into year 3 and while their recruiting class looks really nice it also seems a bit precarious; guys may grab a spot in a class but will absolutely keep looking around and UF might be a team that loses some guys midway through the season if they continue to look overwhelmed. Utah isn't great but they'll absolutely run through a team that can't play solid defense and Florida looks like they're some bodies light on the line and at LB.
I'll definitely be watching the Thursday night matchup between Minnesota and Nebraska, two of our mid-season opponents. Since practically every team not named Northwestern is contender in the B1G West Division, one team gets a leg up on everyone else.
Are there no week 0 games this year that are on the 26th?
yep, and I will watch all of them
August 9th, 2023 at 10:14 AM ^
If there is no ESPN Game Day - or Fox "Big Noon" kickoff - is it really a weekend of college football?
The matchups for "week 0" - on Saturday, August 26th - are:
Navy vs ND in Dublin, Ireland
UTEP @ Jacksonville State
UMass @ New Mexico State
Ohio @ San Diego State
Hawaii @ Vanderbilt
San Jose State @ USC
Florida International @ Louisiana Tech
That's it. ND kicks off at 2:30 pm EDT, and all the other games kick off "late afternoon" - 5:30 pm EDT, or later.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder - and, none of the above games have significant interest to me. I love Ireland - and, if it wasn't for the fondness I have for the country and its people, I'd be hoping for a meteor. It would be fantastic for Navy to find victory "across the pond". I also wonder whether USC / Lincoln Riley has begun to realize that there's something called "defense" which is an element of competitive football teams.
Enjoy.
college football is back. all the games will be awesome to watch. tired of watching CFL and USFL and last years games on espn the ocho
You forgot the sickos game of the week. Northwestern @ Rutgers at noon on Sunday on CBS
If you drink enough you can probably be fooled into thinking it’s a battle of two great defenses.
That Utah-Florida game is plenty compelling. Utah losing that game last year likely kept them out of the playoff, I assume they won't be as good this year, but seeing an SEC travel that far for an actual road game is interesting in its own right.
The new Nebraska will be fun to watch in what could end up being the deciding game in the Big Ten West race.
Also, I'll watch LSU just to root against them and Kelly.
August 9th, 2023 at 10:16 AM ^
I'm not a fan of Brian Kelly - but, he can coach. And, I would pick LSU as a darkhorse for the SEC West. My gut says - LSU will challenge Bama pretty effectively when they meet in Tuscaloosa later in the season.
Week 1 usually has at least a handful of great matchups. Outside of LSU-FSU on Sunday, Week 1 is a complete snoozer this year.
The only other games of note are really only noteworthy because of headlines (how will Prime handle his first game at Colorado, on the road against the defending runner ups), not necessarily because of the level of play expected on the field.