Our Honor Defend

Yet another week of college football awaits.  So what will I be watching, or at least be forced to watch?  Let’s see what’s available.

Tuesday

• Florida Atlantic @ Middle Tennessee State (ESPN2, 8:00PM ET).  Apparently college football comes on Tuesday now.  Apparently there was a game yesterday.  I didn’t watch it.  Neither did you. Moving on.

Wednesday

• Louisiana Tech @ Boise State (ESPN, 8:00PM ET).  WAC football, yes.  The Western Athletic Conference, complete with teams in Hawaii and Louisiana.  Sounds mighty Western.  What’s the over-under on how many times the ESPN commentators make reference to the turf being blue? Or for running back Ian Johnson’s proposal to that cheerleader after the 2007 Fiesta Bowl?

Thursday

• Pittsburgh @ South Florida (ESPN, 7:30PM ET).  It’s not Big East football if it’s not on Thursday night.
• Oregon State @ Utah (VS, 9:00PM ET).  I guess the Worldwide Leader thought against picking this one up as well.  There are like 7 different ESPNs (still waiting for The Ocho, though), and ESPN thought against putting this game on TV.  You know, it’s no big deal, it’s just the no. 15 team in the country playing host to the team that just punked the 2008 version of the greatest team of all time.  Whatever.

Friday

• Cincinnati @ Marshall (ESPN, 8:00PM ET).  Wait wait wait wait.  The no. 8 ranked Mormons are playing at the same time slot and ESPN gives us this shitty interconference sausagefest?  It’s not like the Mountain West Network — which I inexplicably have down here — is picking it up.  ESPN couldn’t find room on one of its 7 subsidiary channels for that game? No, I guess ESPN would rather go live from Huntington, West Virginia instead. Fine, whatever.

Saturday

• Penn State @ Purdue (ESPN, 12:00PM ET).  We play Purdue next week, or what may be left of Purdue next week.  We’ll eventually play Penn State as well.  Gotta know thy enemy.  I don’t expect this game to be pretty, but it’s worth noting that the conference road game is, ceteris paribus, the most difficult game for a college football team.  Purdue has also declared a blackout for this game, complete with novelty t-shirts. Sigh… these color-outs.  Purdue tried that last year when they hosted the Buckeyes.  It didn’t go so well.
• Iowa @ Michigan State (ESPN2, 12:00PM ET). A double dose of Big Ten football on national television.  Perfect.  That said, this just seems like the kind of game that Pam Ward would be doing play-by-play for.
• Florida @ Arkansas (Raycom Sports, 12:30PM ET). If you don’t live in the South, you don’t know what Raycom Sports is.  You’re not missing much.  And you wouldn’t be missing much by not watching this game either.  Tim Tebow has basically become Jared Lorenzen.  And Arkansas? Well Arkansas just blows…
• UNLV @ Colorado State (The MTN, 2:00PM ET). The Mountain West Network thinks it’s important that I watch this game, and not the game featuring the no. 8 ranked Mormons.  That’s cool, whatever.
• Stanford @ Notre Dame (NBC, 2:30PM ET). I’ve not seen Stanford’s band once this entire season.  I better see them this game.
• Kentucky @ Alabama (The SEC Network CBS, 3:30PM ET).  You know it’s odd, most people I talk to down here that insist on coercing me into a conversation about the Crimson Tide believe that they’re being overlooked.  Yes, the Crimson Tide… no. 2 ranked team in the country in the most publicized conference in the country: overlooked.  You know, the team that had its coach featured in Forbes Magazine, was put on the front cover of Sports Illustrated after week one, who had the media overlook its awful performance against the Green Wave and jumped from no. 24 to 2 in 5 weeks? Overlooked. Hmm.  I’ll be pulling for Mike Hartline, though.
• Texas Tech @ Kansas State (ABC, 3:30PM ET).  Who am I kidding, I’m not watching this game.  That is, I’m not watching it unless I get confirmation that Kansas State head coach Ron Prince will do the Ron Stomp sometime during this game.
• Arizona State @ California (ABC, 3:30PM ET).  Yeah, I’m not watching this one either.
• Illinois @ Michigan (ABC, 3:30PM ET).  Finally, something interesting… but not too interesting.  It’s back to back road tests for the Illini, just a week after getting shredded by Penn State.  Let’s be frank about Michigan too.  Most people expected them to finish under .500 and be this year’s Notre Dame.  I wasn’t one of them.  There’s just too many mediocre teams in the Big Ten to really humiliate the Wolverines.  I thought for sure Wisconsin would wax them, but then the Badgers turned into the 2007 Illini game Badgers.  If the Illini fall victim to the hosting Wolverines, that really only leaves Ohio State, Penn State and Michigan State that stands between them and the top of the Big Ten.  They’ll host Sparty as well.
• Florida State @ Tha U (ABC, 3:30PM ET).  A big matchup between two of the best programs in college football.  Oh wait, it’s not 1993 anymore.  Expect Bobby Bowden to still be gumming the applesauce he had for the pre-game breakfast.
• Auburn @ Vanderbilt (ESPN, 6:00PM ET).  College Gameday will be live on location at Vanderbilt University for this game.  Evidently ESPN has forgotten that there are actually other schools outside the confines of the Mason-Dixon line.  ESPN has become glorified SEC groupies, following around their conference play in their lime green Volkswagen Minibus, jamming out to some Phish tunes, munching on Funyuns and mutually discovering hidden truths about the futility of rules and order in a lifetime characterized by inconsequence in a universe governed by chaos.  Well I got news for you ESPN: Phish sucks and there’s actually more interesting locations for Gameday than a surprise undefeated upper echelon school playing host to an offensively impotent Auburn team.  That said, we’re all on the Vanderbilt bandwagon.  Vanderbilt for SEC Champs!
• Oregon @ USC (ABC, 8:00PM ET).  I won’t be watching this game, but my parents will be saddled with it.
• Ohio State @ Wisconsin (ABC, 8:00PM ET).  And finally, the main attraction.  I maintain that Camp Randall is hell on earth for Big Ten teams, and that Wisconsin plays disproportionally better at home than they do on the road.  The Buckeyes’ record against Wisconsin since John Cooper hasn’t been particularly great (10-5-1).  It looks worse when you factor out Cooper’s first four victories against the Badgers (1988-91), roughly corresponding with Wisconsin’s rise to prominence under Alvarez.  The Buckeyes won at Camp Randall in 1995, 2000 and 2002.  They lost in their last visit in 2003.  It’ll be a night game, our record in which I’ve always been suspicious of and it’ll be Terrelle Pryor’s first night-time start and first road start.  So what happens? I guess I’ll have to wait and find out.  I’m hoping we see 2008 Michigan Badgers or 2007 Illini Badgers (I’m convinced Wisconsin doesn’t know how to deal with the option), as opposed to basically-all-of-2006 Badgers.