By Adam Jacobi, The Sports Xchange
Here are the storylines to watch this weekend in college football:
CAN’T SPELL AWESOME CONFERENCE BATTLES WITHOUT S-E-C
The hands-down best slate of games this week resides in the SEC, which heads into conference play with a trio of ranked-on-ranked matchups.
The nation’s eyes will probably be fixed on No. 19 Florida’s trip to No. 14 Tennessee, a tailor-made Verne-and-Gary battle on CBS. Both teams are swimming in equal parts trepidation and optimism, sensing both the evident flaws in their teams and the unmistakable win-ability of the SEC East despite said flaws. A loss here with Georgia still looming changes that equation substantially for one of these two teams, and even the built-in excuse of missing QB Luke Del Rio won’t help Florida if the Gators come up short.
For pure bonkers potential, though, nothing compares to No. 17 Arkansas going to No. 10 Texas A&M, with a, um, well-lubricated Aggie crowd in attendance and noted chaos harbinger Joe Tessitore on the call for ESPN. Bret Bielema and Kevin Sumlin’s teams can do many things, but “playing boring fourth quarters” doesn’t appear on the list. Expect this one to hang in the balance as the clock flies past midnight on the east coast.
WINNER GETS LAKE MICHIGAN
This week marks the first meeting between No. 11 Wisconsin and No. 8 Michigan State since 2012, and that’s a rivalry that has been on the shelf for far too long. The two teams gave us not only the two best games of the Big Ten season in 2011, but arguably two of the best in all of college football that year, full stop.
Russell Wilson and Kirk Cousins have moved onto immensely profitable NFL careers, as have many of their teammates from those great games, but the stakes are as high in this year’s game as any meeting between the two teams. Michigan State can’t afford any letdowns while its sharing a division with rivals Ohio State and Michigan, and Wisconsin can start its ferocious five-game stretch of the season with a huge road win–and leave no doubt that it’s a Top Ten team.
Don’t expect a ton of points here on Saturday; both teams have ferocious defenses to lean on, and Wisconsin’s giving redshirt freshman Alex Hornibrook his first start over senior signal-caller Bart Houston. Twenty points just might win this one.
A DAWG-GONE CLASSIC IN THE MAKING
The week’s marquee interdivisional matchup in the SEC is No. 12 Georgia at No. 23 Ole Miss, a matchup that’ll give Bulldog fans their first glimpse at how the team handles hostile road environments.
There’s no shame in the mere fact of the Rebels’ 1-2 record, with the losses coming to top-ranked Alabama and then-No. 3 Florida State, but the “how” will haunt this team for years. Ole Miss blew leads of 20 or more points in each game, and did so with astonishing swiftness. FSU would end up winning the game by double digits, and it took a furious fourth-quarter rally by Ole Miss to even bring the game within five points at the final gun. Head coach Hugh Freeze needs to have his guys ready to play 60 minutes on Saturday, and that starts with mercurial QB Chad Kelly, who has the uncanny talent of putting both teams in position to win any given football game.
There’s another dynamic at play here, and one worth noting. The SEC East has been the decidedly inferior division for years now, and Georgia’s inability to capitalize on that relative weakness was a major factor in Mark Richt being shown the door after 2015. If Smart can start to turn that (ahem) tide by walking into Oxford and taking the W home, he’ll earn himself years of political capital among the notoriously grumpy fans in Athens.
ANYONE? ANYONE? BUELLER?
Nobody wins a Heisman Trophy in September, but Louisville QB Lamar Jackson is currently lapping the field, especially after exploding Florida State’s collective face last Saturday in the 63-20 rout. Expect Jackson’s path of destruction to continue as the Cardinals head to Marshall under the lights this weekend.
The question, then, is who exactly will provide the first serious challenge to Jackson’s supremacy this season. If it’s going to be anybody among the preseason favorites, look for Stanford RB Christian McCaffrey to make that push this week as his Cardinal goes to UCLA in a prime-time matchup. McCaffrey logged 238 yards from scrimmage and a pair of scores in his team’s easy victory over USC last Saturday; another win on national television for the big-game all-purpose back, and we just might have ourselves a Heisman race.