King Kaufman's Sports Daily
It's college football beat-down season as powerhouses avoid one another, schedule patsies and wish they could play middle schools.
Read more: Sports, Football, College Football, King Kaufman, Sports Daily
Aug. 30, 2007 | Get out those raccoon coats, everybody, it's college football season. Yessir, there's nothing like a good old-fashioned college football ... Thursday.
The season kicks off with a real dandy: Southeast Missouri State at Cincinnati. I can certainly see why that one was moved off of Saturday. Then again, how will the hungry hordes in TV land pick between that tilt and Buffalo at Rutgers, Tulsa at Louisana-Monroe and Miami-Ohio at Ball State? Those games all kick off at 7 p.m. EDT too.
The main event of the evening is an hour later on ESPN. Southeast Louisiana at New Mexico State. Just kidding, it's national title contender LSU at Mississippi State, which is a contender to score six points Thursday night. If LSU loses interest for a while.
LSU is ranked No. 2, behind USC. Rutgers is No. 16. Two other ranked teams are playing Thursday. Boise State, No. 23 in the Associated Press poll, No. 24 in the USA Today, hosts Weber State on the blue field, and Louisville, 10th in the AP and 11th in the USA Today, puts it all on the line against Murray State.
You remember the Racers from their glorious 1-10 season last year, when they came within a touchdown of giving up twice as many points as they scored and, among other things, they lost 33-7 to Samford, which went 3-8 including a win over Miles College. I'll save you the Googling: It's in Alabama. Murray State's one win came against Indiana State, which had one win.
Louisville better bring it.
Not to single out the Cardinals. This is the time of year when our nation's football powerhouses curse the fates that they're not allowed to schedule middle-school teams. There's precisely one game this weekend between AP top-25 teams that isn't dictated by conference schedules: No. 12 Cal vs. No. 15 Tennessee.
Pretty good, you say. First week of the season, what do you expect? Teams have to get their feet wet, etc. etc. But here's the thing: One nonconference top-25 game in a week is a lot. Looking at the preseason AP 25, there are five (5) games between top-25 teams who don't have to play each other because of conference rules. All year.
Aside from Cal-Tennessee, there's No. 2 LSU vs. No. 9 Virginia Tech and No. 4 Texas vs. No. 22 TCU on Sept. 8; No. 1 USC vs. No. 20 Nebraska on Sept. 15; and No. 6 Florida vs. No. 19 Florida State on Nov. 24. That's it.
The top-25 teams play roughly 100 nonconference games, and they managed to schedule five against each other, one-tenth of what they could have scheduled.
