Hello and welcome to 2021’s second edition of the College Football Watch Grid, a weekly attempt to help plan your college football viewing schedule.

Each week, the Watch Grid will sort your Saturday into three watchability columns. As always, watchability is not strictly about game quality, team quality or quality of any kind. These things matter, though, I guess.

We’ve reached Week 1. Despite being named Week 1, it’s the season’s second week, because the first week only counts if you go and do something like lose to Illinois.

Most weeks, things also happen before Thursday, when the Watch Grid posts. Congrats to teams who win things on Tuesdays or Wednesdays. And I’m not listing every game. I’m listing all FBS games with broadcast information readily available as of publish, along with select lower-level games.

Thursday, Sept. 2 and Friday, Sept. 3 college football schedule

Let’s start it off with a hot one, which is also a battle to maybe become the undefeated team ranked No. 13 by the College Football Playoff committee. And yes, Kansas is a Maybe. The Jayhawks have a real chance to pull an upset.

Saturday, Sept. 4 college football schedule

We’re being generous with Maybe status this week, because it’s Week 1! Anyone (besides Vanderbilt) might be decent! Anyone (besides Alabama) might be bad! That’s why Bama’s only a Maybe, actually. I think Miami can stay within 20 of the Tide, but how many times have we thought something like that about Miami and/or Bama before?

Sunday, Sept. 5 and Labor Day 2021 college football schedule

Week 1 is just relentless. Right when you think you’re done, college football’s on the NFL Network. It’s actually aired more amateur football that you might realize, including some high school stuff, a few editions of the Texas Bowl, and the New York Jets.

SICKOS GAME OF THE WEEK

Thanks to answering the call from Week 0’s Watch Grid, the Nebraska Cornhuskers are an automatic SICKOS GAME OF THE WEEK contender until they make it through one Scott Frost Day intact. Against middling FCS team Fordham, the Huskers should win pretty comfortably, but few words are less applicable to Nebraska football than comfortable, let alone pretty.

The actual most important game of the week

Obviously, it’s Clemson-Georgia. Sure. Fine. The winner will likely deserve to rank No. 1 for the time being and will buy itself a huge mulligan (golf term, for UGA fans) with the playoff committee. Great.

Except the loser will remain in basically the same long-term playoff position. If Georgia wins the SEC, Georgia makes it. And if Clemson sweeps the ACC … hang on. I just said, “If Clemson sweeps the ACC.” Sorry. Let’s move on.

The best case for this game might be how much pressure the winning team will immediately begin feeling. Let this sentence simmer, and then scroll all the way back up and look in Uga’s eyes. Ok. Yes. This game is really important.

In a roundabout way, maybe it’s also Bama-Miami. If the Tide have to really work for it, if Thanos spills a drop of blood at any point, then the whole season will look a little more wide-open. But if they win by 45, we’ll know we can sim through even bigger chunks of their schedule than usual.

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