COLLEGE FOOTBALL WATCH GRID, Week 6: Believe in weird stuff

It’s college football season. We can pretend we only wanna watch good games, or we can face facts.

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

This is a really great Saturday, with three games that could’ve each served as a worthy headliner, plus plenty of other interesting stuff. This is despite Alabama-Texas A&M, the offseason’s most anticipated conference game, shaping up to be an expensive dud.

And if nothing else, Notre Dame might lose its second game in a row. See? There’s something here for everyone to enjoy.

Thursday, Oct. 7 and Friday, Oct. 8 college football schedule

This is without question a weeknight college football schedule.

Saturday, Oct. 9 college football schedule

Stream live college football games every week this season from conferences across the country on ESPN+.

SICKOS GAME OF THE WEEK

Yes, UConn-UMass is in the middle column, even though it’s unlikely you have access to its broadcast. Here we have a battle between the two worst winless teams in FBS, something that typically only happens a couple times per decade. Savor the history.

But I’m going with Alabama-Texas A&M, a game everyone swore would be really big this year. The Aggies ranked No. 6 in the preseason AP Top 25 a year after murmuring that they deserved a playoff spot. In May, A&M coach Jimbo Fisher did a viral by replying to a fan’s question about finally beating Alabama by saying, “We’re going to beat his ass.”

Folks, if there’s one thing Jimbo knows, it’s cash!

Nick Saban looked delighted to be handed a little bit of Bulletin Board Material, the kind of thing Bama usually has to manufacture in-house because nobody is crazy enough to actually talk trash about the Tide.

Saban, already 24-0 against his former assistants, looks to run it up further against his former offensive coordinator Fisher. And this game is in the most dangerous possible schedule slot for the A&M coach, who’s already lost two games he wasn’t supposed to lose. The plan was not to go from No. 6 and “beat his ass” to .500 by mid-October, with Auburn, Ole Miss, and LSU still ahead.

Or A&M could win! Now how sicko would that be?

The actual most important game of the week

A host of options! I’m less interested in what the AP poll and College GameDay say right now, and more interested in the long-term forecast.

If Iowa beats Penn State, the Hawkeyes’ path to the playoff is … uh … relatively easy. A victorious PSU would still have a tough road, but would at least be in great shape for a really nice bowl. I wouldn’t advise watching this game until the final five minutes, because it’s likely to be 7,000 punts until all the rules of football suddenly collapse.

The Red River Rootin’-Tootin’ Royal Rumble Revival promises similar prizes for the winner, though Texas has already spent its one freebie loss for the year.

And let’s not overlook Michigan-Nebraska, where Jim Harbaugh appears to have finally put some things together, but would be hooted at and/or hollered at if he were to lose to Scott Frost, despite the weird fact that Nebraska is kinda decent this year.

But keep some eyes on Georgia-Auburn, for two reasons. First, if haywire dangerman Bo Nix can’t score on UGA’s defense, then can anybody? These Dawgs call to mind some of Saban’s old defenses, the ones that were fortresses against all offenses that made sense, but could spring leaks against opponents that just went out there and did weird stuff, and nobody does weird stuff quite like Nix’s Auburn. If not even a Weird Stuff team can move the ball against UGA, we might have something all-time special here. The second reason: the game’s at Auburn, college football’s most notorious factory of weird stuff.

Basically, UGA-Auburn matters because there are not many chances left for teams to figure how to attack the Dawgs. The winner of Penn State-Iowa will have a great chance at a Big Ten title, but the reward might just be … having to face Georgia. Or Alabama.

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