Week 1 Football: What to watch

Finally! Welcome back to football, friends! Everyone grab a drink and kiss goodbye to your spouse and children. Tell them you’ll see them in December. They’ll understand.

We have a bevy of should-be good games ahead of us this weekend, including games on Sunday and Monday - just to make sure you don’t get bored and want to do things outside of watching football any night between now and when you have to go back to work next week. You shouldn’t want to do that anyways. Remember, if you have family events to attend to, make sure you get the seat with the best view of the TV.

For those of you with access to the ACC Network, there will be five games for you to watch this weekend, including State’s opener against ECU. The Network will officially kick things off with the GT-Clemson game tonight. That should be fun for all of about a quarter, then feel free to flip back to that UCLA-Cincy game which should be a good one the whole way through.

Wake needs to watch out on Friday night against a better-than-you’d-think Utah State crew.

Saturday should be fun. Aside from State’s opener, Duke goes down to Tuscaloosa to be the sacrificial lamb for the Tide, and we’ll all be rooting for the Gamecocks in the afternoon, too. Our old friend Eli Drinkwitz kicks off his App State tenure at 3:30pm with a should-be cakewalk against FCS ETSU. Pretty sure I’ll take BC to “knock off” VT in the late afternoon game. The night games look to be entertaining, too.

Enjoy, folks! And welcome back!

The numbers in front of the team names are their current rank in the Sagarin ratings and SP+ ratings (apparently since Bill Connelly started working for ESPN, he’s dropping the ‘&’ from the rating name). SP+ ranking is listed first, Sagarin second.

Thursday

61/52 UCLA @ 44/65 Cincinnati - 7:00pm - ESPN

79/58 Georgia Tech @ 2/2 Clemson - 8:00pm - ACCN

18/22 Utah @ 50/71 BYU - 10:15pm - ESPN

Friday

14/17 Wisconsin @ 76/76 South Florida - 7:00pm - ESPN

43/56 Utah State @ 58/61 Wake Forest - 8:00pm - ACCN

22/18 Oklahoma State @ 98/110 Oregon State - 10:30pm - FS1

Saturday

112/121 East Carolina @ 47/32 NC State - 12:00pm - ACCN

24/27 Boise State @ 35/23 Florida State - 12:00pm - ESPNews

37/50 Ole Miss @ 27/46 Memphis - 12:00pm - ABC

FCS/90 James Madison @ 45/36 West Virginia - 2:00pm - [no TV]

59/48 Duke @ 1/1 Alabama - 3:30pm - ABC

17/37 South Carolina vs 66/63 UNC-CH - 3:30pm - ESPN

FCS/173 East Tennessee State @ 29/47 Appalachian State - 3:30pm - ESPN+

63/39 Northwestern @ 36/26 Stanford - 4:00pm - FOX

32/40 Virginia Tech @ 65/55 Boston College - 4:00pm - ACCN

53/28 Syracuse @ 110/132 Liberty - 6:00pm - ESPN+

19/11 Oregon @ 8/12 Auburn - 7:30pm - ABC

38/42 Virginia @ 60/43 Pittsburgh - 7:30pm - ACCN

46/57 Fresno State @ 28/34 USC - 10:30pm - ESPN

Sunday

70/64 Houston @ 5/5 Oklahoma -7:30pm - ABC

Monday

12/9 Notre Dame @ 82/81 Louisville - 8:00pm - ESPN