Week 7 Football: What to watch

Well dang if the Sun Belt didn’t go and pull a quick one on us - throwing out a Wednesday game without warning (okay, I just wasn’t paying attention). That was a happy stumble-upon last night, though (as long as you can stomach a couple missed PATs), and the game was fantastic, with Coastal Carolina knocking off a Top-25 Louisiana-Lafayette squad on a the road by hitting a late field goal.

Thursday night should be another fun game as Georgia State and Arkansas State both feature dynamic offenses and defenses that are pretty poor.

I hope you love some AAC Friday night football, because you’re getting a double dip (yes, I know BYU is an independent). Seriously, for the pre-Saturday games, this is a nice lineup this week, even without featuring any P5 games.

Not a lot in the early slate of Saturday games, but that’s okay. ECU will see if they’ve really righted the ship against Navy (seafaring pun!), while Clemson will try to beat two teams in a single day - killing Georgia Tech’s feel-good vibes and hanging over Miami from last week’s also killing of feel-good-the-U-is-back vibes. I’m still not buying Tennessee, so it’ll be interesting to see what they look like versus a Kentucky team that’s better than their record.

The underrated game in that noon time slot is the Cincy-Tulsa game. Cincy is 3-0 and ranked in the Top 10 with a fantastic defense (led by a DC we featured in POAPS, no less!). Meanwhile, Tulsa is 1-1, but their win was a road knock-off of UCF and the loss was a close, hard-fought game at Oklahoma State where they held the Cowboys’ offense to just 16 points. This game could be really good. It also highlights the difference in the SP+ and Sagarin ratings - SP+ is more about potential and Sagarin is more about what-have-you-done-for-me-lately.

Scratch that... Cincy-Tulsa has been postponed :(

The State-Duke game is obviously at the top of the mid-day games list for anyone reading this. Ole Miss and Arkansas have both been way better than expected this year, even if the records don’t show it, so that’ll be an interesting one to keep an eye on.

After the State game ends, tune into what should be a good finish of the Marshall-LaTech game. Marshall has a pretty good freshman QB to watch.

You know, this would be a great week for Florida State to get its stuff together and stop looking like total trash.

Everyone rightfully has the Georgia-Alabama game circled, but put that BC-VT game up on another screen - it should be good.

Enjoy, folks!

Rankings for SP+ Ratings and Sagarin Ratings listed, respectively, ahead of each team’s name. [Note: SP+ is now ranking the 126 teams that are scheduled to play this year. Sagarin is ranking all 257 FBS and FCS teams.]

Thursday

71/59 Georgia State @ 81/93 Arkansas State - 7:30pm - ESPN

Friday

40/53 SMU @ 73/99 Tulane - 6:00pm - ESPN

21/10 BYU @ 45/43 Houston - 9:30pm - ESPN

Saturday

96/118 Navy @ 111/94 East Carolina - 12:00pm - ESPN2/ESPN+

2/3 Clemson @ 48/84 Georgia Tech - 12:00pm - ABC

29/61 Cincinnati @ 69/15 Tulsa - 12:00pm - ESPN2

32/36 Pittsburgh @ 17/24 Miami - 12:00pm - ACCN

14/6 Auburn @ 42/32 South Carolina - 12:00pm - ESPN

33/26 Kentucky @ 24/11 Tennessee - 12:00pm - SECN

77/96 Liberty @ 91/74 Syracuse - 12:00pm - ESPN3

41/80 Louisville @ 7/16 Notre Dame - 2:30pm - NBC

74/63 Duke @ 63/27 NC State 3:30pm - ESPN3/FoxSportsSouth

26/22 UCF @ 36/56 Memphis - 3:30pm - ABC

44/38 Ole Miss @ 72/21 Arkansas - 3:30pm - SECN

22/48 Texas A&M @ 54/46 Mississippi State - 4:00pm - ESPN

39/41 Virginia @ 76/30 Wake Forest - 4:00pm - ACCN

53/18 Marshall @ 83/115 Louisiana Tech - 6:00pm - CBSSN

9/8 North Carolina @ 47/102 Florida State - 7:30pm - ABC

4/1 Georgia @ 3/5 Alabama - 8:00pm - CBS

52/34 Boston College @ 25/19 Virginia Tech - 8:00pm - ACCN

98/139 Florida International @ 89/85 Charlotte - 8:00pm - ESPNU