College Football Watch Party Open Thread

Here at RedState, we do it all – politics, culture, and now even sports! Here, you can see just what’s going down in the world of collegiate football and discuss the games that interest you. I’ll briefly break down the top games of the week, and pick a must-watch game. If you’ve got some insight you want to see added in a future week, feel free to comment here or send me a tweet at @JoePCunningham and I’ll make sure I add it in.

This Week In College Football:

Iowa at Northwestern at
Ole Miss at Memphis
West Virginia at Baylor
Louisville at Florida State
Alabama at Texas A&M
Michigan at Michigan State
Florida at LSU
Boston College at Clemson
USC at Notre Dame
Missouri at Georgia
Penn State at Ohio State
Arizona State at Utah
TCU at Iowa State

Best Storylines:

While the SEC may be the only thing in the world that matters when it comes to football, that’s especially true this week with a pair of conference match-ups that are expected to produce some drama. Texas A&M and Alabama will meet in Texas while Florida travels to Louisiana to face off against LSU. Each of these teams is more than capable of producing a solid, watchable game.

If you’re not into that, though, take a look at the 11 a.m. special between Iowa and Northwestern. It’s a game that could go either way, but I lean more toward Northwestern in this one. While it’s true that Iowa has a stellar running back in Jordan Canzeri (697 yards, 9 touchdowns), they have seen a lot of injuries on both sides of the ball. Northwestern is due for a big offensive breakout, and that could happen as soon as today.

Game of the Week:

Giving this one to Texas A&M and Alabama. These are two stellar teams and, barring someone having a really, really bad day, this should be an offensive battle. Of course, a tough battle is what was predicted for Alabama and Ole Miss, and we saw how that turned out. Still, A&M has shown an offensive consistency that Ole Miss is still trying to find, and I think this week it will shine through.

Given my record with the MLB playoffs, however (I was really hoping for a Pirates-Royals World Series), don’t expect my words to even remotely mean anything.

Potential Upset of the Week:

USC getting one over Notre Dame would just about muck everything up, wouldn’t it? Approaching a state of leaderlessness, the Trojans now have uncertainty in their future as they try to figure out what in the world they’re going to do next. Chaos has a funny way of turning things on their head, so a USC win here would give the NCAA the shake-up it needs right now. I’m not saying I’m predicting it will happen, but I’m not saying I’d be totally surprised if it happened.