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Now we turn to the matter at hand. Together, we have gone around the SEC and examined the national games of interest, which leaves us with just one contest of note---or, rather, lack of note, or noteworthiness for its utter lack of noteworthiness---yet to be addressed. I am, naturally, referring to the national game of disinterest.

The national game of disinterest is that special outing taking place each week which warrants special mention for being so thoroughly uncompelling, so entirely absent any redeeming feature, and so absolutely short of all those attributes that make a college football game worth watching that I will not debase myself or this weblog by bothering to choose between the competing teams.

This week’s national game of disinterest is . . .

The deficiencies of the ACC entrant in this toxic waste dump of a showdown are obvious. When you lose at home to the Baylor Bears, you deserve to have shame and ignominy heaped upon your head. If the Demon Deacons are better Baptists than the part of their nickname implying possession by evil spirits suggests, the team will come out of the tunnel wearing sackcloth and ashes on Saturday.

The shortcomings of the Cardinal---other than their its need to pluralize its nomenclature, so as not to continue the oddity of an our-mascot-is-a-color-symbolized-by-a-tree formulation that leaves even fans of the Auburn Tigers scratching their heads and furrowing their unibrows in caveman-like consternation---are less immediately apparent in light of Stanford’s season-opening manhandling of a conference opponent on the road, but let’s get real here. The Cardinal beat the Washington St. Cougars, who went 2-11 last season and who, despite having posted three straight ten-win campaigns in the first three years of the new century, still finished with a 59-61 record for the decade just prior to 2009. For crying out loud, this is a team whose glory years came under the direction of Ryan Leaf.

At the end of the day, though, there is a very simple reason why any contest pitting Stanford against Wake Forest must, by definition, be the national game of disinterest. If I wanted to watch dorky smart guys flop around trying to play football, I’d invite my friends over for a game in the back yard and YouTube it.

When the difference between the two teams’ student-athletes and me is negligible, you have yourself one sorry football game. That’s why I’m not picking it, because I just don’t care. This might as well be Harvard-Yale for all the interest I have in it.

Go ‘Dawgs!