The Monday To Do List Still Doesn't Trust That Visor Wearin' So-And-So.

It's the Monday after the first weekend of the college football season and, conveniently, it also happens to be a holiday for many of you. So while we traditionally begin this presentation of the To Do items which jumped onto our list this weekend by exhorting you to move quickly, there's no such urgency this morning. Grab another cup of coffee, and join us in toasting the men and women who keep America going. Once you've done that, you can turn to your holiday list of barbecuing, napping, rewatching the Clemson game, day drinking, or whatever else you have on tap. For my part, I'll be doing the following.

1) Write Greg McGarity a strongly worded email urging him never to schedule North Dakota State. Ever. Oh sure, you say, that school sounds pretty obscure. They'd probably accept $900,000 to come to Athens and get run over, right? You'd think that. But so did Kansas State. They lost to the Bison in 2013. And so did Iowa State, which lost to NDSU this weekend. In fact the Bison have a 5 game winning streak against FBS teams. They've beaten as many Big XII teams since 2013 as Kansas has. Oh by the way, they beat Kansas in 2010. Don't do it Greg! Don't do it! Mercer, Elon, Wofford, there are tons of schools much closer to home who would love to take your money. Keep that spending close to home.

2) Start worrying about the Head Ball Coach. The Aggies stomped his boys pretty good. His stud tailback is "sort of doubtful" for this weekend's matchup with East Carolina, and Sunday he described the strength of his offense as "we don't have one". He has no good answer in the secondary, and his front seven don't appear suited for the 3-4 scheme his team now employs. Dangit, the bastard has us right where he wants us.

3) Re-evaluate the Volunteers. Tennessee looked not entirely terrible last night in dispatching Chuckie Keeton and Utah State 38-7. I wouldn't book tickets to Atlanta just yet if I were a Tennessean, but there was reason for optimism. Justin Worley looked like a reasonably competent college quarterback, albeit not against an SEC pass rush. He hit 11 different receivers while throwing for 273 yards. The down side for the Vols is that he needed to do so, because the Big Orange only gained 110 rushing yards on 39 attempts against the Utah State Aggies.

That's 2.8 yards per attempt, which won't do it in league play, even assuming that they can produce those results against the likes of Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Ole Miss, and South Carolina. And that's to say nothing of the Oklahoma Sooners, who the Vols visit in two weeks. My sense is that a lot of that is attributable to the offensive line which returned zero starters from last year's unit, much of which is playing in the NFL. I still think the ceiling for this Tennessee team is eight wins, and that six is probably the most likely number. But there's reason to

4) Watch Ohio State climb in the polls for no good reason. The Buckeyes looked lackadaisical in a 34-17 win over Navy that was in doubt far deeper into the afternoon than Urban Meyer likely would have preferred. Writers and Coaches' Poll voters will note how gritty the Buckeyes looked despite playing without their starting quarterback, laud them for scheduling a game against true American heroes, prattle on about how hard it is to prepare for the option (especially when you only have eight months to do so), and move them up two slots.

5) Wonder if we might see the Aggies in Atlanta this year. It's always perilous to extrapolate too much from one week of football, but the alternative is to just shutter this site until October then hit you with 37 articles per day. So here goes an overly optimistic extrapolation: Texas A&M could score 60+ points on multiple teams this year. Even if their defense is porous (which, Johnny Freakin' Benchwarmer as my witness, it will be) it's difficult to imagine other SEC West teams getting out of their own way offensively often enough to keep up. The Ags get both Auburn and Bama on the road, but if they split that tandem it wouldn't be out of the question for them to wind up in the Georgia Dome in December.

That's enough to keep me busy this morning. Feel free to suggest your own post-pigskin tasks in the comments. Until later . . .

Go 'Dawgs!!!