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It's here! The one Saturday of the college football season which you can enjoy without fear of blown coverages, poor blocking, missed tackles, officiating calamities, or the snapping of cruciate ligaments posterior, medial, and anterior. There'll be no penalties for playing while Georgia on this day. Instead, we can watch college football from a safe emotional distance. It's a good place to visit every so often.
And to make matters better, there's a pretty solid slate of games coming up. Among the early games, Auburn travels to Arkansas (noon, SEC Network) in a game that both head coaches could really afford to win. I'm pulling for the Fightin' Bielemas, and you should too. Duh.
ABC has Clemson playing Miami in an abandoned building in Coral Gables, in a game we'll all be watching just to see if it's the one in which Clemson does that thing Clemson does that Dabo Swinney doesn't like you to mention.*
Among the 3:30 games, the one with the most relevance to Bulldog fans is clearly the "Third Saturday in October" game between Tennessee and Alabama, which as usual is being played on the fourth Saturday in October on CBS. Insert your critique of the Tennessee and Alabama public schools here. More importantly, if this Georgia football team were to emerge from its bye week a whole different animal a la 2007 or 2012, this is the game they need Tennessee to lose to make their somewhat improbable road to Atlanta a little clearer.
If you're looking for something to focus on other than that one, I actually like the Indiana/Michigan State game on ESPN2 to be closer than a lot of people expect.
As usual RedCrake has the full schedule sorted by time and TV network for your ease of use. And as usual we'll have an additional thread later in the day for the evening and late shift if comment volume dictates it. Until later . . .
Go 'Dawgs!!!
*By the way, that's long-time friend of the blog David Hale from ESPN asking the tough question there, solely because it's his job. I salute him for it.