How To Football: Week Four

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Waitin’ All Week For Thursday Night Shift

Tulsa at Temple is the only college football game on Thursday. Sure man, why not.

National Champion Respecting Shift

God, if you told me three years ago that FAU-UCF was going to be one of the funnest matchups of the weekend between Lane Kiffin and the defending national champion I think I’d pull a muscle laughing at you. But here we are, and it’s a thing that will be on ESPN major.

Harvard at Brown kicks off alongside it, and Penn State gets a good chance to murderdeathkill Illinois at 8:00.

#PAC12BeforeDawn Shift

The PAC-12 and ESPN either haven’t learned their lesson from last year or are banking on Washington State taking a torch to USC on national television when they know all of college football will be watching. It’s honestly getting hard to tell. But this is an especially bad USC team and the Cougars are still /checks notes yeah they’re still coached by Mike Leach.

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Dudes And Pulses Shift

Well the Scott Frost hand-wringing is real, and it’s likely to get worse around 2:30 Saturday unless he can pick up is first win as Huskers head coach in Ann Arbor. On the flip side of the coin, if Harbaugh drops a second game in September then we’re going to have to have a talk about how he is viewed by the college football hivemind. Because I have some receipts that I feel need to be re-examined.

I put down Notre Dame at Wake Forest as the second game of the shift, and I’m not exactly sure why, when Boston College, WHICH IS AVERAGING 52.6 (FIFTY TWO POINT SIX) POINTS PER GAME, plays Jeff Brohm’s Purdue. The Boilermakers are 0-3 on paper with losses to Northwestern, Eastern Michigan, and Missouri. I know that sounds bad but the margin of defeat between the three games totals up to be...seven. To steal a baseball expression, they’re due for one. Honestly, make this your spotlight game of the shift. We regret the printed error above.

Not sure what to expect out of the Minnesota-Maryland game, honestly. So that will be fun, unless it turns out to not be. Who knows.

Orange Bowl Redemption Shift

Texas finally looked like a competent Texas team, albeit against a bad USC. Maybe we’ll get a good game between them and TCU, maybe TCU kicks them in the face repeatedly. I’m good for either, honestly.

I don’t want to pretend like Texas A&M and Alabama will be a good game, but the Aggies played Clemson to the hilt so I really have no tangible reason to say why the Tide will roll outside of the fact that the game isn’t in College Station. But then again, the last time A&M beat Bama the game was in Tuscaloosa, so hey. And yes, A&M’s last win over Bama was the Money Manziel game in 2012, six whole years ago. I know it’s obvious, but it doesn’t feel like that long ago.

The “Twitter Fingers” game of the shift is NIU at Florida State. The Seminoles should pick up the win considering the Huskies have the 125th ranked offense in S&P+, but the flip side of the coin is the fact that defense is the third best in the country. Yikes.

Clemson at Georgia Tech and Kansas State at West Virginia rounds out the afternoon slate.

World’s Largest Outdoor Rock Fight Shift

If you don’t go to the Tech game (or leave it early...) you have some solid options to see points out the wazoo: Texas Tech at Oklahoma State. The 18th and 19th teams in offensive S&P+, the 104th and...14th in defensive. Sorry ‘bout it Red Raiders.

Or if you want to keep things in conference, Mississippi State at Kentucky is an important SEC game now. Not like, Atlanta Preview important, but like a Second Place Behind Georgia And Alabama (or LSU...) important.

AND THAT’S THE BOTTOM LINE!

Moving down into the 7:00 hour, Stanford and Oregon tee off. This is the GameDay assignment of the week, and it will move TVs because of the names and recent history of this series. I’m just not sure if Oregon in year one under Cristobal is ready to solve Stanford’s defense just yet. Prove me wrong, Ducks.

Thirty minutes later, Wisconsin, reeling after getting out-manballed against BYU meets up with Iowa for the World’s Largest Outdoor Rock Fight. The Badgers should handle business because Iowa’s offense is megabad and their defense is pretty middle of the road, but it’s in Kinnick so I mean, maybe.

SPARKY NO! Shift

So after seeing Herm route UTSA and somehow beat Michigan State, we finally saw our special boy lose his first game in #college against San Diego State. Now he works into the real meat of the schedule in a big way by playing Washington, in Seattle. Get those memes ready for deployment boys.

Rest of the shift are the leftovers you’d expect to find at the end of week four: Air Force at Utah State, Eastern Michigan at San Diego State, and Duquesne at Hawaii. Yeah, even Hawaii even managed to give us a boring nightcap.

We need you now more than ever, big sexy.