Your College Football Saturday Viewing Guide: August 31, 2019

After a very exciting Week Zero on the college football calendar, everyone’s favorite completely bonkers sport gets going in full swing today.

Of course, by “today,” I actually mean “two days ago.” Thanks to the joy that is.... actually, I don’t know why there were 16 games on Thursday, including four games with ranked opponents. I know why there were eight games on Friday, as well as one each on Sunday and Monday: It’s Labor Day weekend, and gosh darn it, television networks have space to fill. Thursday was not legally the weekend, though, so I don’t know what that’s all about, especially with that many games going on.

ANYWAY

There’s 27 games of college football with a national television broadcast today, which is a pretty standard CFB Saturday. This is probably helped by the ACC Network being a thing that exists now. I am including ACC Network as a national broadcast channel for two reasons:

1) I am able to watch it, so I don’t really care if you can’t.

2) Thanks to the magic of the 21st Century and streaming services like YouTube TV and Hulu + Live TV, pretty much anyone can get ACC Network if they so choose.

Pretty straight forward there.

11 of today’s games feature a ranked team. Most of these 11 are hilarious mismatches brought on by the fact that it is the first game of the season. Of course, the best part of hilarious mismatches on paper is the fact that they become outrageously hilarious upsets sometimes. Keep your eye on that as the day goes on.

The clear and obvious best game of the day has two ranked teams facing each other. #11 Oregon and #16 Auburn will butt heads at JerryWorld in Texas for some weirdo reason that will likely be tilted towards Auburn in terms of fan attendance. However, it is a holiday weekend, so don’t underestimate the Ducks. One of these two fanbases will head into Sunday overly excited about their team for the coming season, while the other fanbase will spend the rest of the night cursing their head coach’s name for very silly reasons.

For those of us neutral fans out there, this is what we like to call “a win-win” scenario.

Speaking of my proclaimed neutrality, we should probably announce the College Football Anarchy rooting guide for the day.

Duke vs #2 Alabama (in New Orleans)
Vanderbilt vs #3 Georgia
Florida Atlantic at #5 Ohio State

Clemson already played Georgia Tech on Thursday, and Oklahoma plays Houston tomorrow, so only three top five squads are at risk today. Yes, I realize I’m cheering for Lane Kiffin here. The alternative is cheering for Ohio State and/or cheering for good things to happen to highly ranked teams. Neither of those is fun. Lane Kiffin is fun. Cheer for fun.

All times Central.