Your College Football Saturday Viewing Guide: September 7, 2019

17 college football games on national television with at least one ranked team participating is a whole heck of a lot, and that’s what we have on deck today for you. Of course, thanks to the ACC Network chipping in and, believe it or not, the NFL Network doing some lifting, we’re up to a whopping 34 games on national TV today. With three hour expected runtimes for games, that’s hard to do! We see that a lot during college basketball season because of the 2+ hour runtime on games, but perhaps this is the new normal for everyone’s favorite very dumb sport.

We’ll get to the biggest games of the day in a second, but I want to highlight what Alabama is doing today. They’re taking on a variation of the UConn Women’s Basketball NCAA First Round Challenge. That’s where you pretend to spot the Huskies’ opponent 50 points and see if UConn still wins anyway. According to ESPN.com’s scoreboard, the gambling line on the Alabama/New Mexico State game is [drumrooooooooll] Alabama -55.5. They have to WIN BY FIFTY-SIX POINTS in order for those bets to come in. Can they do it? Maybe! The Aggies lost by 51 to Washington State last week! I don’t think it’s mean to anyone involved to say that Alabama is better than the Cougs, so keep an eye on that one.

Remember: Good teams win, great teams cover. Alabama, do you want to be good or great?

Two ranked teams playing always means good things one way or another, and we’ve got two of those on national TV today. First it’s #12 Texas A&M visiting #1 Clemson. Clemson is favored by 17, so things aren’t looking good for the Aggies. The biggest question might be whether or not the Clemson fans will storm the field after the win.

The other ranked team fight today is a bit more important, as it has two top 10 teams. #6 LSU head a wee bit to the west to face #9 Texas. LSU is the favorite, even on the road, and both teams are coming in off fairly useless opening week wins against overmatched opponents. If the early money is on a playoff of Clemson, Alabama, Oklahoma, and Georgia in one fashion or another, the winner of this one is going to do themselves a lot of favors in terms of elbowing into that conversation.

Here’s your official College Football Anarchy cheering guide for the day:

#12 Texas A&M at #1 Clemson
New Mexico State at #2 Alabama
Murray State at #3 Georgia
South Dakota at #4 Oklahoma
Cincinnati at #5 Ohio State

All of the top five teams are in action today, but as you can see and as we already talked about, some of these teams have more of a chance than others. Downside: It’s not likely that we get the upsets that we desire. Upside: It’ll be really funny if we do!

Please Note: Oklahoma’s game is not on TV, as it’s their yearly pay-per-view game. We’re still cheering for South Dakota, they’re just not on the grid below.

Here’s the full rundown for nationally televised games today.