Welcome to the Defector College Football Watch Guide, where Israel Daramola and Ray Ratto will tell you which of the weekend’s college football games are worth giving a crap about.
Israel: Last year when we did this, the assumption was that the committee would finagle things around to provide fewer potential blowouts and unwatchable games. Since then, I've started to put together that ESPN might be more committed to their Survivor-esque weekly playoff tribunal than to actually producing good games. Even the games that ostensibly look worthwhile seem like they could be terrible. Alabama has been stinking it up for the past month; Oklahoma hasn’t been dependable at any point this year; Miami and Carson Beck could absolutely implode at any moment; and Texas A&M is … well, Texas A&M. Suddenly the Gasparilla Bowl between Memphis and NC State seems like the only must-watch game of the weekend. Unfortunately, there is only one solution: MORE EXPANSION.
Ray: College football’s gift for subtlety is always on display, which is how the 11- and 12-seeds got dumped onto TNT mostly to make Greg Sankey and Tony Petitti feel smart about getting a number of different extortioni—er, umm, corporate players in the sport’s media footprint. This bastardized format will almost surely get swapped for a 16-team bracket and eventually a 32-teamer that will be populated almost entirely by SEC and Big Ten factories. Plus Notre Dame, because there’s always going to be the “plus Notre Dame” clause.
And now, the games.
Alabama at Oklahoma – Friday, 8:00 p.m. ET on ABC
It’s very funny that the only two games in this round with any sort of tension are also the first two to be played. Whatever scheduling shenanigans made it so that James Madison at Oregon would be a Saturday night game, it really highlights how stupid this expanded playoff is. At any rate, the consensus seems to be that Alabama will beat Oklahoma, which I don’t fully understand, mainly because I’ve actually watched Alabama play over the past month. They have gotten worse with each successive game, and for whatever reason, Oklahoma and Brent Venables’s defense specifically has had their number for the last couple years. I think Oklahoma is just flat-out better than Alabama, particularly at this point of the season, and I don’t think a week off and a bunch of rumors about Kalen DeBoer taking the Michigan job will help anything.
Anyway, the winner of this game will get dog-walked by Indiana in the next round. – Israel
Miami at Texas A&M – Saturday, 12:00 p.m. ET on ABC
This is the only truly interesting game of the first round. On paper, Texas A&M should win; they have the better record. But despite what their record says, I suspect that this is still your typical 8-4 TAMU team in spirit. Their quarterback is talented and their defense is good, but they just feel susceptible to the right team. The question is if Miami is that right team. On defense they are up for it, without a doubt. Offensively, there's no telling whether we'll get "Carson Beck: effective game manager" or "Carson Beck: guy who throws eight interceptions that actually should’ve been 12." And don’t let this game come down to an important coaching decision, because Mario Cristobal will for sure blow it. Yet despite these real concerns, I want to believe in Miami. At least for this game.
Once again, the winner will get skull-dragged by Ohio State in the next round. – Israel
Tulane at Ole Miss – Saturday, 3:30 p.m. ET on TNT, truTV, HBO Max
Having been left with the televised undercard, we can say that this actually is the least interesting game, because we cannot hate-watch Ole Miss, and nobody cares enough about LSU to watch the Kinder’s Texas Bowl even though it is sponsored by barbecue sauce. Tulane went 10-2 and earned its way in, but is expected to get mauled by a team that is not viewed as a realistic candidate to win the title. We have two options for you, though: one, get plowed early and just say the name “Trinidad Chambliss” over and over again just for the pure mellifluous joy of it, or two, watch Montana at Montana State (Saturday, 4:00 p.m. ET on ABC) in the second FCS semifinal. There won’t be snow, but it will be cold (low 30s), and the secondary market is offering tickets for $654, the highest number of any posted figure by a factor of three. Frankly, UM-MSU is the better watch on all levels. Plus there’s in-state hate that won’t be in evidence for the title game with the Illinois State-Villanova winner.
In other words, fun wins, for the last time all year. Each successive game will be overblown nonsense. – Ray
James Madison at Oregon – Saturday, 7:30 p.m. ET on TNT, truTV, HBO Max
Ostensibly this is just a family thing—the daughter helped UO extort us for $150 large back in the day, and we will therefore be forced to watch despite our own general meh-itude—but there is an undercurrent here of pressure on Oregon to put up a big number on the Dukes just to prevent being dismissed by the Southeast Corner Punditomafia. We are not likely to see JMU’s like in the playoff format for very long, and most front-running brutes will claim to be happy about that, because the general feeling is that only big-budget operations should be allowed and JMU cheapens the process, which of course doesn’t explain Indiana, but fine. In terms of a satisfactory result for those troglodytes, the Ducks need to cover the 21 by halftime. They won’t, but they’ll get there eventually. – Ray
My only concern is whether the result of this game will somehow make Notre Dame even more insufferable about being left out of the playoff. I like the Dukes, I really do, but Oregon will boat-race them by the second quarter. I would hope they have learned their lesson about starting slow from last year. The real heavyweight battle will be between them and Texas Tech, where for the first time so far in this playoff we’ll have a guaranteed good game. – Israel
