College football Saturdays are back, and without further adieu, here’s the Notebook Nine, the nine best games of the day for the Saturday of college football Week 1. Games are listed in order of kickoff time so you can plan your Saturday accordingly… Penn State-Central Florida (8:30 AM, ESPN2): A top ‘o the morning to […]
College football’s top rung is currently held down by Alabama and will be until they lose outright, rather than just look sluggish. That’ s appropriate for a program that has won three of the last four national championships, but there’s also no denying that the Tide looked like a team with a lot of work to do in their 35-10 win over Virginia Tech.
There were a lot of things one could take away from Week 1 in the college football season, a five-day festival that begin with South Carolina’s 27-10 Thursday win over North Carolina and Jadeveon Clowney sucking wind all over the field, and ended with Florida State’s 41-13 prime-time thrashing of Pitt on Labor Day. But the biggest is this—any notions the challengers in the ACC Atlantic Division had of getting to Charlotte and the conference championship game on December 7 had best be put on hold.
South Carolina hosts North Carolina to get the season kicked off on Thursday, and then Saturday sees Alabama-Virginia Tech in the late afternoon, followed by Georgia-Clemson and LSU-TCU in prime-time. Here’s the rundown on the four games that are the highlight of the season’s opening week…
The first week of the college football season is in the books after last night’s thriller in Blacksburg, with Virginia Tech beating Georgia Tech in overtime 20-17, a game where each team converted must-have fourth downs in the final minute-plus of regulation.
VT-GT was also the most consequential game of college football Week 1, as the win put the Hokies in the driver’s seat for ACC Coastal Division title. I picked Georgia Tech to win this division at the start of the year and while they played well enough to believe a good year is still ahead, you have to give a major hat-tip t o Virginia Tech’s sophomore quarterback Logan Thomas. Trailing 17-14, surrounded by nine new starters, and 44 seconds in the clock, Thomas comes up with the drive for the game-tying field goal, capping a solid all-around performance. I know the game was in Blacksburg, but if Georgia Tech can’t beat a completely rebuilt Hokie offense on the first night of the season, then you have to wonder what’s going to happen as Virginia Tech gets better. Looks like we can plan on seeing Frank Beamer on the sidelines again come the first Saturday in December when they play the ACC Championship Game in Charlotte.
The college football season got underway Thursday night and if the South Carolina-Vanderbilt opener was any indicator, we’ve got an exciting season ahead of us, as the Gamecocks rallied for a fourth-quarter touchdown and won 17-13. That was the start of the appetizers on the holiday weekend card, others of which are still to come and previewed here. Now let’s dive into the main course, focusing on five big games that start with the biggest of them all, Michigan-Alabama on the college football Week 1 schedule…
College football kicks off tonight and with it the game-week previews here at TheSportsNotebook do as well. South Carolina and Vanderbilt don’t get anything in the way of adjustment time. Their game in Nashville is a key game between SEC East foes who each made a bowl game last year. The Gamecocks-Commodores game is one of three key major conference games for the holiday weekend overall, as it’s also a big week in the ACC. We’ll look at these games, plus several notable matchups on the Saturday undercard as TheSportsNotebook previews college football Week 1…