Welcome to Week 3 of the college football season, I hope you’ve enjoyed all the big games the past two weeks because it’s going to be slim pickin’ this Saturday. After a gluttony of great games last week, all kicking off within 90 minutes of each other, we’re left with very little in the way of marquee matchups for Week 3.
That isn’t to say there aren’t good games out there that you should watch, it’s just that you might need to do a little more searching to find those games on the old cable guide. If you are looking for picks on the Week 3 slate, you can find those right here, but otherwise, we’ll go ahead and dive on in to the rough beginnings of Saturday that is the noon slate.
UCLA (-3, 73) at Memphis, 12:00 p.m. ET, ABC
The noon slate doesn’t have a lot, but it does give us a super weird matchup between UCLA and Group of Five powerhouse Memphis in which the Bruins for some reason are on the road in west Tennessee. This is some breakfast ball for those out in California and those dastardly body clocks might come into play for UCLA. Josh Rosen has been phenomenal through two games, but this feels like one of those spots where a Jim Mora Jr. coached football team finds a way to struggle.
Oklahoma State (-12.5, 64) at Pittsburgh, 12:00 p.m. ET, ESPN
The Panthers are coming off a 19-point loss to rival Penn State and don’t have much time to lick their wounds as the Pokes and their high powered offense roll into town. This will be interesting for one of two reasons. Either Pitt’s secondary shows up and keeps this thing close, or there’s some busted coverage in Narduzzi’s quarters coverage and Mason Rudolph and James Washington have themselves a field day. We’ll find out on Saturday afternoon, but for the multi-screeners out there, this is almost assuredly making a screen.
Notre Dame (-13, 51) at Boston College, 3:30 p.m. ET, ESPN
The 3:30 slate isn’t a whole lot better, as evidenced by this game showing up. I’m mostly interested to see how Notre Dame bounces back from a tough loss to Georgia. This one probably won’t last long on a screen for most people, unless, like me, you’ll be sweating out the Under.
Tennessee at Florida (-4.5, 49.5), 3:30 p.m. ET, CBS
It’s a rivalry game. That’s about the most positive thing I can say about this game. Florida’s offense is bad and still doesn’t have its best players, while Tennessee lucked out a win against Georgia Tech in the opener and have a trash can on the sideline for celebrating. This game will likely be competitive, which might make it the best game of the mid-afternoon and that’s not a good thing.
Wisconsin (-16, 40.5) at BYU, 3:30 p.m. ET, ABC
If you like running the football, not scoring a lot, and defense this is the game for you. BYU is averaging 11 points per game on offense and was shut out by LSU in a dismal performance in Week 1. Wisconsin has looked like an old school Wisconsin team, which is to say they’re mean as hell on the lines and run the dang football. This game might not take three hours to play.
Purdue at Missouri (-7.5, 78), 4:00 p.m. ET, SEC Network
Ohhhhh, don’t sleep on these Boilermakers. Jeff Brohm’s got the boys from West Lafayette playing hard and playing pretty well. This offense is significantly more fun than last year and they hung close with Lamar Jackson and Louisville in the opener. And then there’s Mizzou, which just fired the defensive coordinator after getting thumped at home by 18 to South Carolina. I think this will be sneaky fun and awfully dangerous for the Tigers.
Army at Ohio State (-30.5, 53), 4:30 p.m. ET, Fox
Will J.T. Barrett and company bounce back after the Oklahoma loss? Almost assuredly. That’s because the troops come into town this week with their triple option, ready to try and run the ball against a very fast Buckeyes defense that has mostly struggled against the pass. The option is always tough, but Army can’t throw it and I think Ohio State simply has the athletes to outlast them, but maybe this will be interesting to watch for a quarter or maybe even half.
LSU (-7.5, 53) at Mississippi State, 7:00 p.m. ET, ESPN
It’s going to be loud in Starkville on Saturday night when the Tigers come into town and I think this will be the second best game of the entire day. Nick Fitzgerald can play ball and the Bulldogs have looked quite good early in the season. We’ll have to see how they fare against a nasty LSU defense, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this goes down to the wire in the land of cowbells.
Clemson (-3, 58.5) at Louisville, 8:00 p.m. ET, ESPN
The game of the week in the ACC and nationally, especially with Miami-FSU delayed. This was a phenomenal game last year with Lamar Jackson showing out in a near comeback win. Clemson’s defense looked filthy against Auburn and they’ll come in looking to hit Jackson early and often to try and dissuade him from pulling the ball down and running. I think this will be a fun one, but maybe not as high scoring as people anticipate.
Texas at USC (-15.5, 67.5), 8:30 p.m. ET, Fox
So, I fear this may get ugly for the Longhorns. After bouncing back against San Jose State, Texas can at least feel good about themselves heading into the Coliseum, but USC just dominated Stanford and made that defense look bad. Sam Darnold, Ronald Jones, and the rest might go out there and torch the Horns defense and it may not matter what Tom Herman’s offense has up its sleeve. I hope this game is fun, but I don’t have high hopes that it’s competitive come the fourth quarter.
Ole Miss (-4, 72) at California, 10:30 p.m. ET, ESPN
Let’s get super weird and stay up until 2 a.m. again on some Pac-12 After Dark action. Ole Miss’ defense is hot garbage, but Shea Patterson can spin it for the Rebels. If Cal can play like they did against UNC and score some points, we ought to have ourselves a shootout that takes nearly four hours.
