College Football Week 2 Thread

Last week was quite the opening week and a lot of hot takes fell real flat. A few points.

First, the Arch Manning hype was beyond ridiculous. Maybe he’s a good QB. Maybe’s he’s a future 1st round pick. I can believe it. But he’s sure not right now. He looked awful against Ohio State. Granted the Buckeyes have a good defense but so does Texas and Julian Sayin looked not bad against it. Manning couldn’t do anything at all until midway through the 4th quarter. He’s definitely the first QB in college football history to have more commercials than completions in a game. Maybe rather than put a crown on an inexperienced kid’s head, we should let them play the games first? PUT AWAY THE ANOINTING OIL says Bill Parcells. It’s really unfair to Arch Manning, not that he hasn’t benefitted from it all too. But this is what we get in the era of Stephen A. Smith and Pat McAfee–manufactured narratives to fit hot takes, like talking about a shitty Shedeur Sanders at every opportunity.

Second, Bill Belichick. Ah….Someone made a joke on Bluesky when TCU was ahead of North Carolina 41-7 that when his girlfriend Jordon Davidson was 7, Belichick was 41. Alas, the fact is that when she was 7, he was 56. Anyway, Bill Belichick being a disaster as a college coach is the easiest thing to predict ever. You mean the man who last developed a young player in 2010 or so has no idea how to coach 18 year olds? Who knew! The thing is that while the games of college and professional football are not that different, what is different is the coaching styles. It’s why successful college coaches are so often disastrous in the NFL (Chip Kelly, Steve Spurrier, Nick Saban) and great NFL coaches don’t often do much when the take a stab at college (Bill Walsh, Herm Edwards). There’s a few who can manage it, such as Pete Carroll and Jim Harbaugh, but you have to do two very different things or get over your style in the other league on the force of your personality. And let’s just say that personality is not Bill Belichick’s strong suit. North Carolina was utterly obliterated and it looks to me like the Tar Heels are staring at a 3 win season. Good.

The third terrible hot take was Nico Iamaleava being an exciting add for UCLA. He was terrible. He’s another guy who became famous for his NIL greed, the kind of guy who makes bad poor decisions for a slightly larger bag rather than stick around and work for the really big bad to come in the NFL and then he just turns out to not be very good anywhere. UCLA looked awful against Utah.

Week 1 tends to have some really big matchups. Week 2 tends to be one of the weakest weeks of the year. The hype machine is on the opening of the NFL so the networks don’t push as hard for top matchups. Plus lots of teams are still playing chumps for easy wins. There’s a few good games, but as I have a conference on Saturday, I’m not real sad to be missing most of the weekend’s games. I will make a beeline out of my panel to see Oregon play Oklahoma State in a matchup that looked good when it was scheduled and then the Okies just collapsed last year and then also lost their starting QB in the first half of last week’s game. Mike Gundy (“I’m a Man, I’m 40!) is already whining about how they are going to lose because Oregon has more money. Inspiring work there.

There are however some good games if you like evenly matched teams with potentially interesting seasons ahead of them.

The top 10 games of the week, based on the Athletic’s rankings of all FBS teams and in order of when the games start. The rankings this week decided to reflect the results of week 1 much more than any preseason rankings, so they are kind of odd compared to the AP, but that’s fine, probably the way it should be. It all shakes out in the end.

1. #44 James Madison at #27 Louisville (-14.5), 7 Friday, ESPN2. JMU is not a bad team, even though no one thinks much of the Sun Belt generally. But those teams have a history of going on the road to win games against power conference opponents. That said, I am not going to bet on that happening and the spread seems to take into account the fact that JMU is a better Sun Belt team, so it’s not a blowout kind of prediction. So I take Louisville with those points.(Saturday update: Bah, Louisville won by 14. Sun Belt has good teams and aren’t easy to put away! JMU’s defense was outstanding. It’s offense was not though.)
2. #30 Iowa at #16 Iowa State (-3.5), 12, FOX. This should be a good game. Iowa State looks very good after two games. Iowa played Albany. A spread like that is a belief that on a neutral field, the teams are even. People are higher on Iowa than normal. Iowa traditionally wins every game it should and loses every game it should. The question is a game like this where it’s not clear. I will take Iowa State based on the very solid beginning of the season they’ve had.
3. #38 Baylor at #22 SMU (-3), 12, CW. Why is this line so close? Baylor had a tough opening matchup against Auburn, but also lost by two TDs. SMU played something called East Texas A&M, so OK, Baylor is more tested. But SMU also went to the playoffs last year and return a lot of guys from that team, including the QB. Unless Baylor is actually good, which I doubt, I don’t get this line and am taking SMU -3.
4. #14 Illinois at #40 Duke (+2.5), 12, ESPN. Now this is an interesting game. People are very high on Illinois and they were good last year, but it’s still a boring offense Illini team. Duke seems relatively strong. Neither team played anyone decent in the first week. I’m taking Duke as home dogs here based on me needing to see Illinois prove they are as good as people seem to think and my belief that Duke is probably a bit underrated.
5. #31 Kansas at #36 Missouri (-6.5), 3:30, ESPN2. Interesting rivalry matchup here between two states that don’t like each other much. Kansas dominated Fresno and then had a tune-up game against Wagner. Missouri had their own tune-up against Central Arkansas. But Missouri also lost its starting QB. While I think Missouri has more talent than Kansas, that’s a big loss and that’s why I will take Kansas +6.5, despite a challenging road environment.
6. #55 Texas State at #56 UTSA (-4.5), 3:30, ESPN+. An early good Sun Belt matchup featuring two of the conference’s better teams. UTSA did play A&M tough last week, as I predicted in my discussion of an obviously too broad spread. Texas State handled Eastern Michigan easily. I don’t think the Roadrunners go to 0-2 and they take care of business by a TD or so.
7. #20 South Florida at #18 Florida (-17.5), 4:15, SEC. South Florida ripped Boise a new one last week. Florida destroyed Long Island, which I did not know had a football team. Impossible to know much from a game like that. Given that South Florida now knows more much more about itself than Florida does, I will take South Florida losing by 17 or less.
8. #17 Michigan at #29 Oklahoma (-5.5), 7:30. ABC. This is the marquee game of the week in terms of names, but these are two programs who had real off seasons last year without a lot of clarity on how good they are really going to be this year. Michigan looked mediocre against New Mexico, though Bryce Underwood had a nice game as a true freshman QB. Oklahoma played Illinois State and only put up 35, so not an amazing performance either. Given that this game is in Norman and John Mateer is a far more experienced QB, I will take the Sooners with the points here. Not super confident, but again, new starters at QB need to prove themselves.
9. #50 Boston College at #49 Michigan State (-3.5), 7:30, NBC. Sparty was bad last year and you hire a Beaver and you bring in a bunch of Beaver transfers, you are going to Beav it. BC is no great team, but is probably a decent team. I need Michigan State under Jonathan Smith to prove something and a 23-6 win against Western Michigan isn’t anything. Until then, I don’t believe in it and I take BC +3.5 on the road.
10. #46 Vanderbilt at #60 Virginia Tech (-1.5), 7:30, ACC. This is a weird line. Virginia Tech did not get blown out by South Carolina, which is something I guess, but Vanderbilt is probably the better team. I know it’s hard to believe in Vandy because of its history, but it could win 7 games or in the SEC, which is better than the Hokies would do. So I take Vanderbilt.

I was 7-3 against the spread last week, making me 9-5 this season. Not a bad start!