Brian Kelly vs. Mike Leach, a Notre Dame win watch, and more from college football’s unranked

LSU, Notre Dame, and Florida State headline the flip-around games in Week 3 of college football

PublishedSeptember 16, 2022

We may earn a commission from links on this page.

Start Slideshow

Image for article titled Brian Kelly vs. Mike Leach, a Notre Dame win watch, and more from college football’s unranked — Image: Getty Images

There are so many good games featuring at least one ranked school this weekend that it’s easy to overlook the unranked matchups that are still compelling this early in the season before teams amass nicks and cuts and flaws and people deem their season a loss. If you’ve only got one TV/screen, you’re doing it wrong, but I like to refer to these as flip-around games.

Obviously, the biggest contests should be front and center — Miami-Texas A&M, Oregon-BYU, etc. — and then in between commercial breaks and lopsided matchups, you peruse the slate of secondary games. There’s an art to watching college football and planting yourself on a couch for 12-plus hours with no break in the action to suffer more pregame. At the end of Saturday, do I feel greasy like I just spent all day traveling because I’ve only walked to the bathroom and kitchen, periodically sweated uncomfortably, and have eaten the most pre-made, mindless food imaginable? Of course, but those bed sores are badges of honor.

So allow me to help you keep the pigskin streaming until the last glob of that seven-layer dip that definitely shouldn’t have been dinner is gone.

Previous Slide

Next Slide

2 / 6

Florida State gets Friday night to itself

Let’s start your weekend of football early with Mike Norvell and Jordan Travis’ (above) follow-up to beating LSU. After a bye week, the Seminoles start conference play against a Louisville Cardinals squad led by Malik Cunningham. The Cardinals aren’t a great team. They lost the opener in Syracuse, 31-7, and had to rally to beat UCF, 20-14, last Friday.

However, it’s their first home game of the season, and they did beat Florida State a year ago. My guess is the betting public loves the ’Noles because they were last seen triumphing in New Orleans and that -2.5 seems like easy money. If they are as crisp — save for that fumble that almost cost them the game — as they were against the Tigers, they’ll be closing in on the Top 25 after another impressive road win.

Previous Slide

Next Slide

3 / 6

Purdue and Syracuse wake you up with offense

Once Georgia takes control of South Carolina, and the nostalgia wears off of Nebraska-Oklahoma, can I interest you in a little Big Ten-ACC showdown between the Orange and the Boilermakers that could feature more points than a basketball game between the two schools? Each team is putting up right around 40 points and more than 450 yards per game.

Cuse QB Garrett Shrader (above) has 10 incompletions all season and an immaculate 5-0 TD-INT ratio. Purdue signal caller Aiden O’Connell came incredibly close to upsetting Penn State in the season opener, and also has a 5-0 TD-INT mark. The over-under on this game is 60. It should be a track meet, especially in the JMA Wireless Dome. The early window returns to its sleepy self after Alabama-Texas last Saturday, but that just lets you ease into the day so you don’t have to take a Xanax before the afternoon contests.

Previous Slide

Next Slide

4 / 6

If Marcus Freeman loses to Cal he’s actually 0-3

Notre Dame is unranked after entering the season with lofty expectations. The loss to Marshall was alarming, but the stat floating around about Marcus Freeman being the first Irish coach to start his career 0-3 is one of those oddities that the ESPN stats and research crew finds to make the 45th Sportscenter of the day seem interesting.

Brain Kelly’s departure was such a punt to the junk that Freeman getting the team to its bowl game was an accomplishment in itself. Honestly, the way Freeman handled it probably played a major factor in him going from interim to permanent head coach.

That said, if he loses to Cal, it’s going to get really ugly, really quickly in South Bend. Those fans don’t care if Tyler Buchner is done for the season. This is Notre Dame. Freeman said he has the utmost confidence in Buchner and now starter-by-default Drew Pyne, so this should game should be a romp.

The Golden Bears are a Pac-12 team though, and Jack Plummer, son of Jake, has Cal off to a 2-0 start with wins over UC Davis and UNLV. The Golden Domers are 12-point favorites at home for a game set to kick an hour before the rest of the afternoon docket. I would recommend watching without sound, or on your second screen, because listening to the new Notre Dame booth Jac Collinsworth and Jason Garrett is a level of hell I didn’t know existed.

Previous Slide

Next Slide

5 / 6

Yes, Brian Kelly, it’s like this every week in the SEC

The only thing Brian Kelly and Mike Leach have in common is occupation. I imagine dinner at Kelly’s would be an uptight affair with special forks and conversation over wine and maybe a Michelob Ultra. There’s a 95 percent chance that Leach answers the door without shoes or socks, a 50-50 split if he’s wearing a shirt, and no way you’re eating off the good plates — if he has those at all.

This is Kelly’s SEC debut as coach of LSU, and I couldn’t imagine a better opponent than Mississippi State and Leach. Bulldog quarterback Will Rogers has 763 yards passing and nine touchdowns in two games, and was a big reason for LSU fans’ early season panic a year ago that led to the midseason firing of defensive coordinator Bo Pelini and eventually head coach Ed Orgeron.

Rogers went 47-of-62 for 371 yards, three scores, and an interception in a 25-28 loss a year ago, and has already attempted 98 passes in two games this season. Despite Leach’s demeanor, he has no chill and would like nothing more than to welcome Kelly to the conference with an L.

The contest kicks at 6 p.m. EST on ESPN, but we know the party starts when you wake up in Baton Rouge.

6 / 6