Game of the weekend: #2 Oregon at #16 Washington, 3pm, Fox Sports 1
It may only be week seven, but the beauty of college football is that it already feels like the playoffs - and this is game two of the three-game round-robin playoff between Oregon, Stanford, and Washington in the Pac-12 North.
Washington lost game one of the series, a 31-28 heartbreaker at Stanford last week, and comes home to Seattle knowing that a 10th consecutive loss to Oregon will derail the chances of the best Huskies team in years. With coach Steve Sarkisian the focus of the USC coaching rumor mill, you could excuse UW fans for feeling like this is their best chance for greatness.
Over in Oregon, meanwhile, the University of Nike juggernaut keeps chugging along, despite the departure of head coach Chip Kelly to the NFL. The Ducks haven't been tested yet, under new coach Mark Helfrich -- their closest win so far was a 55-16 destruction of Cal, and Oregon led that game 41-3 at halftime.
The SEC gets the press, but the Pac-12 may be the best league in college football. Even better, this game is at a normal time in the afternoon, instead of being one of those late-night post-apocalyptic West Coast slugfests that ends at 1am Central time.
Your weekend viewing schedule
2:30 Saturday: #17 Florida at #10 LSU, CBS. First, if you didn't read Patrick Reusse's story of how he became an LSU football fan while growing up on the Minnesota prairie, I encourage you to do so. Second, Florida is an offensive disaster, but LSU has grinning death-train conductor Les Miles at the helm, so who knows what will happen in Louisiana today.
7 pm Saturday: Dallas at Wild, FSN / New Hampshire at Gophers, FSN PLUS. It's your first chance of the year to flip back and forth between the two local hockey squads. The Gophers looked good in dismantling Mercyhurst last night; the Wild have looked less so in their four games. Curse one, hit the swap button on your remote, and watch until you curse the other and flip back. Hockey!
