Do Not Rage At Your Most Online Fans

Welcome to the Defector College Football Watch Guide, where Israel Daramola and Ray Ratto will tell you which of the weekend’s college football games are worth giving a crap about.

Ray: It’s been a tough year for Texas A&M and coach Mike Elko, who celebrated the Aggies’ 27-6 loss to Missouri last Saturday by calling the team’s leading social media outlet a cesspool and, two days later, apologized for calling the team’s leading social media outlet a cesspool. Elko also said that he is the reason Texas A&M is struggling, which is probably what the team’s leading social media outlet was saying about him after his team lost at home by three scores. This is that rare case where someone can be right all three times, making Saturday’s showdown with The Citadel a must-watch game just to see what Elko says afterward if his Aggies don’t cover the 45.5-point spread. Otherwise, it’s just another weekend in college football’s version of paradise, if that’s what you consider your afterlife goal.

Israel: We are near midseason, and exactly as we predicted the most exciting programs in the sport are Will Stein’s Kentucky and Bob Chesney’s UCLA. Bill Belichick’s UNC team keeps losing, but they’re too scrappy and full of energy to make fun of or even care about. Deion Sanders’s Colorado team is a complete mess but are too dull and incompetent to fuel much schadenfreude. And Lane Kiffin cannot get the stank of the Brian Kelly era off LSU in one offseason, it turns out. And all the best teams are just kinda humming along uncontroversially, save for the occasional bad referee call. Texas lost the Red River Shootout to a mid-to-bad Oklahoma team, but that is just something that happens in that game.