There’s Too Much Football Happening

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: Week 0 is behind us, as well you might want it to be if you watched South Carolina State beat Savannah State 87-0 in Saturday. There will be more of that this week, undoubtedly, and every one of those games will serve as blessed relief from the hailstorm of turgid analyses about North Carolina being 1-0 without Mike Lombardi and TCU being 0-1 without the Fort Worth Star-Telegram (and yes, there may be lessons in those disparate things for all of us). But we have miles and thousands of administrative outrages to go before we sleep, starting with five days of ball glut as the industry tries to keep up with the NFL’s new promotional masterstroke of Extreme Calendar Glut.

But here’s something to make your blood run cold this early in the year: Bill Belichick is the only coach who could conceivably win the season’s opening and closing game, and if that happens, spring will next emerge in 2183, at which point Punxsutawney Phil will have been replaced by an eye-clawing psychobadger from the 11th dimension.