College football Week 2 gets started tonight, although the Thursday & Friday games of Pitt-Cincinnati and Utah-Utah State aren’t reason to get that excited. There are some good games on the Saturday undercard though, so let’s run through a list of games that might not fall in the category of games that make you clear three hours on the schedule to watch, but are certainly worthy of clearing 10-15 minutes to check in on the results of…
No college football conference in the country had the kind of impactful first week the ACC did. TheSportsNotebook looked at the implications of Virginia Tech’s win over Georgia Tech on Monday night as part of the Week 1 recap. But the ACC also had the most consequential injury—Florida State defensive end Brandon Jenkins is lost for the year. Florida State was a trendy pick to win the ACC (including here) and to compete for the national championship (not including here). Can they fulfill those goals without Jenkins?
The ACC usually isn’t known for its football and given that the last sighting of such involved Clemson getting seventy points hung on them in the Orange Bowl against West Virginia, perhaps that’s understandable. Whether the conference can legitimately compete with national powers this year remains to be seen, but if nothing else, the league has a lot of experienced teams and the push to be in Charlotte on December 1 when the championship is settled should be a good one. TheSportsNotebook offers a brief overview of the ACC football landscape…