College Football Week 7 Viewing Guide: What to watch at the USF tailgate

This is the first Saturday with a USF football home game in over a month. So for once, you won’t be at home all day with the remote in your hand, trying to find the best game going. We know what you’re watching at 7:30, but if you’re in charge of the TV at your tailgate, or if you don’t live in Tampa, here’s what the rest of the college schedule looks like today.

For entertainment value and quality games, this is looking like a very Big 12 and Pac-12 heavy day.

12:00 p.m. TCU suddenly finds itself in the Big 12 driver’s seat, but waiting for them in Manhattan is a purple speed bump. (Such metaphor. Very hack.) Texas Tech and West Virginia should also be a good game. And if Tennessee loses to South Carolina at home, they may bring Butch Jones out to midfield right after the game and fire him in front of everyone.

3:30 p.m. I went to a concert just across the Red River in Oklahoma last night and drove up I-35 to get there. Both Texas and Oklahoma had their electronic highway signs set up for everyone headed to Dallas for the annual Red River Shootout Rivalry Showdown.

On the Texas side of I-35, the signs said:

BE SAFE
DRIVE SMART
BEAT OU

HORNS UP
PHONES DOWN
FOR SAFETY

As soon as I crossed the border into Oklahoma, the signs switched to this:

DRIVE SAFELY
TO BEAT TEXAS

UP WITH SAFETY
DOWN WITH
HORNS

If you ever get a chance to go to a Texas-OU game, take it. The Cotton Bowl is an antique death trap and it’s usually hot and muggy or pouring down rain, but there’s nothing else like this game in college football. The stadium is split right down the middle between Oklahoma and Texas fans, the State Fair of Texas is going on all around it, and strange things happen in this game all the time. No other rivalry game, with the possible exception of Michigan-Michigan State, delivers so many laughs year in and year out.

Or you can watch Navy-Memphis, which will be decided by whoever gets to 60 points first.

7:30 p.m. Even if you weren’t going to be at the USF game, there aren’t any really compelling games in the evening time slots. Just watch USF. (And oh hey, there’s USC hogging up another prime TV slot that could have gone to Washington. Chris Petersen should have asked who died and made USC king in his rant about being stuck in late-night time slots. That would have been a much better argument. The last time the Trojans won the Pac-12 was 2008, when it was still the Pac-10.)

10:30 p.m. Considering we just had two highly ranked teams get popped by big home underdogs on Friday night, Washington might want to watch themselves at Arizona State. That game has #Pac12AfterDark written all over it. You can also watch Oregon-Stanford, or you can once again root in vain for San Diego State to lose, although they’re playing Boise so there might actually be a chance this time.