Week 8 college football open thread: Get it over early

This is a good week for Florida Gators fans to get out and see the world on a Saturday, rather than devoting it to college football.

But there are, of course, some delights to be had if you stick around on your couch beyond what is a rather pleasantly loaded noon hour.

Florida’s trip to South Carolina (noon, ESPN) is probably the biggest and possibly the most competitive game of the early window, but West Virginia taking a shot at troubling Oklahoma and Louisville getting Clemson at home are both interesting tilts in their own ways. Iowa State and Texas Tech are also meeting in a game between teams that have arguments to be ranked.

If you put in your time from noon to 3:30, though, you have seen basically the caliber of game you’re going to get today. At 3:30, LSU travels to Mississippi State in what should be a walkover on CBS, and ranked Oregon and Washington teams meet in one of the fiercest rivalries no one east of the Rockies cares about; at night, Michigan at Penn State is supposed to get the juices flowing for ABC, but it’s flanked by a lot of potential beatdowns, like Tennessee traveling to Alabama.

Personally, I’m going to seriously consider what’s playing in my local multiplex — remember the word multiplex — this evening.