Week 3 college football open thread: The biggest showdown is off the field

Week 3 brings another early-season Saturday without many showdowns for college football fans. But one that many may not have anticipated — including Florida Gators fans — might affect their ability to watch games this evening.

That’s because Disney — ESPN’s parent company — and AT&T are currently squabbling over Disney attempting to raise carriage rates for several channels (including ESPN and the SEC Network) as AT&T pushes back. Your mileage may vary on which side is in the right in this or other cable provider/channel operator disputes, but the end result for fans may well be not seeing their favorite team this evening, depending on their cable provider.

Florida fans who want to watch Florida-Kentucky at 7 p.m. and don’t have assurances that they will have access to ESPN might want to consider finding the nearest bar or friend that will have it for certain.

Before the evening, though, we’ll see the return of SEC on CBS action at 3:30 p.m. Eastern — with Alabama traveling to South Carolina for the first time since Stephen Garcia and Steve Spurrier combined to upset the Crimson Tide in 2010 — and a couple of other interesting games (UCF hosting Stanford, USC traveling to BYU) in the late afternoon block.

And while our eyes will certainly be glued to Florida’s attempt to restart a winning streak against the Wildcats in the primetime window, there are some decent games elsewhere, as Florida State heads to Virginia as an underdog and Oklahoma comes to UCLA as a vanquisher. Don’t sleep on Clemson’s trip to Syracuse, either: The Orange have been notoriously tough for the Tigers in recent years, though Trevor Lawrence was only briefly a factor in last year’s narrow Clemson victory thanks to injury.

Here’s the full Week 3 TV/streaming schedule. (Note: The links leading to ESPN+ in this table are affiliate links, meaning that if you sign up for ESPN+ through them, Alligator Army will receive a small percentage in return.)