Opening Weekend: College football must-watch games
Yahoo Sports Daily hosts Caroline Fenton and Jason Fitz preview the opening weekend in college football and highlight their most-intriguing matchups this weekend. Watch the full episode of Yahoo Sports Daily on YouTube or YahooSports.TV .
Video Transcript
One week zero matchup I'm looking at is Virginia, NC State.
We're getting an ACC conference matchup in August.
Sign me up for that every single time.
I'm looking at Virginia.
A lot of people forget, Virginia was in the ACC championship game last year.
A lot of people forget, Virginia won 10 games last year.
They had a double-digit win season and got to the conference championship game, and nobody is talking about the Hoos.
So this year is gonna be a lot of, can they follow that up?
Can they be a perennial nine and three, 10 and two, relevant in the ACC kind of football program?
Beau Furbula comes in.
It's a name that you might recognize.
He was a backup at Penn State.
He transferred to Missouri.
He got banged up at Missouri.
He now transfers to Virginia.
So it's a, it's a high caliber, a high profile quarterback that they're bringing in, that now that he's healthy and in a new offense.
NC State is a fascinating case study to me.
NC State has not won double digit games since 2002.
I was in kindergarten.
It's about time for NC State to be nationally relevant again.
And I'm saying nationally relevant in the lens of they're nationally relevant in November.
We talk a lot about NC State, I feel like, in the preseason and the off-season, and they just kind of fall off into irrelevancy.
But w- this year feels like the year that they can do it.
CJ Bailey gives them the opportunity to do that.
I mean, he had over 3,000 passing yards last year, didn't turn the ball over, he can make plays with his legs.
So I think this is a fascinating case study on two teams that are really trying to prove themselves in the ACC.
You lose this one, and all of a sudden it's an uphill climb in the ACC conversations.
I find this one fascinating.
I will give you a game that's off a lot of people's radar, but it shouldn't be because it actually matters for the college football playoff.
How's that for a sales pitch out of the gate?
Because we have a group of five matchup out of the gate that will matter.
We get Memphis versus UNLV in a game that- Let's go UNLV's coaches and staff have, have come straight out from the gate and said, "Hey, this thing matters.
This is going to matter at the end of the year for the conference conversation, for the playoff conversation."
This game is in Vegas, which I think actually helps Memphis a ton if Memphis is able to turn around and get a win.
Memphis bringing in new coaching staff, a lot of new in Memphis.
UNLV keeping a lot of the same, right?
So if you're UNLV, you bring back Mullen, and Mullen has come in and said from the outset that he believes this is a team that is capable of making the college football playoff.
So they have consistently become right on the edge of it.
They gotta figure their quarterback situation out.
They're going to figure out their quarterback situation, I think, over the course of the f- first few weeks.
Jackson Arnold comes in, transfer, gonna get a lot of attention.
But Alex Orji, who a, not a lot of you may remember from Michigan, is still trying to play his way into this game.
There are a ton of quarterback questions to be answered, but this is a team that's not gonna be afraid to run the football.
Jayden Thomas, somebody I've already told you about last year, over 1,300 cumulative yards for him.
He is going to be explosive in this offense.
He finished second in yard per carries with over seven yards a carry.
UNLV ranked sixth last year in carries of 10 plus more yard, 10 or more yards.
So this is an explosive rushing offense that needs to come out and be explosive.
The one thing that makes these games sort of angsty for me, Caroline, one reason I love these games, is that they do mean more.
The SEC tells you all the time, it just means more.
One bad showing, whether it's week zero or whether it's week 10, one bad showing for group of five can be enough to eliminate you from the college football playoff conversation altogether.
While it, it's, it's a week zero game, so we expect some rough edges, it means so much to both of these teams, two teams I have a lot of love for.
I think this one matters more
