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College Football Viewing Guide: Week 2

Week one of the college football season delivered an all-week buffet of games. Week two is a bit more condensed, but it brings with it some great games. Here’s your college football viewing guide.

NCAA Football: Iowa at Iowa State
It’s week 2 in college football. That can mean only one thing. El Assico returns!
Reese Strickland-USA TODAY Sports

How do you follow up an opening weekend with 5 consecutive days of college football? How do you possibly do that? You don’t. So I suppose it’s to be expected that college football didn’t even try.

Coming off that smorgasbord of games in week one, week two of the college football season doesn’t include a single FBS matchup on Thursday night (granted, there’s an NFL game tonight and who wants to compete with that? - also, you can catch Kennesaw State at Tenessee Tech on ESPNU at 6pm if you’re really starved for the college game). If that wasn’t bad enough, after being treated to a slew of Friday games last week, we have only one this week. And Saturday’s slate doesn’t exactly make up the difference, though there is plenty of quantity.

So, without further adieu, let’s take a look at the weekend’s full slate of games.

Note: All times are as the good Lord intended, in the central time zone. For that is where the college football Mecca known as Kinnick Stadium lies.

Friday Game

As noted above, there’s only one game to catch on Friday evening. I’d like to tell you it’s going to be great, but Courtland Sutton is no longer catching everything within 20 miles of the Dallas metro so I have little faith in SMU to hang with #16 TCU tomorrow night. But alas, it’s college football and it’s on TV. You can catch this one at 7pm CT on ESPN2.

Friday, September 20th

Matchup Time (CT) TV Streaming
Matchup Time (CT) TV Streaming
FAU at #16 UCF 6:00 PM ESPN WatchESPN.com
#10 Penn State at Illinois 8:00 PM FS1 FoxSportsGo.com
Washington State at USC 9:30 PM ESPN WatchESPN.com

Saturday Games

Saturday is full of games given the lack of mid-week games in week 2. Unfortunately, there’s more quantity than quality on Saturday.

Things get kicked off in the 11am time slot with #5 Wisconsin hosting New Mexico on BTN. As I suspect you won’t need to tune into that one for long, best to check out ESPN. There you’ll find #18 Mississippi State at Kansas State. FS1 has #21 Michigan hosting Western Michigan. Duke is at Northwestern on ESPNU. And ABC and ESPN2 are mirroring Arizona at Houston and Georgia Tech at South Florida. Yeah.

FOX is doing it’s part to keep things moving with their staggered start times. They have UCLA at #6 Oklahoma at noon central.

The 2:30 pm CT time slot has a bunch of highly rated teams paying money to destroy miserable opponents. ESPN2 has #1 Alabama hosting Arkansas State. Rutgers is at #4 Ohio State on BTN. And NBC has Ball State at #8 Notre Dame.

As for potentially good matchups at 2:30, check out CBS for #3 Georgia at #24 South Carolina. You can also watch what would have been a tremendous game about 25 years ago on ABC as Nebraska hosts Colorado.

Of course, the game of the week is at 4pm on FOX.

The evening slate isn’t much better than the early games. The SEC has a pair of games on their network at 6:30 with #7 Auburn hosting Alabama..... State, and Kentucky (Ahmad Wagner watch) at #25 Florida. The Big Ten also has a pair of games at 6:30. Illinois is hosting Western Illinois and Virginia is at Indiana.

Arkansas at Colorado State could be interesting. That’s also at 6:30 on CBSSN. Iowa’s week one opponent, Northern Illinois, will also get another test as they host Utah this week. That one’s on ESPN News. And Fresno State is at Minnesota on FS1.

At 7pm CT, #12 Penn State is at Pitt on ABC. I’ll be interested to see how Penn State responds to the close call with App State a week ago. I’ve long been beating the “James Franklin isn’t actually good” drum. Let’s see how game two post-Saquon Barkley and Joe Moorhead treats him.

FOX keeps up their solid slate with their 7:30 matchup. #17 USC is at #10 Stanford in what is probably the best matchup of the week (outside of ¡El Assico!, of course).

With the minimal early week schedule, we get a chance to bring back the #Pac12AfterDark this week. At 9:15 pm CT you can catch Cal at BYU on ESPN2. At 9:45, #15 Michigan State is on the road at Arizona State to take on the fightin’ Eno Benjamins. That’s worth a watch.

And finally, it’s a damn shame that you have to stream it on WatchStadium.com, but America’s team, Hawai’i, is hosting Rice 10:59 pm CT. Not 11, not 10:55, but 10:59.

Here’s the full schedule for Saturday.

Saturday, September 22nd

Matchup Time (CT) TV Streaming
Matchup Time (CT) TV Streaming
#2 Georgia at Missouri 11:00 AM ESPN WatchESPN.com
#8 Notre Dame at Wake Forest 11:00 AM ABC WatchESPN.com
Nebraska at #19 Michigan 11:00 AM FS1 FoxSportsGo.com
#23 Boston College at Purdue 11:00 AM ESPN2 WatchESPN.com
Kent State at Ole Miss 11:00 AM SECN WatchESPN.com
Buffalo at Rutgers 11:00 AM BTN FoxSportsGo.com
Minnesota at Maryland 11:00 AM BTN FoxSportsGo.com
Akron at Iowa State 11:00 AM FSN FoxSportsGo.com
Ohio at Cincinnati 11:00 AM ESPNU WatchESPN.com
Nevada at Toledo 11:00 AM CBSSN CBSSports.com
Navy at SMU 11:00 AM ESPNN WatchESPN.com
Pittsburgh at North Carolina 11:20 AM ACCNE WatchESPN.com
Louisville at Virginia 11:30 AM ACCNE WatchESPN.com
Western Michigan at Georgia State 1:00 PM ESPN+ ESPN+
Miami (OH) at Bowling Green 2:00 PM ESPN+ ESPN+
Western Kentucky at Ball State 2:00 PM ESPN3 WatchESPN.com
Illinois State at Colorado State 2:00 PM ATTSN ATTSN.com
Maine at Central Michigan 2:00 PM ESPN+ ESPN+
#22 Texas A&M at #1 Alabama 2:30 PM CBS CBSSports.com
#3 Clemson at Georgia Tech 2:30 PM ABC WatchESPN.com
Tulane at #4 Ohio State 2:30 PM BTN FoxSportsGo.com
Kansas State at #12 West Virginia 2:30 PM ESPN WatchESPN.com
#13 Virginia Tech at Old Dominion 2:30 PM CBSSN CBSSports.com
Florida International at #21 Miami 2:30 PM ESPNU WatchESPN.com
Gardner-Webb at Appalachian State 2:30 PM ESPN+ ESPN+
Charlotte at UMass 2:30 PM None UMassAthletics.com
North Carolina Central at Duke 2:30 PM ACCNE WatchESPN.com
Northern Illinois at Florida State 2:30 PM ESPNU WatchESPN.com
Kansas at Baylor 2:30 PM FS1 FoxSportsGo.com
Arizona at Oregon State 3:00 PM PAC12 Pac-12.com
South Carolina at Vanderbilt 3:00 PM SECN WatchESPN.com
UConn at Syracuse 3:00 PM ESPNN WatchESPN.com
#17 TCU at Texas 3:30 PM FOX FoxSportsGo.com
McNeese at #25 BYU 5:00 PM ESPN3 WatchESPN.com
North Texas at Liberty 5:00 PM ESPN3 WatchESPN.com
Army at #5 Oklahoma 6:00 PM PPV Soonersports.com
Louisiana Tech at #6 LSU 6:00 PM ESPNU WatchESPN.com
#14 Mississippi State at Kentucky 6:00 PM ESPN2 WatchESPN.com
Texas Tech at #15 Oklahoma State 6:00 PM FS1 FoxSportsGo.com
Rice at Southern Miss 6:00 PM ESPN+ ESPN+
Texas State at UTSA 6:00 PM ESPN+ ESPN+
UNLV at Arkansas State 6:00 PM ESPN3 WatchESPN.com
Coastal Carolina at Louisiana 6:00 PM ESPN+ ESPN+
Troy at UL Monroe 6:00 PM ESPN+ ESPN+
NC State at Marshall 6:00 PM CBSSN CBSSports.com
Florida at Tennessee 6:00 PM ESPN WatchESPN.com
Arkansas at #9 Auburn 6:30 PM SECN WatchESPN.com
#24 Michigan State at Indiana 6:30 PM BTN FoxSportsGo.com
New Mexico State at UTEP 6:30 PM ESPN3 WatchESPN.com
#7 Stanford at #20 Oregon 7:00 PM ABC WatchESPN.com
East Carolina at South Florida 7:00 PM ESPNN WatchESPN.com
Texas Southern at Houston 7:00 PM ESPN3 WatchESPN.com
South Alabama at Memphis 7:00 PM ESPN3 WatchESPN.com
#18 Wisconsin at Iowa 7:30 PM FOX FoxSportsGo.com
Arizona State at #10 Washington 9:30 PM ESPN WatchESPN.com
Air Force at Utah State 9:30 PM ESPN2 WatchESPN.com
Eastern Michigan at San Diego State 9:30 PM CBSSN CBSSports.com
Duquesne at Hawai'i 10:59 PM None WatchStadium.com

So that’s that for week 2 of the college football season.

As for the beverage this week, I think the choice is obvious. It’s Iowa State weekend. A time where brothers and friends become enemies. And at a time like this I think it’s important to remember at the end of the day, we’re all Iowans (transitive property?). We may like different teams, but we’re all good people (all is a stretch, most some of us are good people). And any game featuring two teams from the state of Iowa is deserving of the most Iowa beer in the land.

Image via foodandwine.com

It’s very representative of the game itself. Is it particularly good? No. Do you really want it to exist? Probably not. But it’s here and it’s all Iowa, baby!

Long live ¡El Assico! Go Hawks!