Welcome back, college sports fans, to episode 682, the Sunday edition. Normally, we will post the Evaluation (aka the Top 266) on Sunday morning, but we have more games to play this week. The NFL has finished their preseason and take Labor Day weekend off to rest/recover for week 1. College football takes advantage of that by playing both today and tomorrow! Look for the first complete Evaluation Tuesday.
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W Michigan (0-1/107) just missed out with a huge victory over Michigan (1-0/65) when the first Hail Mary missed the mark. We watched that play and saw 0:00. The Broncos rushed the field to celebrate as was expected. Upon review, there was one second left. The second prayer worked and Michigan gets credit for a 13-12 win. WMI just about joined UMASS as MAC Big Ten giant killers. What’s more interesting to us than the possibility of a tick left is that, just before the previous play, the referees added a second to the clock. If Michigan has a so-so year not making the playoffs, no one (other than Bronco fans) will remember. If they do make a championship run, we think this will be like the Colorado 5th down play. For those that don’t remember, Colorado was losing to Missouri in 1990 but had a 1st and goal as time was expiring. They spiked first down, had an incomplete second down after which the guy on the side failed to flip to 3rd down. On the next play, the failed to score prompting a spike on what should have been fourth down to stop the clock. On the next play, they scored and won the game. Colorado finished the year 11-1-1 and were co-champions with Georgia Tech. Maybe if they knew it was 4th down, they don’t spike, run the same play they did on 5th down and won the game anyway. Maybe they can’t get the play off or fail to score on 4th and lose the championship. We just don’t know. This controversy for Michigan has the same flavor. We saw the replay video and it’s iffy. Let us know in the comments what you think.
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Kudos go out to Tarleton (2-0/87), the FCS school who beat Bowling Green (0-1/125), and FCS Citadel (1-1/159) who took out Charlotte (0-1/123). We also had a tremendous ending in the only neutral site game when Auburn (1-0/60) edged Baylor (0-1/91) 17-16 when the Bears went for 2 for the win only to be thwarted by the War Tiger defense. For those not in the heat dome, temperatures at southern games were sweltering. Many games set temperature records with heat indexes well over 100. One Division II game ended in a tie when neither team felt it was safe to play overtime.
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But today is about the rare Sunday college football game. We have 6 on the slate today including a game that was weathered out yesterday: W Carolina (1-0/99) at Campbell (1-0/98). In the table below, times are Eastern Time and assumed to be p.m., unless otherwise stated. Away teams are listed first in both the Games and Conference columns. (N) after the teams listed in Games indicates a neutral site game – there are 3 today. If only one conference is listed, it is a conference game. There was no Vegas line for the TXSO/PV or SCST/FLAM games when we published this, so we listed NL.
| Time (ET) | Games of September 6th | Conference | Vegas | GCR | Cover | TV |
| 11:00 AM | W Carolina (1-0/99) at Campbell (1-0/98) (make up from 9/5) | SoCon/CAA | WCAR -4.0 | WCAR | WCAR | FloFootball |
| 12:00 | TX Southern (1-0/118) at Prairie View (0-1/216) | SWAC | NL | TXSO | — | ESPN2 |
| 3:00 | SC St (1-0/141) / Florida A&M (1-0/148) (N) | MEAC/SWAC | NL | FLAM | — | ESPN |
| 4:00 | Washington St (0-0/164) at Washington (0-0/164) | PAC/B10 | WASH -23.5 | — | — | NBC |
| 7:30 | Wisconsin (0-0/164) / Notre Dame (0-0/164) (N) | B10/IND | ND -20.5 | — | — | NBC |
| 7:30 | Louisville (0-0/164) / Mississippi (0-0/164) (N) | ACC/SEC | MISS -7.0 | — | — | ABC |
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That’s it for today. Enjoy the middle of the long Labor Day weekend. Tune in tomorrow for Monday Night Football, college style. Until then, thank you for reading (it’s why we publish), commenting/suggesting (it’s how we get better), and, especially, for sharing with others (it’s how we grow), JoJo and G.
