The first week of college football is normally quite amusing
Published on HivePostify by @sports.guy55 · Sat Sep 05 2026
If you are not a big fan of NCAA football then you might not be aware of how they system of lining up a team's games works. I have been a fan since I was 7 years old and honestly, I don't really know how it works either.
However, at the start of every year there are normally some games that are meant to get the fans all riled up but these games are almost always some seriously lopsided games where one teams is almost certainly going to get absolutely destroyed.
[src](https://s.espncdn.com/stitcher/sports/football/college-football/events/401856634.png?templateId=espn.com.share.1)
Alabama, as you may recall from Forrest Gump, is a football school and always has been. their legacy as being one of the greats extends deep into borderline corrupt situations and now that college football is basically allowed to pay their student-athletes (that's another conversation) you can be assured that Alabama is going to remain good forevermore. They have an incredible booster and alumni network and even though they are ranked a mere 14th at the start of the season. East Carolina has only been a good team like once in their entire history as a team.
Alabama is basically guaranteed to completely run away with this one and is currently favored by the bookies to win by 28.5 points.
ECU can only really accomplish one thing in this, and that is to not look completely foolish. If they can hold Bama to say, 20 points or so, that is essentially a win for them. We will find out in 8 hours as it is an early game.
Other nutso matchups that have already happened or are going to soon include 7th ranked Miami(Florida) playing against unranked Stanford. This one isn't as bad because Stanford from time to time is a decent team and a rather prestigious school to go to. They have a leg up on ECU in that regard since most people don't even know that East Carolina University is a real place, a real school, with 30,000 studnets.
Stanford got destroyed in this game 45-6 and honestly, those 6 points were kind of like "let's let em have a few field goals between our touchdowns." It could have been a much greater victory than this if Miami hadn't pumped the brakes in the 4th quarter as well. At some point it becomes kind of frowned upon and a bit mean to run up the score unnecessarily.
Number 10 ranked Oklahoma has a lot to prove this year seeing as how they have been an "almost" team for a number of years consecutively as of now. What better way to send a message to the sport world than by defeating UTEP (who?) 51-0.
Honestly, most of these week one games aren't really even worth watching if you are the favored team because well, of course you were going to win, and if you are a fan of the underdogs it can be a bit demoralizing to see your team just get walked all over.
It's not a great way to start out the season when you know that if you were playing a team that was actually good you would be getting completely worked. It can't do much for the recruiting process either. No potential player is going to want to go to UTEP to play after seeing them get whalloped like they were a high school team out there.
One game could be good with Notre Dame (ranked number 4) vs Wisconsin (unranked). I say this because Wisconsin is continuously underestimated and they are also in the Big 10, which for whatever reason the press seems to hate.
Something else that is going on that is ticking a lot of people off is that now that college players can be "paid" in a way, LSU hit the ground running on this one and actually recruited players that are already playing in the NFL. I don't know how this is legal but it's unprecedented to the point where there was a legal battle over this. Clemson (who LSU plays in week one) was stating that "college football as we know it, as a fair sport, is now over."
in response LSU has decided to bench their NFL players for the game vs Clemson even though they are not required to do so.
It could be an interesting year but this first week's games are always pretty lopsided. I'll have to look into why that is. The real games aren't going to start until week 2 or 3, and in that regard it is a lot like the NFL>
Tags: #americanfootball#ncaa#lsu#ecu#alabama#upcoming-games#betting#gambling