One of my laws of college football is this: Competition creates competitors. Teams that feast on cupcakes in early September will spend the rest of the season puking up frosting. I considered this rule ironclad and inviolable until the rise of Indiana, which treats challenging non-conference games the way most of us would react to finding a dead rat in our breakfast.
Hayden Fry's notorious theory about scheduling those non-conference games was "a tune-up, a toss-up, and Iowa State." For most of Hayden's tenure Iowa State was a second tune-up, but I digress. It's fair to say I stole my idea from him. A team that arrives at a challenging conference schedule without having been seriously tested at least once is significantly less likely to make it through the season unscathed.
Indiana has now provided at least one counter-example to my theory, but it's too soon to tell whether that is actual data or just an anecdote. For the teams in my purview, since they're unlikely to make the playoff, the cost of a non-conference loss is mostly pride and maybe a slide down the rankings, if they're even in them.
Why do I bring this up? No idea, but it's certainly not because of Nebraska's kitten-belly-soft non-conference schedule this season. Bill Snyder scheduled tougher opponents at K-State.
Anyway, the games. This looks like a good week to get any of that pesky yard work done because these games should be darn near unwatchable.
Akron at Minnesota (11 am, BTN): It's tempting to crack wise about Minnesota playing one of the many interchangeable Ohio MAC schools, but since the Gophers got pantsed by Mississippi State last weekend I'll let it slide. Akron got a lot of free publicity last week by allowing a fan to call the offensive plays on its opening drive, only for that drive to stall out when one of the Zips fumbled, which is the most Akron thing ever. The Zips should maybe just let AI call all the plays this week; it wouldn't affect the result. Minny 44, Akron 7.
Eastern Michigan at Wisconsin (11:30 am, Peacock): Here is another theoretically unforgiveable game that can be looked past after the goshawful season the Badgers had last year. After all, what is MAC football other than an escort service for Big Ten programs? Wisconsin 38, EMU 17.
Southern Illinois at Illinois (1 pm, Peacock): Speaking of clandestine transactions, here's another one, but at least SIU is pretty good. Not "beat the flagship of its own state" good since they did lose in their opening game to a school that just moved up to Division II, but still, pretty good. Illinois 48, SIU 20.
Northern Iowa at Iowa (3 pm, FS1): Iowa has played NIU and UNI. So why does it refuse to play INU, IUN, NUI, and UIN? What is Kirk Ferentz afraid of? Smash that 'like' button and hit 'subscribe' for more deceptive content! Iowa 33, UNI 10.
North Dakota at Nebraska (6:15 pm, BTN): The joke is potentially on the Huskers here since the [Googles] Fighting Hawks are ranked No. 6 in the FCS this week. I think they're hoping that everyone thinks they're playing North Dakota State, which the Huskers would never do. Of course, they played Ohio University in the season opener, not Ohio State (that game is coming) and for three quarters it was dangerously close to disaster. UND doesn't have the horses to run with Nebraska for four quarters, but it probably does for three. Again. Nebraska 42, UND 23.
Know Your Non-Conference Tomato Can: North Dakota
The University of North Dakota is located in, and pretty much is, the city of Grand Forks. Yeah, there's an air base there, but it's a considerable ways out of town. With an enrollment just over 15,000 students, UND doesn't have the football profile of its long-time rival NDSU, but it's an up and coming university. Its aviation and aerospace programs are noteworthy and, just like the University of Iowa, you can study law and medicine at UND, but you can't study agriculture. And, just like Minnesota, hockey is a bigger deal here than football is. Notable UND alumni include a zillion NHL players, basketball coach Phil Jackson, NFL "Remember That Guy?" hall-of-famer Jim Kleinsasser, and Gen X gadfly Chuck Klosterman.
Cupcake photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/CG-WXGipr26/
UND photo: By MatthewUND - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7590288
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