Football is back! Well, almost back, we get a little end of week tease and then Saturday morning truly kicks off the incredible 14-week sprint through to bowl season.

What’s that? Not a college football fan.

I get it. You have other things to do on a Saturday in the fall. You have errands. You have your kid’s soccer game. You have a wedding.

Or maybe you didn’t go to a big football school. You prefer the NFL. College players aren’t as good. The coaches do dumb stuff. It’s completely unpredictable chaos… that just ends up with Alabama winning in the end anyway.

Look, the NCAA has no shortage of warts, but if you’re missing out on college football, you’re missing out on life.

First, let’s address why you should watch college football. IT’S FUN. It’s that simple. Each college football season is filled to the brim with entertaining characters, both new and recurring, who are constantly jostling for the lead role in the soap opera that is the quest for a championship.

However, that leads to another problem all in itself, what should you watch? It can seem like there are too many teams to follow, its too hard to remember which of the 29 different channels the game might be on, or why Missouri is located in the midwest but plays in the SEC east.

Well, say no more. Mr. Saturday himself is back to save you the frustration of trying to pick which of the 65-odd college games to watch each Saturday. Each week, we’ll provide you with a quick overview of all you need to know enjoy the pure pageantry that is Saturdays in the fall.

Below, and every Thursday you’ll find not only what to watch and when and where to watch it, but most importantly WHY these are the games to watch. The focus will mainly be on the the unique characters and wacky traditions that make college football fun.

Brunch (9am PST/noon EST kickoffs)

FAU @ #7 Oklahoma (-21)(9am, FOX) — This time next year, Oklahoma’s starting quarterback will be on a baseball diamond near you. Oklahoma’s Kyler Murray was drafted by the Oakland A’s with the 9th overall pick in the MLB draft and will be reporting to A’s spring training in February. Between now and then, all he is tasked with doing is taking over for the Sooners’ Heisman-trophy winning QB Baker Mayfield and leading the uber-talented Sooners to a national title, two wins further than Mayfield was able to take them. Despite the Sooners’ being 21-point favorites, this game serves as your perfect appetizer in large part due to the intrigue of seeing what kind of schemes Lane Kiffin comes up with to try to befuddle the Sooners. For the uninitiated, Lane Kiffin is the Lindsey Lohan of football coaches with a mercurial rise and fall that is suddenly back on the upswing since arriving in Boca Raton, Florida a year ago and taking a school nobody had heard of to a conference championship and 25% spike in applications. He should have at least a few tricks up his sleeve for some entertainment in Norman on Saturday morning.

Graphic by Caitlyn Epes/The OU Daily

Other items on the menu:

Oregon State @ #5 Ohio State (-38)(9am, ABC) — Ohio State will be starting the season without their multiple national championship winning head coach Urban Meyer who royally screwed up, but is very good at coaching football and therefore keeps his job. (I already admitted college football has its warts. Hideous ones.)

#23 Texas (-13.5) v. Maryland at FedEx Field (9am, FS1) — TEXAS IS BACK! That’s what everyone gets to say after Texas wins their opening game over an inferior non-conference opponent. However, last year Texas robbed of us of that annual tradition by losing to Maryland in their season opener. Given Texas’ talent and Maryland’s turmoil, that shouldn’t be the case this year, but there’s always a chance.

Furman @ #2 Clemson (no line) (9:20a, ACC Network/Watch ESPN) — Clemson is really really good, arguably the best team not named “Alabama.” The best part about this game is that Furman’s quarterback is actually a student at Clemson. Yes, you read that right, a Clemson student will be playing quarterback at Clemson against Clemson. In short, Harris Roberts is in a 5-year degree program where he took 3 years of classes at Furman and is now finishing up his engineering degree with 2 years of classes at Clemson. Again, college sports are just more fun.

Ole Miss v. Texas Tech at NRG Stadium in Houston(-2.5)(9am, ESPN) — This should be the best game of the day between equally good-looking coaches leading unranked teams.

Lunch (12:30pm/3:30pm kickoffs)

#6 Washington v. #9 Auburn (-1.5) at Mercedes Benz in Atlanta (12:30pm, ABC) — This game epitomizes why college football has the greatest regular season of any sport. This is the first game of the year, both of these teams are widely-considered to be serious contenders for the College Football Playoff, and whoever loses will be on must-win red alert status before we even make it to Labor Day. Beyond that, depending on this single outcome, we get to apply outrageous extrapolations to the rest of the teams in a given conference (Washington’s Pac-12 or Auburn’s SEC). Depending on the outcome, we’ll either say that the Pac-12 is BACK! or is never going to be back and will either write Auburn off as having no chance to make a bowl in the brutal SEC or take the tack that its a down year for the SEC because one of its teams lost to the #6-ranked team in the country the first game of the year.

Other items on the menu:

Appalachian State @ #10 Penn State (-10)(12:30pm, BTN) — Exactly 11 years to the day of one of the biggest upsets in college football history, App State pays another trip to a top-10 Big Ten team for a game on BTN (Big Ten Network).

UNLV @ #15 USC (-26)(1pm, Pac12 Network) — USC’s starting quarterback J.T. Daniels isn’t just a true freshman, he is a true freshman who should still be in high school, but “felt” like he was ready for the college game, so sped through his final high school credits, skipped out on his senior year, and will now be leading one of the most talented teams in the entire country.

Dinner (4pm/7pm kickoffs)

#14 Michigan @ #12 Notre Dame (-1)(4:30pm, NBC) — The best on-campus game of opening weekend will be happening up in South Bend. As often happens in college football, most of the talk will be about the coaches. Jim Harbaugh, Michigan’s coach, has said and done some interesting things that have grabbed a lot of attention during his tenure in Ann Arbor, but the most recent notable tidbit shared about him was his advice to his former QB to not eat chicken, because chicken is a “nervous bird.” According to Harbaugh, “some type of sickness injected its way into the human population when people began eating white meats instead of beef and pork.” On the other sideline is a human dynamite stick named Brian Kelly, who is probably the last person who ever should have been handed a high-stress job, but has somehow survived a near-decade of leading Notre Dame with mixed results. You have two fanbases who best epitomize the convergence of a venn diagram where the circles for intelligent and irrational overlap, you have one of the great venues in all of sport with a rare 7:30pm EST kick, you have the debut of Shea Patterson, Michigan’s new QB transfer from Mississippi, who Wolverines’ fans are hoping is their very own Touchdown Jesus, plus ESPN’s College Gameday will be kicking their tailgate tour off there — all in all, it should be a spectacular way to kickoff the greatest time of the year.

Other items on the menu:

Cincinnati @ UCLA (-15)(4pm, ESPN) — Chip Kelly is back! Chip Kelly absolutely dominated college football during his only 4 years of running the show in Oregon. Now he is back in the college game, a game that changed substantially in his 5 years away, with everyone copying what he did at Oregon, or as Chip puts it, “When I first came into this league there weren’t many spread offenses and we were the only team that had shiny helmets, and now everybody runs the spread offense and everybody has shiny helmets.”

Louisville v. #1 Alabama @ Camping World Stadium in Orlando, FL (-24.5)(5pm, ABC) — Why doesn’t anybody ever learn their lessons? Apparently, some Louisville players have been quoted saying something along the lines of they are going to dominate Alabama’s front 7, that’s the equivalent of an island saying they are going to dominate a tsunami. It’s simply not going to happen. The main intrigue in this game is whether Alabama’s starting quarterback will be Tua Tagovailoa, who took over during the second half of the national championship game and led the Tide to the title, or Jalen Hurts, who has gone 24–2 in two seasons as Alabama’s starter. Man, tough decisions. Poor Nick Saban.