Trying to fill the football-less void is a tough thing. However, looking at the best non-conference games of the ’08 season seems like a perfect way. I have found two lists—one very extensive and one a top three. The first comes from CollegeFootballNews.com’s Pete Fiutak, and the second from SportingNews.com’s college football writer Matt Hayes.
Both agree that the best non-conference game is Ohio State vs. USC on September 13th. I would put Georgia’s trip to Tempe on the following weekend at #2, but Fiutak has it at #4—he thinks that the border war in St. Louis between Illinois and Missouri is #2. Now, both of those teams might be good again this year, but it seems more interesting to me that the consensus #1 team isn’t playing four complete pushovers.*
* Though of course any SEC team can get away with non-conference pushovers, right? I mean, conference play is just brutal, so they clearly need a rest. In fact, why don’t we just go ahead and give all of them four non-conference wins?
March 18th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
I just checked StubHub for USC-UVA tickets and they’re going for $650 or so per; apparently some people in the Charlottesville area think this is a non-conf game worth attending (maybe the DC area Trojan alums have made their presence known). The UVA game the following weekend against the University of Richmond has tix for $15 available.