College football Saturday open thread

Thursday night, No. 9 Oregon wacked Cal 43-15 but the nation's leading rusher, the Ducks LaMichael James suffered what looked to be a horrible arm injury as he hyper-extended his right elbow early in the fourth quarter of that game (we're putting this together on said Thursday night, so this post will be updated if we find out anything regarding James' injury)




The Saturday games:



The Red River Shootout (No, we refuse to bend to political correctness that has befallen the naming of this tremendous rivalry which we are informed is now the Red River Rivalry. Yeah, right.)

Anyway, it's No. 3 Oklahoma vs. No. 11 Oklahoma at the Cotton Bowl at the Texas State Fair. Half the stadium in burnt orange and the other half in crimson (pictured). It just doesn't get much better than this.

The SEC game of the week: No. 17 FLA Gators at Death Valley and the No. 1 LSU Tigers.

The physicality and speed of the Tigers will overwhelm the visiting Gators just setting things up for the Nov. 7 showdown between LSU and Alabama.

Boston College at No. 8 Clemson.

Everyone keeps waiting for the always-promising Tigers to trip up. They should handle BC easily... which is exactly why this is one of those watch games.

No. 15 Auburn at No. 10 Arkansas

Auburn comes off victorious in a squeaker against South Carolina and Arkansas a record-setting 510 yards passing by their QB Tyler Wilson against those choking dogs and SEC-bound Aggies of Texas A&M.

ABC's primetime matchup: Ohio State at No. 14 Nebraska.

Memorial Stadium will be rocking but with both teams coming off losses and Ohio St. under a cloud of NCAA investigations, shouldn't ABC be angling for a flex-out option for, uh, maybe Texas v. Oklahoma? Seriously, don't know why the Red River Rivalry Red River Shootout is not in the primetime instead of 9 in the A.M. PDT.

And out here on the Coast: San Diego St. comes off a bye week and a thumping at Michigan 2 weeks ago to go up against a TCU team that got thumped themselves last week by SMU. Despite TCU's loss, consider this one of those barometer games for SDSU.