Week 6 of the 2022 college football season might feature some of the least heralded rivalry game matchups in some time.
We’re getting three this week, all of which are somewhat unexciting this season for various reasons.
At 11 am central, Texas will play Oklahoma in the Red River Shootout. They don’t still call it that but I refuse to call it the “Red River Rivalry” or the “Red River Showdown” because I don’t accept that referring to a football game as a shootout encourages or diminishes gun violence. This is America’s War Game and pretending it isn’t is a waste of time.
Anyways, the Longhorns are 3-2 with a 1-point loss to Alabama and an overtime, 3-point loss to Texas Tech, both of which occurred with star transfer quarterback Quinn Ewers mostly on the bench nursing an injury suffered against the Tide. He’s back for this contest.
Oklahoma is also 3-2 but has yielded consecutive 250+ rushing days to Kansas State and TCU in their last two games and will likely miss their starting quarterback Dillon Gabriel after he was concussed in Fort Worth.
Texas opened -5 and were already -7 before the news broke Thursday that Quinn Ewers would be starting and it quickly climbed to -9.5.
Then we have Auburn at Georgia at 3:30, a game the Bulldogs are favored in by 30 points. Yikes. The #HarsinFired watch continues. I have little doubt Auburn people are reaching out to potential candidates behind the scenes already.
Finally we have Farmageddon, which is the name for Iowa State and Kansas State’s budding rivalry. Kansas State is a 2-point favorite on the road but the Cyclones are 0-2 in Big 12 play and while the game is primetime viewing at 7:30, it’s relegated to ESPN+.
There are a few interesting matchups overall this week including the rivalry bouts but most of them are pretty lopsided. Generally in college football that’s when things get wild but it’d be hard to guess which of these will break strangely. Here’s a few games I’ll be keeping an eye on for one reason or another.
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