ABC's Saturday Night Mediocrity/Upset Alert

In the past few weeks, Brent Musburger, Kirk Herbstreit, and ABC have brought you some pretty good primetime matchups from the college football world. Tennessee at Cal, Virginia Tech at LSU, USC at Nebraska.

Now everyone hold your breath when I say that ABC is splitting Saturday Night Football between Washington State at USC and Iowa at Wisconsin. Cue disappointment.

I mean, these aren't horrible matchups. Speaking of horrible, just think of the intrigue of Saturday's primetime game in two weeks -- Notre Dame at UCLA. Think the bigwigs at ABC are regretting that hasty preseason commitment?

If USC was on the road again, I'd maybe understand. But c'mon, this is being played in SoCal, and Washington State is just okay. They did keep competitive with Wisconsin for the first half. Then again, so did The Citadel. But they haven't been tested since. USC manhandled Nebraska, and I expect this one to have a similar outcome. Plus, am I the only one sick of seeing USC in the marquee games? Looks like Washington at USC is another 8:00pm ET kickoff next week. I don't think I can handle three weeks in a row of Brent Musburger getting off to the Trojans. (If Musburger will be in SoCal next week, I expect ABC will put him in Madison this week. I hope.)

Iowa-Wisconsin lost a ton of luster when Iowa fell flat against a pretty crappy 0-2 Iowa State squad. The Cyclones didn't even need to score a touchdown to beat Kirk Ferentz's crew. Not that the matchup had a whole lot of luster in the first place. Wisconsin allowed Wazzu and The Citadel to play a 21-21 game up until halftime. They struggled to put away UNLV until the final minutes on the road. The foundation of both teams is shaky, at best. This is where I tend to disagree with EEW, here. I think Wisconsin unsurprisingly allows the Hawkeyes to keep it competitive for the first 30 minutes before pulling away in the second half. This is a primetime matchup in Madison, after all.

Quick upset alert, and I need to write it today since they're playing in the Orange Bowl tonight. Watch out, Texas A&M. I know the Miami Hurricanes haven't looked overly impressive in the first three weeks of the season, but neither have the Aggies. Don't think for a minute that Randy Shannon won't have this team pumped and ready for this one. This would be a statement win for Miami, and while it may not be one for A&M, it might be a win that proves they deserve their ranking.