It Is Time to Tee Up a New Season

OK, pipe down, we wondered the same thing.

How can there be three Saturday college football games if USC and Penn State are playing Sunday in the “Kickoff” Classic?

Answer: It’s football, people, not truth in advertising.

Eight months after Florida State beat Virginia Tech in New Orleans to win the national title, campaign 2000, um, kicks off with five games in five states over two days.

The great thing about college football is that there is no such thing as preseason games, except at Kansas State.

A loss in August can hurt just as much as one in November, witness Arizona’s pre-Labor Day defeat last year at Penn State.

It’s time to buckle up and knuckle down.

Here’s a glance at the weekend games:

TODAY

* Iowa vs. No. 8 Kansas State, Eddie Robinson Classic at Kansas City, Mo., 11 a.m., Fox Sports Net: Nice try, Kansas State, but adding Iowa to your list of pathetic nonconference opponents does not count as an upgrade. Iowa finished 1-10 last year and checks in as about the 80th best team among 115 major colleges. After this rollover at a “neutral” site, Bill Snyder’s Wildcats return home to play Louisiana Tech, Ball State and North Texas before opening the regular season Sept. 30 at Colorado.

With this assortment of hand-picked pylons, it’s no wonder Kansas State has won 24 consecutive nonconference games since an Oct. 17, 1992 defeat to Utah State.

That said, Kansas State is loaded on offense and appears primed to make a 1998-like run for the national title, a season in which Snyder built the schedule around beating Nebraska at home. The plan was only foiled by an overtime loss to Texas A&M; in the Big 12 title game.

We’ll check back with Kansas State on Nov. 11, when Nebraska invades Manhattan.

* Brigham Young vs. No. 2 Florida State, at Jacksonville, Fla., 5 p.m., Channel 7: It’s the story of two legendary 70-year-old coaches headed in different directions. BYU’s LaVell Edwards has already announced he will retire at season’s end, while Florida State’s Bobby Bowden shows no signs of slowing in the afterglow of last year’s national championship season. Bowden and Edwards are the second and third winningest active coaches in Division I-A, trailing only Penn State’s Joe Paterno. Bowden and Edwards have combined for 556 victories.

Bowden’s Seminoles, led by 28-year-old senior Chris Weinke, have almost perfected the national title strategy in the non-playoff era: Win the Atlantic Coast Conference, beat Miami, beat Florida, advance to title game.

Edwards might have at least stood a puncher’s chance of matching wits and hits against Florida State if he wasn’t, of all years, breaking in a new quarterback. This gives BYU virtually no chance.

* New Mexico at Texas Tech, 5 p.m., Fox Sports Southwest: They’re calling this one the Transamerica Hispanic College Fund Football Classic, but the game will be blacked out locally in Lubbock because the school couldn’t sell out its 45,000-seat stadium.

SUNDAY

* No. 15 USC vs No. 22 Penn State, Kickoff Classic at East Rutherford, N.J., 11:30 a.m., Channel 7: Keith Jackson actually hops on a plane and treks East to chronicle one of the most important games in recent USC history. The Trojans carry the Pacific 10 Conference’s sad-sack reputation into another national showcase game in the put-up-or-turn-in-your-headset third season of Coach Paul Hackett’s regime. Last year, Penn State pasted Arizona, 41-7, at State College, Pa., in a game that set the Pac-10 back so many years it considered changing its name to the Pac-8.

The promising news? USC should win. Penn State may struggle to go .500 after losing nine of 11 starters on defense and longtime coordinator Jerry Sandusky, who retired. The X-factor, as always, is Paterno having all summer to prepare for an opponent. Last year, Paterno took Arizona’s Dick Tomey to the Xs and O’s woodshed.

* Georgia Tech at No. 11 Virginia Tech, Black Coaches Assn. Classic, 5 p.m., ESPN2: The first peek at Virginia Tech quarterback Michael Vick since he electrified the nation in January’s Sugar Bowl loss to Florida State. Vick, now a sophomore, put a down payment on this year’s Heisman Trophy in that game when he passed for 225 yards, rushed for 97 and juked at least one Florida State defender into knee surgery with a cut-back move.

The Hokies probably lost too much on defense to make a national title run, but the offense promises to be explosive and should overrun a Georgia Tech squad that returns nine of 11 starters from a unit that gave up 30 points a game last season and ranked 91st nationally.