This Week in College Football: Week 9

Introducing “This Week in College Football”. With the proliferation of conferences desperate for ESPN’s money and exposure, we now have college ball on practically every day of the week. So each week, I’ll write up a short post about this week’s weekday games in the same vein as my weekend column.
As usual, all times Eastern and all predictions wrong.

Tuesday
8:00: East Carolina @ Memphis (ESPN2): These are two C-USA teams going in opposite directions. ECU is 3-1 in the conference and has a win over fellow 3-1 team Marshall, which puts them in the driver’s seat for the C-USA East division. Memphis, meanwhile, is 1-3. Statistically, the two teams are somewhat similar, though Memphis has marginally better offensive stats, though this may be skewed by a couple of Memphis blowouts. However, Memphis has a harder time holding onto the ball and doesn’t play defense especially well. I expect this to be a close for awhile, with ECU pulling away at the end.

Thursday
7:30: North Carolina @ Virginia Tech (ESPN): I’m not even going to get into the whole blocking discussion that flared up over the weekend. (It’s also been covered well elsewhere.) I will say that Carolina’s offense is still just terrible (namely, 114th in the nation bad). I think VPI should be able to cruise to a victory here.

Friday
8:00: West Virginia @ South Florida (ESPN2): It looks like the annual October swoon for USF – get everyone excited in September, and the flop against the teams you need to beat to win the conference. Mainly, it looks like it starts with the defense – allowing 75 points to Cincy and Pitt while averaging well less than 20 to that point in the season. WVU did what they needed to last week against UConn, and behind Noel Devine, they should be able to again.