College Football’s Week Six:
DG’s “Pick Six” Includes Clemson-FSU,
Drinkwitz-Elko, First GameDay At Cal(!)
By David Glenn
North Carolina Sports Network
Each week during college football season, we offer a “Pick Six” package of intriguing matchups — three “local” games that include one or more North Carolina-based team and three “national” contests that involve the Atlantic Coast Conference and/or the most prominent intersectional games.
Week Six: Top “National” Games
Game One
#9 Missouri (4-0) at #25 Texas A&M (4-1), Sat., noon (ABC/ESPN+)
Latest Betting Line: Aggies a three-point favorite
There is only one Top 25-vs.-Top 25 matchup on this week’s entire national schedule, and it happens to involve a couple head coaches very familiar to North Carolinians.
Among movie buffs, there’s a very popular game known as “Six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon,” in which any actor or actress is selected and then gradually connected — sometimes through other actors/actresses and the movie appearances they have in common — to Bacon, the idea being that you’ll never have to take more than six steps to make the connection.
Example: The actor Steve Martin has a Bacon Number of one, because both he and Bacon appeared in the movie Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Martin co-starred with John Candy in that one, of course, while Bacon had a very small role (which still counts!). Similarly, Jack Nicholson also has a Bacon Number of one, because both he and Bacon had memorable roles — and an unforgettable scene together — in the movie A Few Good Men.
However, the actor Ben Affleck would have a Bacon Number of three, because while Affleck and Bacon have never been in the same movie together, Affleck starred in the movie Good Will Hunting with Matt Damon, Damon starred in the movie Ocean’s Eleven with Julia Roberts, and Roberts appeared in the movie Flatliners with Bacon. So, for Affleck, that would be “Three Degrees Of Kevin Bacon.”
Anyway, in the highest-profile matchup of the college football weekend, both Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz and Texas A&M coach Mike Elko have only one degree of separation, if you will, with the great state of North Carolina.
Drinkwitz, who’s in his fifth season as the head coach at Missouri, was coach Dave Doeren’s offensive coordinator at NC State from 2016 through 2018. Drinkwitz also was App State’s head coach in 2019, when the Mountaineers finished 12-1, won the Sun Belt championship and finished in the national Top 25.
Elko, of course, was Duke’s head coach for the past two seasons and the 2022 ACC Coach of the Year before accepting a six-year, $42-million offer to take over at Texas A&M. The Aggies, remember, were on the hook for the largest coaching buyout in NCAA history (more than $75 million) under the terms of its dismissal of coach Jimbo Fisher after last season.
Drinkwitz is known as an offensive guru, although this year’s Missouri team also has played really good defense and is giving up only 12 points per game. Elko is a defensive guru, and the Aggies are giving up only 16 points per game. Missouri has the higher ranking and the perfect record. A&M has the home-field advantage at Kyle Field, which has a capacity of almost 103,000.
Missouri has a fifth-year senior and three-year starter in quarterback Brady Cook, although the Tigers just haven’t made many big plays in the passing game this season. A&M has been starting redshirt freshman Marcel Reed at QB — he’s a great athlete but not yet a strong passer — in place of NFL prospect Conner Weigman, who suffered an injury to his right/throwing shoulder in the Aggies’ season-opening loss to Notre Dame.
This evenly matched contest likely will be about coaching, big plays, turnovers and mental mistakes, as the Aggies hope to take advantage of one of the largest crowds in all of college football and post a Top 25 victory on their historic home field.
Game Two
#15 Clemson (3-1) at Florida State (1-4), Sat., 7 pm (ESPN)
Latest Betting Line: Tigers a 14-point favorite
These two programs have combined to win 12 of the last 13 ACC championships on the gridiron, with the Tigers earning eight in that period under coach Dabo Swinney and the Seminoles capturing four — three straight under Fisher from 2012 through 2014 and then last year under coach Mike Norvell.
These same two schools, of course, are in the process of suing the ACC over its exit fee, the Grant of Rights and other off-the-field legal matters.
While it’s definitely true that Clemson and FSU bring far more value to the ACC’s television deals than any other school — the TV numbers during football season back that up, even in years where those teams are not having banner campaigns — it’s also true that both schools agreed to those contractual terms willingly and repeatedly, under multiple administrators. Now they’re simply trying to back out by asserting a variety of Hail Mary-style legal arguments that they hope will find either a sympathetic and/or partisan judge or simply exhaust the ACC, financially and otherwise, until they get some type of legal settlement offer from the conference.
We’ll see how that plays out in the courts. As we’ve warned everyone repeatedly, for almost a year now, don’t expect a conclusion here in 2024.
In terms of the on-field matchup between the Tigers and the Seminoles, one also could call this the DJU Bowl. DJ Uiagalelei was Clemson’s primary starter at quarterback in both 2021 and 2022, when the Tigers went a combined 21-6, which is a great record in most contexts but not during the Swinney Era at Clemson.
After his backup, Cade Klubnik, was the MVP of the Tigers’ win over UNC in the 2022 ACC championship game, Uiagalelei saw the writing on the wall and hit the transfer portal. After a strong campaign at Oregon State last year, he entered the portal again and ultimately returned to the conference where he began his college career.
At a time when both Cam Ward of Washington State and Uiagalelei were considering the Seminoles as a transfer destination, Norvell accepted the commitment of Uiagalelei, and that decision — like FSU’s 2024 season, at least to this point — has turned out to be an unmitigated disaster.
While Ward has led Miami into the national top 10 and become a Heisman Trophy candidate, Uiagalelei has shown a lot of the same inconsistency that plagued him at Clemson. He’s completing only 53 percent of his passes — that’s the worst accuracy rate, by far, of any ACC starting quarterback — and he offers next-to-nothing as a runner. FSU is dead-last in the 17-team ACC in scoring offense, at only 15 points per game, and the Seminoles are off to a 1-4 start and one of the most disappointing campaigns in all of major college football.
Clemson, meanwhile, has bounced back impressively from its ugly, season-opening 34-3 loss to Georgia in Atlanta. The Tigers have annihilated each of their three opponents since then — App State (66-20), NC State (59-35, including 45-7 at halftime) and Stanford (40-14), all at Death Valley — and they’re probably going to be the favorite in every game they play for the rest of the regular season.
Nobody should be surprised if Clemson is one of the two teams playing for the ACC title in Charlotte in early December. This doesn’t appear to be among Swinney’s best teams, but it may be good enough to win the ACC championship and play in the newly expanded College Football Playoff.
One would think FSU will put up a fight in this rivalry game, especially since it’s in Tallahassee, but the Seminoles’ defense is probably going to have to create turnovers and short fields for their offense if they’re going to have a realistic chance of pulling an upset.
Game Three
#8 Miami (5-0) at California (3-1), Sat., 10:30 pm (ESPN)
Latest Betting Line: Hurricanes a 10-point favorite
If you’re willing to stay awake for this one and catch it in that late-night TV window on ESPN, it matches Ward and the ACC’s highest-scoring offense — that’s Miami, at 49 points per game — against the league’s #1 defense, at least statistically, with Cal giving up only 12.8 points per game.
This weekend also will give many ACC fans their first up-close look at the game-day football atmosphere at Cal, because ESPN’s popular College GameDay show — which airs from 9 am to noon here in the East — will be in Berkeley for the first time since that show first became a traveling circus way back in 1993.
Reminder: A show that airs from 9 am to noon here is actually broadcasting live from 6-9 am on the West Coast, so it will be interesting to see what kind of crowd the ESPN folks draw for that uncommonly early morning session. Half-a-day later, everyone fully expects California Memorial Stadium — that’s the Bears’ on-campus facility, which seats 60,000-plus but has been half-empty at times in recent years — to be filled to capacity and very loud leading up to the opening kickoff.
As discussed for weeks now, Miami’s offense is the real deal. The Hurricanes not only have 11 starters they truly believe in on that side of the ball, they have really impressive depth at running back, tight end and wide receiver, too.
Whether Cal’s statistically dominant defense also is the “real deal” may be the most fascinating question in this game. The Bears did win at Auburn, 21-14, and they battled FSU in Tallahassee pretty impressively before ultimately falling 14-9.
Cal plays an unusual 2-4-5 defense, essentially with two tackles, four linebackers and five d-backs, and the Bears coaches really like their two inside linebackers a lot — fifth-year senior Teddye Buchanan, a transfer who spent the past four years at the FCS level, and sophomore Cade Uluave (ooh-luh-WAH-vay), who was the Pac-12’s Defensive Freshman of the Year last season.
The Miami offense is by far the most dynamic Cal has faced so far this season, so the Hurricanes may put up 30-plus on the Bears, but it will be interesting to see if Cal’s star running back, Jadyn Ott, and quarterback Fernando Mendoza can keep the chains moving offensively and keep that UM offense on the sidelines for as long as possible.
If there’s a script for Cal to pull the upset — and that seems highly unlikely — it will have to include a time of possession advantage as one of the story lines.
NOTE1: Bears coach Justin Wilcox and Hurricanes coach Mario Cristobal both were recent guests on the David Glenn Show.
NOTE2: For the complete Week Six schedule (including television/streaming options) for all ACC and state of North Carolina teams, please click HERE.
