College Football’s Week Seven:

DG’s “Pick Six” Includes #2 Ohio State-#3 Oregon,
Plus Ole Miss-LSU, Red River Showdown (SEC-Style )


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 Seven: Top “National” Games

Game One
#2 Ohio State (5-0) at #3 Oregon (5-0), Sat., 7:30 pm (NBC)
Latest Betting Line: Buckeyes a three-point favorite

ESPN’s very popular College GameDay show is simply moving up the West Coast this week, while switching — thanks to conference realignment — from a first-of-its-kind ACC contest to a first-of-its-kind Big Ten matchup.

Rece Davis, Kirk Herbstreit, Nick Saban and the boys hosted their weekly football festival at the thrilling Miami-Cal game last week in Berkeley, Calif. Now they’ll head up the coast to the Great Northwest and Eugene, Ore., to preview the Saturday night matchup between the #2 Buckeyes and the #3 Ducks, who are meeting for the first time as Big Ten opponents.

These may be the two best teams in the recently expanded, 18-team Big Ten, although 5-0 Penn State looks pretty darn good, too, and our old friend Curt Cignetti — an NC State assistant coach under Chuck Amato, a former head coach at Elon University here in North Carolina, and an extremely successful FCS head coach at James Madison — has Indiana off to a 6-0 start.

With all due respect to Texas, Oregon, Miami and everyone else who’s high in the national rankings right now, Ohio State may be the best team in the country.

You know the folks in Columbus didn’t like archrival Michigan winning its first national championship since 1997 last season, and now the Buckeyes — who have won just two national championships since 1970 — look as if they’re capable of raising a trophy or two of their own this year.

OSU once again is absolutely loaded with NFL-caliber talent, on both sides of the ball (e.g., running back Quinshon Judkins, wideout Emeka Egbuka, defensive end Jack Sawyer, cornerback Denzel Burke), and during the offseason sixth-year head coach Ryan Day (now a stunning 61-8 with the Buckeyes) brought in offensive guru Chip Kelly, who left his head coaching job at UCLA to take the position. The Buckeyes’ former OC, Bill O’Brien, took the head coaching job at Boston College.

Oregon is very talented, too, and the Ducks are at home in this one, so maybe a sellout crowd can pick them up, but Ohio State is giving up only 202 yards per game and 6.8 points per game so far this season. Both numbers rank #1 in the entire FBS ranks.

If the Ducks are going to win, they’ll need a superb performance from former UCF and Oklahoma quarterback Dillon Gabriel, a sixth-year senior who is completing an incredible 78 percent of his passing attempts so far this season.


Game Two
#1 Texas (5-0) at #18 Oklahoma (4-1), Sat., 3:30 pm (ABC)

Latest Betting Line: Longhorns a 14-point favorite

The “Red River Showdown” is probably one of the top five rivalries in all of college football — along with Michigan-Ohio State, Army-Navy, Alabama-Georgia and maybe a few others — and it’s the first time the Sooners and Longhorns will be playing each other as members of the Southeastern Conference, after decades together in the old Big Eight and, more recently, the Big 12.

Amazingly, these two schools have played each other in football since 1900!! For perspective, in 1900, Oklahoma wasn’t yet a state — that happened in 1907 — and the teams weren’t even called the “Sooners” and the “Longhorns” yet.

Since 1932, this game has been played at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, which is almost equidistant between the Texas and OU campuses. The game is typically played during  the Texas State Fair, and this year’s matchup — between two ranked teams, as usual — is expected to draw another crowd of 90,000-plus.

Oklahoma has had the better of this rivalry lately, with 16 victories in the past 24 matchups, including a 34-30 win last season that was revenge for an absolutely dominant 49-0 Texas triumph in 2022.

The Sooners’ path to victory is more complicated this year, because they have struggled offensively against their better opponents, and right now the Texas defense is in the top three nationally — up there just behind Ohio State — in both total defense (228.2 yards per game) and scoring defense (7.0 points per game). The Longhorns’ average score so far this season has been 45-7, with their best win a 31-12 triumph at then-#10 Michigan.

For what it’s worth, the lower-ranked team has won five of the last 11 regular-season meetings in this series. However, Texas is confident that one or both of its NFL prospects at quarterback — redshirt freshman Arch Manning or the possibly-returning-from-injury Quinn Ewers, a redshirt junior — can tilt the scales back in the Longhorns’ favor.

Game Three
#9 Ole Miss (5-1) at #13 LSU (4-1), Sat., 7:30 pm (ABC)
Latest Betting Line: Rebels a three-point favorite

It’s unlikely that either of these teams is good enough to win the SEC this year, given the presence of Texas, Georgia and Alabama, but in this brand-new era of the expanded College Football Playoff, the winner of this game will put itself in great position to chase one of the seven at-large bids in the current format.

Ole Miss is probably the slightly better team right now, with its third-year starter and NFL prospect Jaxson Dart at quarterback, but the status of the Rebels’ top playmaker, wide receiver Tre Harris, is in question because of an injury he suffered last Saturday. Harris is leading the nation with almost 150 receiving yards per game.

Also, this game is being played at that “other” Death Valley, which means LSU will be hoping for a loud crowd and an impactful home-field advantage.

One of the fascinating aspects of this game, beyond the Xs and Os, is how the SEC tends to attract elite coaches in a variety of ways, but most importantly in a sheer volume that no other league has matched.

Ole Miss hired Lane Kiffin away from Florida Atlantic in 2020, after he had extremely controversial tenures as a much younger head coach in high-profile jobs at Tennessee and Southern Cal. That has worked out very well for the Rebels, who haven’t won an SEC title since 1963 but have averaged almost 10 wins per season and have two national top-11 finishes over the past three years.

LSU, of course, lured Brian Kelly away from Notre Dame after the 2021 season, in the aftermath of firing a guy, Ed Orgeron, who had led the Tigers to a 15-0 record and the national championship with quarterback Joe Burrow and Co. just two years prior. How’d the Tigers do it? By more than tripling Kelly’s annual compensation, from less than $3 million per year with the Irish to more than $9 million per year at LSU, in the form of a 10-year, $95 million contract.

There are times when SEC teams get too much credit, or too much benefit of the doubt from poll voters, for example, but nobody should ever doubt how much they care about football in the SEC, or how much they’re willing to spend on that sport in the pursuit of greatness.

NOTE: For the complete Week Seven schedule (including television/streaming options) for all ACC and state of North Carolina teams, please click HERE.