Week Eight NATIONAL College Football Previews:

#7 Ole Miss-#19 Texas, #14 Houston-#10 Utah,
Virginia Tech-Clemson Among Intriguing Matchups
(DG’s Weekly CFB YouTube Show = Below)

By David Glenn
North Carolina Sports Network
(last updated Oct. 20, 2026)

The 2026 college football campaign continues Tuesday through Saturday with a compelling Week Eight schedule, highlighted by two games matching Top 25 opponents and College Football Playoff contenders.

The three most intriguing contests nationally — each set for Saturday night and previewed below — include #7 Ole Miss (5-1) visiting #19 Texas (4-2) in a prime-time matchup (7:30 p.m., ABC) with major CFP implications, a Big 12 showdown matching undefeated #10 Utah (6-0) and #14 Houston (5-1) in an offensively charged late-night tilt (10:15 p.m., ESPN), and a closer-to-home clash between Virginia Tech (5-2) and Clemson (4-2), two Atlantic Coast Conference programs trying to rediscover their previous glory (7:30 p.m., ABC).

Meanwhile, five of North Carolina’s seven Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) teams are in action this week, with Appalachian State and East Carolina each enjoying a Thursday night TV window, Duke and NC State taking nationally televised Friday night road trips, and coach Bill Belichick’s much-improved UNC team seeking a 5-2 start to the season.

Here are more details on our “Three To See” selections from this week’s national schedule:

National “Three To See,” Game One

Although nobody expects either of these teams to end up in the ACC championship game this season, both Virginia Tech and Clemson represent programs that have been at or near the top of the college football mountain relatively recently.

There is no doubt that it would benefit the league’s depth tremendously if first-year Tech coach James Franklin — who did some extraordinary things during his tenures at Vanderbilt and Penn State — can gradually get the Hokies rolling, and if 18th-year Clemson coach Dabo Swinney can find a “second wind” of sorts with the Tigers.

Virginia Tech football was mostly irrelevant before it hired legendary coach Frank Beamer, who took the Hokies to seven conference titles and the 1999 national championship game, and Tech has been mostly irrelevant since Beamer retired in 2015.

Clemson has nine ACC titles and two national championships under Swinney, but the Tigers haven’t had a top-10 campaign since 2020, and there are fair questions regarding Swinney’s extreme resistance to the transfer portal and other aspects of the modern game.

At Death Valley on Saturday night, these two teams will line up with similar records, but that may be highly misleading.

Virginia Tech is just a few plays away from being 7-0 — the Hokies barely missed a last-second field goal in their 35-33 loss to Pitt, and they led until the final minute of their 25-20 loss at Cal — whereas Clemson clearly was outclassed in its 51-10 loss at LSU and its 41-13 home defeat against Miami, although the Tigers did beat Cal (a common opponent) in Berkeley.

Clemson’s biggest shortcoming, by far, has been true freshman quarterback Tait Reynolds’ inability to throw the ball effectively. The Tigers are last in the ACC in passing offense, at just 188 yards per game, despite having plenty of talent at wide receiver, including Bryant Wesco Jr., TJ Moore and Tyler Brown.

While the Hokies have not been dominant defensively on a consistent basis this year, they’re giving up fewer than 315 yards per game, and they lead the league in sacks, so they hope to take control of this contest with their defensive front.

Meanwhile, Tech will present a much more prolific passing attack than Clemson faced in its victories over UNC and Cal.

Tech quarterback Ethan Grunkemeyer, a redshirt sophomore who followed Franklin from Penn State to Blacksburg, ranks third in the ACC with 283 passing yards per game. Grunkemeyer’s favorite targets include wideout Que’Sean Brown, a Duke transfer, and tight end Luke Reynolds, another Penn State transfer.

If Tech (a two-point underdog at last glance) wins this one in Death Valley with transfers leading the way, expect more difficult questions for Swinney along those lines in the aftermath.

National “Three To See,” Game Two

#7 Ole Miss (5-1) at #19 Texas (4-2), Sat., 7:30 p.m. (ABC)

Since this ongoing 2026 season looks as if it will be the last with a 12-team College Football Playoff, it’s important to remember that the top teams in the top conferences can lose once — any maybe even twice — during the regular season and still have a good shot at an at-large bid to the gridiron version of the Big Dance.

However, losing three times in the regular season, even if you’re a high-profile program in an elite conference, almost certainly will end your CFP dreams.

The best example of that last year was Texas, which finished 9-3 in the regular season against a tough Southeastern Conference schedule. The Longhorns posted three victories over SEC teams (Oklahoma, Vanderbilt, Texas A&M) that were ranked in the national top 10 at the time of the game, but they didn’t even come close to a CFP at-large bid. Notre Dame (10-2) and BYU (11-2) ended up as the “first teams out” a year ago.

Now the Longhorns, who were ranked in the top five of virtually every preseason poll going into this season, have suffered back-to-back losses to Oklahoma and Florida and fallen all the way to #19 in the national rankings.

If the Horns can run the table and finish 10-2 in the regular season, they still would have a great chance at the CFP, because they’ve already beaten highly ranked Ohio State and Tennessee teams, and “running the table” would mean additional victories at Missouri, at LSU and — this Saturday night — at home against #7 Ole Miss. Anything short of 10-2, though, and they can probably forget it.

Texas is playing elite defense this season, but its offense has been underwhelming, and that’s put a lot of pressure on both big-name quarterback Arch Manning and sixth-year Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian, a long-time offensive guru who was the quarterbacks coach on Southern Cal’s 2003 national championship team and the offensive coordinator on Alabama’s 2020 national champs.

During his previous five seasons in charge, Sarkisian did lead Texas to one conference championship, but that was in the Big 12, before the Horns jumped to the much more competitive SEC.

Sarkisian has built a strong program in Austin — the Longhorns have averaged almost 12 wins over the past three seasons, and they’ve been to two of the past three CFP semifinals — but the expectations remain sky-high at a program whose last national title came under coach Mack Brown (a guest this week on NCSN’s weekly “The Coaches Room” college football show) in 2005.

Ole Miss, meanwhile, has been elite offensively but much less impressive on defense during its 5-1 start, which included a 52-28 loss at Florida, so Texas (a three-point favorite) is viewing this game as an opportunity to get back on track, while the Rebels need to avoid their second defeat of the season, with a matchup against mighty Georgia still ahead.