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Good Friday to you, everyone, and welcome back to the space you hate that doesn’t hate you back.

It’s time to take our spin around what we’re looking ahead to this weekend, and there’s no better place to start than this:

Fitting that we have a skillet game and a pig game on the same weekend imo pic.twitter.com/xBeZZy2dQH

— Jay Arnold (@CoachJayArnold) September 20, 2024

Ah, yes. It’s Floyd of Rosedale weekend. Bring on all the food-based rivalries. (Except for maybe the Lowcountry Boil one. You do you, but I’m allergic.)

Now that I’ve angered the entire state from which this is being written, let’s move on.

• We had a game canceled last week due to whooping cough. I would venture to say we won’t see that again this year, or maybe even this decade. I hope not, anyway. I hope everyone recovered well from that — pertussis is one of the more miserable ailments.

• South Alabama continued its couple-weeks streak of shellacking opponents, as the Jags traveled to Boone last night and delivered a 48-14 curb stomping to App. The Mountaineers have gone from one of the potential participants in the Playoff as the G5 representative to perilously hovering at 2-2 on the year, with Liberty making the trip to pay pleasantries next week. It is, of course, still completely within the realm of possibility that App can still claim that spot, but the road is almost entirely uphill now. The Jags were getting more than a touchdown — 8.5 at closing — and ran 43 times for 320 yards and five scores Thursday night. If Liberty has Quinton Cooley back — or even if it doesn’t — that’s a problem.

• Illinois and Nebraska battle tonight in a duel of ranked teams. No one could have envisioned that — your humble correspondent included — when Matt Rhule took the job in Lincoln. Dylan Raiola is completing over 74 percent of his passes through the early part of the season and looks every bit the part as a freshman. The Huskers are favored by 7.5 for tonight’s 8:00 (Eastern) FOX tilt.

• Charlotte takes the 49ers on the road tomorrow to surprising Indiana. The Hoosiers are 3-0 and coming off a thrashing of UCLA, while the Niners scored a comeback, one-point win over 0-3 Gardner-Webb and their coach chose to troll their fans. Charlotte starts third-stringer Trexler Ivey under center in Bloomington and gets 28.5 from Curt Cignetti’s Hoosiers. The whole sleeveless shirt thing and Biff Poggi’s unconventional ways intrigued a lot of people at first, but you eventually have to win. Charlotte has not done so — yet — under Poggi’s command.

• I’m probably the only sicko looking at this game with intrigue, but there’s a long-standing OVC-Big South battle — that feels odd to type — taking place in Cookeville Saturday afternoon. Tennessee Tech is 0-2, but was the better team for a lot of the game at Middle Tennessee and competed at Georgia. TSU is 2-1, though the one was big — North Dakota State hung 52 on the Tigers earlier in the season. Tech is -6.5 at what I’ll always call Tucker Stadium, no matter how many times the name may ever change. Kick time is 2:30 (Eastern) on ESPN+.

• Speaking of great FCS games, there’s one at Washington-Grizzly Stadium. Western Carolina travels to take on the top-ten Montana Grizzlies. The Catamounts skidded out of the gate a bit with losses to NC State and Campbell, but came back to take down 22nd-ranked Elon at Rhodes Stadium in almost-Burlington last weekend. Winning on the road is tough — especially there — but this is a nice test before Western settles into more favorable SoCon territory.

• Middle Tennessee is +14.5 to Duke on Homecoming. As someone who shelled out a lot of money to that school, that hurts.

• Williams Stadium — or, as EA called it until this week, William Stadium — is sold out in Lynchburg for a 6:00 kick against East Carolina. Liberty has sneakily not released a 2-deep as of press time, but Billy Lucas and the Flames’ stable of backs should ably fill in if Cooley can’t go. Liberty has done a lot of unusual things this year — they’ve committed a lot of penalties that show a lack of discipline. They righted the ship a bit last week, so they’re a storyline for this week.

• If you’d rather watch an FCS game in that time slot, 1-2 ETSU is at 1-2 Elon. The Bucs led North Dakota State by 12 — Tre Lamb said they had the game won in his remarks earlier this week — and allowed the Bison to come back and leave Johnson City with a victory. We’ve chronicled what happened with the Phoenix last week. Elon is giving 8.5, which feels heavy. Both teams will look for a big bounce-back win in this game that you can see if you’ve handed over your entire life savings to FloSports.

• FSU is giving 2.5 to Cal in a 7:00 kick on ESPN2. The Seminoles can’t drop to 0-4 — can they?

• Another fun FCS game kicks at the same time on ESPN+. NC A&T travels to former MEAC rival NC Central and gets 5.5 points from the Eagles in the deal. The event is almost as fun as the game itself, and I am always here for the storied history of these two schools.

• Tennessee (+2) at Oklahoma (7:30pm, ABC) should be a fun one as well, with Josh Heupel returning to the scene of his collegiate quarterback successes. He’s said the right things all week, but I irrationally like the Vols on the road here.

• Finally, there’s the Arch Manning Show over on ESPN+, as the Longhorns take on ULM. Texas is favored by an incredible 44.5 at DKR, and there’s no reason to think this one will be much to watch other than to see Manning’s first start.

Sorry for the lack of jokes this week. I’ll do better next time. Send money — or pizza. Call it a “talent fee”.

Enjoy your football weekend, everyone! Try not to follow your GPS into a lake.

(Oh, and again — please do not construe any word of what you’ve just read as gambling advice. I offer none of that. You deserve to lose every cent you bet based on anything I say. Besides, there are 500 female handicappers on Twitter/X/whatever who look far better and can be faded pretty much the same as I. Go follow them.)