College football pick-six: Bama-LSU is the game of the century of the week, Penn State-Iowa was a horror show and rankings season is here

Cliched storyline of the week

No sport has cornered the market on Games of the Century quite like college football. This is because for the first 145 years of its existence, the sport’s executive cabal refused to accede to the idea that its season should culminate in the radical notion that, you know, the best teams should actually play each other to determine a champion. Maybe that’s why there hasn’t been a Game of the Century since the advent of the playoff era. Maybe that period of college football’s existence is now forever preserved in amber, since the College Football Playoff will automatically produce a Game of the Century, presuming it works out the way we imagine it should.

It’s fitting, then, that the most recent — and perhaps the last — Game of the Century ended up meaning absolutely nothing. You may remember LSU’s 9-6 slog of a victory over Alabama in 2011; you may also remember that the teams met again for the BCS national championship, with Alabama winning 21-0. It is worth revisiting that history this week, because the game of the college football season to date is Alabama at LSU on Saturday night. But is it a game worthy of Capital Letters? We really won’t have any idea until after it’s done.

Here’s what we do know: Alabama is a gaping favorite heading into the week, though that number has already settled down under the two-touchdown threshold. Either Alabama is utterly unstoppable and on its way to one of the greatest seasons in college football history, or Alabama is about to come up against a team that will expose enough of the Tide’s weaknesses that even if the Tigers don’t win — even if they accomplish those things other Alabama opponents haven’t so far — they’ll set the table for a more competitive College Football Playoff.

In other words, this weekend is not a Game of the Century. This weekend is a litmus test. And those of us who plan on viewing the remainder of this season through a neutral lens are looking to this weekend to provide us with hope that the season isn’t already over.

Steadily encroaching Playoff watch of the week

I have no idea how the College Football Playoff committee will set the table in its first rankings on Tuesday night. I imagine it’ll play it safe. I imagine the committee might even emphasize strength of schedule to the point that Alabama could fall to No. 2 before the LSU game. But that seems like one of those tricks of the eye that the committee likes to play to keep us focused on "The Argument." It doesn’t change the top of my tier rankings.

Tier 1: Alabama. See above. A decisive win over LSU may suck the air out of pretty much everything except a potential Alabama-Clemson playoff rematch come December.

Tier 2: Clemson. I thought perhaps Florida State, playing at home, would keep it close against a team that still appeared to be finding its way under freshman quarterback Trevor Lawrence. That was not the case. Lawrence threw four touchdown passes, and Clemson won 59-10. A road game at Boston College next month could be tricky, but there’s not much else in the way of severe challenges. I can’t envision the Tigers budging from this spot anytime soon.

Tier 3: Notre Dame, LSU, Georgia. I imagine Georgia is about to shred Kentucky’s Cinderella shoes this Saturday, which would put the Bulldogs in a decent shape for a matchup against Alabama in the SEC Championship Game. If LSU can’t prove to be a roadblock for the Tide, Georgia would be the last best regular-season hope.

I’m still not entirely sure about Notre Dame, and the Irish have some tricky games upcoming, starting this Saturday against Northwestern.

Tier 4: Central Florida, Michigan, Oklahoma, Ohio State. I have no doubt Central Florida will be undervalued by the Playoff committee because its schedule is loaded on the back-end. But even UCF wins all those games, it probably doesn’t matter. Meanwhile, Oklahoma is back in command of the Big 12, and Ohio State-Michigan could once again determine whether the Big Ten gets a Playoff representative at all.

Tier 5: Kentucky, West Virginia, Washington State. This may be the best team Mike Leach has fielded in his career, but I still wouldn’t wager my Chihuahua on the Cougars making it through the remainder of their schedule without a hiccup. Same for West Virginia, which faces a brutal November slate of games: Texas, TCU, Oklahoma State and Oklahoma.

The Jeff Spicoli dudes of the week

Let us deliver some props to the posterior end of the Pac-12, which proved why the conference will likely be left out of the Playoff for the second consecutive year. All five underdogs not only covered the spread in Pac-12 games, but all five underdogs also actually won. If you wagered a dollar on that possibility in Las Vegas, I believe you would have gone home not only with Sheldon Adelson’s fortune — but Adelson also might have been thrown in as a bonus gift.

Also, let us give props to the football men of Kansas because for some unknown reason, the Jayhawks continue to field a football team. And that football team is now 2-5 with an outside shot — OK, like a 35-foot shot with Dikembe Mutombo in its face, but still, we’re saying there’s a chance — at a bowl game, thanks to a victory over TCU that was decided on a butt fumble. Rock, Chalk, Mark Sanchez.

The week in weird

Those of us who were subjected to the majority of the Penn State-Iowa game for partisan reasons are going to require weeks of therapy. This is a rivalry that once produced a 6-4 result. And yet Penn State’s 30-24 win on a rainy evening in State College — a game that featured two safeties, myriad penalties, some utterly WTF coaching moves, a botched play-call that led to an interception and a final play in which a quarterback flipped a ball to an offensive lineman who rumbled 20 yards downfield before finally putting us out of our misery — may have outdid 6-4 for overarching stupidity.

I’m still getting over it, but I can tell you there were no lessons learned. Except that we’re all dumber for having watched that.

Off-topic recommendations of the week: The best thing about Michigan edition

Michigan faces a crucial home test against that same utterly incoherent Penn State team this weekend, and in honor of said game, here are some of the best first lines to novels ever written, all of them by perhaps the most entertaining Michigander in history: Elmore Leonard. The more I think about it, the more I realize that Jim Harbaugh essentially is an Elmore Leonard character.

Your weekly dose of historical context

From 1971 to 1981, amid the peak Bear Bryant years, Alabama defeated LSU 11 straight times. After LSU beat the Crimson Tide 20-10 in 1982, Bryant was so distraught that he ordered a complete top-to-bottom review of the football program and offered to step down if necessary.

A few months later, after an 8-4 season, he did retire at age 69. And soon after he retired, he died. Nick Saban is currently 66 years old. He appears to have no plans to retire any time soon.