Who to watch in college football’s really big games this weekend … Truth be told, there haven’t necessarily been a lot of truly must-see games through the first three weeks of the college football schedule. However, that all changes on Saturday with as many as a half a dozen key contests all with major conference and national implications. The biggest of these arguably kicks off Saturday evening when perennial powerhouses Ohio State and Notre Dame hook up in South Bend in a battle of top 10 teams with CFP playoff aspirations. Earlier in the day, Florida State will duel Clemson for ACC supremacy with a Noon ET KO, while in what will surely be the most talked about game of the day, resurgent Colorado has its toughest test to date as Deion Sanders and his Buffalos travel to Oregon to play the Ducks, who also have national playoff dreams. Here are the players to watch in those three games with an eye toward the 2024 draft. At the same time, though, there are several other games that aren’t getting the same kind of national pub, but which in many ways are just as intriguing. In fact, there are two other games on the west coast very much worth watching as #22 UCLA plays at #11 Utah, while #14 Oregon State and #21 Washington State play for the ‘unofficial’ Pac-12 championship as they are the only two teams in the conference that haven’t committed to leaving next fall. And the one player we are looking forward to watching in the latter three games is UCLA ER Laiatu Latu (#15, 6-5, 265), potentially the most disruptive pass rusher in the country. He’s also one of the most interesting stories in college football. Indeed, he was named the Comeback Player of the Year in college football last fall after actually having retired from football two full years earlier when he suffered a neck injury while playing for Washington. But he had 10.5 sacks last fall after transferring to UCLA despite not actually being a starter for the Bruins and already has 4 in UCLA’s first three games this year.
