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The Ohio State University starts its national title defense by hosting the preseason No. 1 Texas on FOX in the rematch of their College Football Playoff semifinal game.

After that showdown, you can watch No. 8 Alabama try to become Alabama again while playing at Florida State on ABC. When you’re done with that battle, you can stick with ABC and check out No. 9 LSU playing at No. 4 Clemson in another heavyweight battle.

And if you still want more college ball Sunday, then how about Notre Dame at Miami?

Think of all the storylines.

Texas is the preseason headliner with Arch Manning taking over at a quarterback. He waited his turn to get the keys to coach Steve Sarkisian’s offense.

He enters the season as the subject of crushing media coverage, but it’s not like his family is unfamiliar with that sort of attention. Also, did you see where Travis Kelce finally proposed to Taylor Swift?

The defending champion Buckeyes are looking to uphold the Big Ten’s honor after elevating the league with last year’s title run. Ohio State coach Ryan Day earned some relief from booster abuse by hoisting the championship trophy, but now he faces fresh challenges with freshman quarterback Justin Sayin.

Let’s hope the lad doesn’t check his social media feeds if the Longhorns win.

Writing for , Ari Wasserman loved this showdown:

But off the field stakes? You’re not going to find it in Columbus. There’s no coach on the hot seat. No seasons are ending for the loser. No fanbase freak outs. Just clean, high-level football from two of college football’s giants. It’s exactly what college football fans want to see. No drama necessary.

The best part? It’s the latest edition of an emerging, interconference rivalry.

College football is rooted in traditional, geographically-driven rivalries. Those rivalries are what make this game different from all other sports, and there’s nothing that can replace history that dates back (in some cases) more than a century. You can’t create another Ohio State-Michigan or another Alabama-Auburn or another Oklahoma-Texas.

But rivalries happen organically through familiarity. And in this new world of college football — where conferences don’t even make geographical sense anymore — butting heads with a team over and over again in the postseason and offseason recruiting creates rivalry. Ohio State and Texas are two of the premier programs in college football in this era and they have to beat each other to get where they ultimately want to go — all the way.

Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer lost four games in his first season as Nick Saban’s successor, including one at Vanderbilt. That upset drew Vandy students out of the library and into the stadium to rush the field.

So DeBoer faces extreme pressure in Season 2. But at least he didn’t go 2-10 last season, as Florida State coach Mike Norvell did during the Seminoles’ epic pratfall.

LSU has done fine under Brian Kelly, but boosters down there expect the Tigers to play for national titles. If they can upset Clemson – defeating more Tigers who want back into the championship chase – that would be an excellent start on that quest this season.

Y’all have a couple of days to stock up on chicken wings and bratwurst.

MYSTERIES OF THE UNIVERSE

Questions to ponder while bracing for 24/7 Taylor Swift-Travis Kelce engagement coverage:

• Should the NFL start planning a Super Bowl Halftime Show that incorporates their wedding ceremony/concert?
• Is the SEC’s old guard having second thoughts about welcoming Texas into their league?
• At this point, what pitching adjustments can we realistically expect the battered Andre Pallante to make between now and the end of this season?

THE GRIDIRON CHRONICLES

Here is what folks have been writing about college football:

Jerry Brewer, Washington Post: “College football refuses to stay in the moment. There is too much money to pursue. There are too many factions to satisfy. There is too much power to protect, even if it results in compromises that threaten the stability and long-term interests of a sport rooted in tradition. The latest ego-driven nonsense involves the Big Ten, which floated the idea of expanding the playoff from 12 participants to a 24- or 28-team format. It’s probably a ploy to motivate other stakeholders to support a 16-team setup that the Big Ten prefers. Despite the chatter — okay, outrage — the Big Ten stirred, it’s not worth debating the merits of a supa-dupa playoff because the conference’s goal was to be preposterous. Such disingenuous tactics come with the warning that, if the Big Ten isn’t guaranteed a larger plate of food, it just might yank the tablecloth and ruin everybody’s meal. College football stopped dealing in good faith long ago. Maybe it never did. Determining a true national champion isn’t the objective; forging tenuous alliances to fatten the revenue stream is. Every program is for itself until forced to profit together.� 

Bill Connelly, : “Through the decades the only thing everyone has seemingly agreed on in this sport is the need for a commissioner figure . . . Of course, there's no place for a commissioner in college football's structure. There's no National College Football Office for him or her to occupy. England has spent the last few years working toward an "independent football regulator" (IFR) to oversee soccer as a whole in the country -- in a lot of the same ways we're talking about here -- and it might create an intriguing model to follow. Or it might prove to totally lack independence from either partisan government or financial influence. We'll see. The creation of the College Football Playoff as an entity might have produced an opportunity for a leadership structure of sorts -- imagine a situation in which schools must opt in to CFP membership (which features a set of rules and protocols you must follow) to compete for the CFP title -- but it doesn't appear we're anywhere close to that at the moment.” 

Ray Ratto, The Defector: “The SEC and Big Ten have taken only the fattest of outworlder cats and let the rest of the litter fend for itself in whatever low-rent bowl games are left; eventually those conferences will start looking inward toward their own smaller earners when it comes to redivide the money. There is no longer the safety of tradition or geography to save the Mississippi States and Northwesterns of the world if their brethren and sistren need to do what athletic directors do exclusively: find more money to populate all their weight rooms with hot oil massages provided by unicorns. Football games are where the money comes from in all of this, and the business is what it is. From one week to the next, the business is leveraged tribalism; at the macro level, it is a plan for deforestation.�

John Talty, : “The (SEC scheduling) math just got harder for the programs whose sights are set more on just making a bowl game than qualifying for the College Football Playoff. For the programs in the bottom quadrant of the conference, the path to get to at least six wins got more challenging. Sure, the extra $5 million or so each SEC school will get for an additional conference game is helpful, but it is difficult to consistently fill stadiums and get donors to pay for increasingly more expensive tickets when you aren't winning.  It is something I frequently think about when schools make moves solely for financial reasons. The debut of the revenue share era and the accompanying $20.5 million annual hit has ADs everywhere scrounging for more money, but no school has ever hung a banner for generating the most revenue. You do that for championships. And when the powerhouses like Texas, Alabama and Georgia are getting that same extra money as you, it doesn't positively change the equation for the schools at the bottom.” 

Megaphone

“We got to remember that we're Alabama, People want our heads on a platter. They're not going to get it.�

Alabama defensive tackle Tim Keenan III.