NCAAF Can't Wait For Saturday | College football off to a quiet start ... until next week
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Greetings from "Can't Wait For Saturday," your morning morsel of college football, courtesy of longtime Illini beat writer, AP Top 25 voter and Heisman state rep Bob Asmusssen. He'll give you his views each day on the game he loves.
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My first impression from the opening day of college football?
Top of the list: Too bad everyone wasn't playing.
It was a football-friendly afternoon/evening in Champaign-Urbana. Not too hot. Sunny for part of the morning and early afternoon.
Rather than a handful of games Saturday, 60-plus of them would have been so much better.
On the game I watched in totality: Notre Dame is really good. Hard to get a precise gauge because opponent Navy is rebuilding.
But Wake Forest transfer Sam Hartman stamped himself as a Heisman candidate with a near-perfect performance. He hit all but four is his 23 passes for 215 yards and four touchdowns.
Notre Dame's defense held Navy's tricky offense to 169 yards. It will get tested by better opponents later in the season, but the defense appears to be better than average.
Marcus Freeman's team faces a handful of challenging games, but the season really comes down to how it performs against Ohio State, Clemson and Southern California.
Take two of those games with no other stumbles and Notre Dame will be in contention for the College Football Playoffs.
