You’re probably going to watch part of the Mayweather-McGregor fight on Saturday night.
11 reasons to watch Stanford-Rice during Mayweather-McGregor
College football’s opening weekend is getting trampled by this colossal oddity, but this game will probably end up being roughly as quality.
Getty, Rice
I’m here to recommend you save yourself the frustration that comes with devoting 100 percent of your attention to that fight by sliding some of that attention to No. 14 Stanford vs. Rice in Australia. That game kicks off at 10 p.m. ET on ESPN/WatchESPN, or a little bit of the way into the fight card.
Here are 11 reasons to consider the football blowout as your fallback option, at the very least.
1. Stanford-Rice is free.
Photo by Mike Stobe/Getty Images
2. FOOTBALL IS BACK.
College football’s season isn’t fully underway until Thursday, but Division I action starts Saturday, with a handful of decent teams playing. A few — BYU, Colorado State, Stanford, and USF — could be way better than decent.
“Is Rice way better than decent?”
Listen, we need to get back to talking about why the fight is bad.
“Is Rice better than decent?”
I resent this line of questioning, and the fight is bad.
“Is Rice decent?”
Stanford’s potential star players include running back Bryce Love, quarterback Keller Chryst, and like half of the Cardinal’s defense and offensive line, as always. Stanford could win the Pac-12 and make the Playoff!
“Is Rice bad?”
Yeah, well, so is the fight.
3. No dubious streaming setups would need to be attempted in order to watch Stanford-Rice online for free.
WatchESPN is legally accessible for most televised content subscribers at no additional cost and without malware popups, unlike the boxing match.
4. Mayweather fighting actual boxers is plenty boring enough already.
How many more times do we need to watch Mayweather do the boxing equivalent of kicking a field goal, then punting on second down for 55 minutes and giving up like 12 yards all day? There’s reason to think Mayweather will actually go for a knockout for once, which might be like watching Northwestern attempt a flea flicker, but I wouldn’t bet on this thing ending in fewer than 292 rounds.
Instead, feel your spine tingle as Rice goes three-and-out six drives in a row and Stanford skeptically accepts field-position gains. I’m quivering!
5. Unlike certain other sporting events, there is no way to feel financially ripped off for any time you invest in Stanford-Rice.
I take that back. Maybe someone out there will skip a lucrative work opportunity in order to watch Stanford-Rice. I wouldn’t recommend that, but you’ll have to make that call with the intel available to you.
7. The fight, which is a shitshow, costs money to watch.
8. Look how much fun these teams are having in Australia!
If you ask me, that staredown looks so much more fun than this one:
Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images
Those guys look real bored.
9. The football game is free to watch.
10. Yeah, sure, Stanford is going to lead Rice by a slowly increasing amount that eventually morphs into a blowout, but ...
11. ... if you want to watch a sluggish mismatch between a clock-bleeding favorite and a baffled underdog in a weird location, ESPN’s airing a free version of that exact thing.
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