Your Watch Grid guide to Black Friday college football

Black Friday is just one of several reasons this is annually the best weekend of college football. With so many rivalry games popping off, Saturday alone doesn’t have room for give all these regional squabbles, so let’s spread things all over the day before.

This is an above-average Black Friday, too, with some early College Football Playoff stakes and quite possibly the biggest non-power game of the year in the middle spot, plus hatred in every time slot.

Below, the Watch Grid attempts to sort your weekend based on a crude estimate of watchability, along with TV and streaming info for each game.

Lemme hit you with a tightrope-walking No. 2 Miami going on the road to play the only team to beat last year’s national champion, follow that with the biggest Florida rivalry game of 2017, and end it with a Commonwealth Cup in which both teams are actually good. Imagine explaining any of these three situations to anyone back in July.

The backup games promise entertainment, with most of the MAC’s good teams in action, the red-hot Missouri probably finishing off Bret Bielema, Iowa probably finishing off Mike Riley despite scoring only 11 points, Texas Tech-Texas certainly getting dumb, Cal vs. UCLA in a bowl-eligibility battle, and so forth.

Games involving 2017 Baylor or New Mexico probably shouldn’t be watched, but Bears-Frogs is still a rivalry, and no rivalry should ever be counted out.

After all that, rest up.

Early shift

Once the weather gets cold, the early groups are always loaded because nobody wants to kick off at 10 p.m. ET in late November. I guess we’ll go with Ohio State probably beating Michigan in an unbelievably ugly classic, but heads on swivels. After that is one of the biggest Iron Bowls ever — no big deal. Also, I’m giving preference to the FCS playoff games that have single-digit spreads.

Late shift

The Watch Grid’s only rule, broken three or four times a year: only one WATCH THIS game at a time. Ranked-vs.-ranked Palmetto and Apple Cups call for just such a breakage. Meanwhile, Kevin Sumlin’s assumed last game at A&M happens to come in a rivalry that just gave us Les Miles’ wrongly assumed last game at LSU and Ed Orgeron’s wrongly assumed last game at LSU. In other words, CONTRACT EXTENSION COMIN’.