The Building He Built: TLP's Games Of The Week, Week 3

Eight games. Two levels the big networks won’t show you. One coach walking back into a building that still has his fingerprints on it.

That’s Week 3.

Houston at Texas Tech

The slate opens Friday night, before most of the country has even settled in for the weekend — Houston, ranked 22nd, on the road against 13th-ranked Texas Tech, both sitting at 2-0, both opening Big 12 play a day early in Lubbock. Conner Weigman brings the kind of veteran calm a young Big 12 race respects. Joey McGuire’s defense, at home, in front of a crowd that’s been waiting all offseason for a game like this one, gets the first say.

Saturday does not slow down from there.

Youngstown State at South Dakota State

South Dakota State is No. 2 in the country. Youngstown State is No. 9. This is FCS football, and it is also the Missouri Valley Conference opener for both programs — which means the preseason favorite, the team every coach in that league picked to win it all before a snap was played, finally has to prove it against somebody who already beat them once. A year ago, South Dakota State won that meeting by five points. Five points doesn’t stay settled. It just waits for the rematch.

Hutchinson at Butler

An hour and a half south of Wembley Stadium’s own history-making kickoff, there’s a different kind of statement game happening in El Dorado, Kansas — one this show refuses to skip past. Hutchinson is the reigning national runner-up in junior college football, a program that went undefeated through last year’s regular season before falling one win short of a championship. They travel to Butler ranked No. 2 in the country. Butler opened this season at No. 8, lost its first game, and dropped four spots for it. Now the best team in their own conference walks through the door. That is what an answer game looks like, whether or not ESPN ever points a camera at it. A six-foot-seven left-hander named Randy Phillips threw for close to 180 yards and ran for a third touchdown in his own season debut. Butler’s defense just held an opponent to negative rushing yards and gave up over 300 through the air doing it. Somewhere in that gap between what Butler stops and what Butler allows, Saturday’s answer is already written. Nobody’s read it yet.

NC State at Vanderbilt

Back among the names you already know, Vanderbilt hands the ball to a five-star true freshman for the first time in his career. Jared Curtis walks into his first collegiate start against an NC State team that has shown the country two entirely different versions of itself in two weeks — a blowout loss at Virginia, then a 73-point beatdown of Richmond seven days later. A freshman’s first look at a defense is supposed to tell you something about him. This week, it might tell you more about which NC State team actually exists.

Arizona State vs. Kansas at Wembley

And then there is London.

No FBS football game has ever been played at Wembley Stadium. Not once, not in all the decades American football has tried to sell itself overseas. Saturday, that changes — because a stadium under construction back home forced Kansas to give up its own home game, and the sport picked Wembley to receive it. Arizona State and Kansas will open Big 12 play five thousand miles from either campus, in front of a crowd that has never seen this game played live, in a building that has never hosted it. Call it a novelty if that’s easier. It is also just true: nobody in this game has ever experienced what Saturday is about to ask of them.

Florida State at Alabama

Two programs get a rematch with a losing taste still in their mouths. Florida State beat Alabama in Tallahassee to open last season — an upset loud enough to follow both programs into this one. Saturday, the return leg is played in Tuscaloosa, and Alabama, No. 10 and unbeaten, gets the answer it’s been waiting a full calendar year to give. Florida State arrives 1-1, already having dropped a game to SMU the week before, walking into Bryant-Denny as the team that has already done this once and knows exactly how.

Mississippi State at South Carolina

An hour east, Mississippi State and South Carolina both walk in unbeaten, and only one of them walks out that way. Both open SEC play Saturday. Mississippi State earned its perfect record with a road win over a Big Ten opponent; South Carolina earned its with defense and a punt returner who scored twice with his legs instead of his arm. Whichever team’s perfect record survives the day carries real weight into everything the SEC still has coming. Whichever one doesn’t starts working from behind immediately, this early in the year.

Florida at Auburn

The Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry gets a new chapter, too, and this one belongs to men who have never coached it before. Florida under Jon Sumrall. Auburn under Alex Golesh. Two brand-new staffs, both making their SEC debut on the same Saturday, in the same rivalry, at the same time. Auburn’s transfer quarterback, Byrum Brown, has been one of the most productive portal arms in the country this season. Florida counters with a running back, Jadan Baugh, who leads the entire SEC in rushing touchdowns. Neither coach has been here before. The rivalry does not care.

SMU at Louisville

And on paper — strictly on paper — none of it was supposed to beat SMU at Louisville.

Two ranked teams, ACC race implications on both sides, and by the numbers this is as close to a dead-even game as the entire week produces. SMU has won the last two meetings, including a 38-6 result a season ago. Louisville wants that trend buried, at home, in front of a crowd tired of watching it continue. Kevin Jennings against Lincoln Kienholz. Whoever plays the cleaner forty minutes probably walks away with it. By the numbers alone, this was the best game on the entire board.

But the numbers do not know what a building remembers.

The Marquee Matchup

LSU at Ole Miss

No. 7LSU, unbeaten

No. 8Ole Miss, unbeaten

41Combined margin, LSU's two wins

41Points, each of Ole Miss's two wins

No. 7 LSU. No. 8 Ole Miss. Both unbeaten. Both walked here without much resistance — LSU past Clemson and Louisiana Tech by a combined 41 points, Ole Miss scoring 41 points in each of its own two wins. Neither team has been made to sweat yet. Somebody finally will be, Saturday, in the one building built to make it personal.

Lane Kiffin Returns to Oxford

Lane Kiffin spent six seasons turning Ole Miss into something it had never quite been before — a program that belonged in the same sentence as the sport’s biggest names, not as an aside, but as a real answer. Then he left. He is LSU’s head coach now, and Saturday he walks back into Vaught-Hemingway Stadium for the first time since he built it and handed the keys to somebody else.

He has tried to talk his way out of the story.

“I know obviously a lot’s going to be made about me, but this is about the players being prepared really well and playing really well.”

That is the coach talking. The building does not answer to the coach. It answers to six years, and Saturday, all six of them show up whether he wants them to or not.

The Stakes

The stakes are not abstract. The SEC’s new nine-game round-robin format leaves nobody room to bleed a loss quietly — LSU alone plays five true road games in this conference this season, the most in the program’s history under this scheduling model. Whatever happens in Oxford follows both teams through every week left on the calendar. A win here is not just a win. It’s insurance nobody else on this schedule can sell them.

The Game Inside The Game

The game inside the game is LSU’s defensive front against an Ole Miss offensive line still finding itself — a line that has allowed its team to put up 41 in back-to-back weeks, now facing a defense that has not been tested at this level yet. It is Sam Leavitt, LSU’s transfer quarterback, walking into the loudest true road environment of his career against a top-ten SEC defense. And it is Kewan Lacy — seen icing his knee during Ole Miss’s win over Louisville, his availability still unconfirmed as of this writing — whose first-quarter workload will answer more about this game than anything written beforehand possibly could.

The Magnolia Bowl

This is the Magnolia Bowl.

65–39–3LSU leads the all-time series

115thMeeting between the two schools

24–19Ole Miss won last year's, in this building

LSU leads the all-time series 65 wins, 39 losses, and 3 ties across 114 meetings. Saturday is the 115th. Ole Miss won last year’s, 24-19, in this same building.

TLP’s Call

TLP's Call

LSU

TLP's call is LSU — close, low-scoring by Ole Miss's own standard this season, decided up front. Real confidence, not a lock. This is a legitimate top-ten pick-'em by the numbers, and Kiffin's teams have a way of showing up when the story is theirs to answer.

What To Watch

Watch Kewan Lacy’s first-quarter workload. Watch whether LSU’s front gets home without needing to blitz for it. And watch the building itself, the moment Kiffin steps onto that field — because some things about Saturday will never make the box score, and that one might matter more than anything that does.

The Last Word

Circle Oxford. The rest of the slate earned its say. This is the one that earned the last word.

Where, When, and How to Watch

Broadcast and streaming details sourced from official team/conference releases and NCAA.com as of September 16, 2026; verify before kickoff for any late change.