College Football Corner: Old School

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- The second football Saturday of the year yields its riches in Columbus, Ohio, and Ann Arbor, Mich., as four traditional powers square off in a kind of swapping of their oldest rivals: No. 7 Ohio State takes on No. 3 Southern Cal, sworn enemy of No. 18 Notre Dame, which takes on its second-most hated annual foe, unranked Michigan, blood feudist of Ohio State. It's like some kind of 1970s mash-up.

Not all of these programs are, here in the 21st century, at the same level, with the Irish and the Wolverines scrambling and scrapping to climb back to the elite of college football after years (or in ND's case, decades) of inconsistent play -- and losses to their rivals in Ohio and L.A.

Meanwhile, intriguing match-ups abound around the country: The Ball Coach's South Carolina Gamecocks head to Athens to face No. 21 Georgia, a loser in its opener at Oklahoma State; Purdue visits a beleaguered and now unranked Oregon, which fell controversially to No. 11 Boise State in the season opener for the second year in a row; and everyone's Pickens-fueled favorite for a BCS bowl, the No. 6 Cowboys of Oklahoma State, welcome the flamboyant offense of unranked Houston into Stillwater.