These weary eyes watched football — all or parts of four games — morning, noon and night Saturday. I have some thoughts.

First, this: What does it say about college football when you watch game after game for nearly 12 hours, finally sleep, and your dreams are punctuated by TV timeouts?

It says, I believe, there are too dang many.

Other thoughts:

First up was San Jose State-Texas, one of any number of early season games when the visiting team, playing for a huge paycheck, is overmatched. San Jose State surely was. The attraction, of course, was Arch Manning, the young Texas quarterback with so many Mississippi connections. 

Young Manning was coming off his first meaningful college start — at defending national champion Ohio State, no less. That’s an incredibly daunting assignment for anyone, no matter pedigree and ability. Manning’s performance against the Buckeyes was uneven, as his stats showed: 17 of 30 passing for 170 yards, a touchdown and an interception, plus 38 yards rushing on 10 keeps. He showed both promise and at times uncertainty.

Fast forward to Saturday: After a slow start, Manning completed 19 of 30 for 295 yards and four touchdowns with one interception. At one point in the first half, he threw four touchdowns in slightly over five minutes of playing time. He ran for another touchdown, looking forever like his grandfather when he tucked the ball and took off. He missed some throws but hit far more than he missed.

Bottom line: He will only get better and better, as any young quarterback does with experience.

I didn’t even have to switch channels for the next leg of my football marathon: Ole Miss-Kentucky, a hard-fought 30-23 Ole Miss road victory.

Several takeaways:

• Similarly to Manning, Rebels quarterback Austin Simmons showed both promise and plenty room for improvement. Two interceptions helped dig the Rebels into a 10-0 hole on the road. But Simmons, displaying much poise for a 19-year-old, then helped them dig out of it, finishing 13 for 24 with the two interceptions and no touchdowns. Expect him to steadily improve.

• Meanwhile, running back Kewan Lacy, a sophomore transfer from Missouri, looks like the real deal. The Dallas native showed vision, speed and power in running for 138 yards and a touchdown on 28 carries.

• My biggest concern for Ole Miss was who was going to replace defensive tackle Walter Nolan, the NFL first rounder who was such a disruptive presence last season. Zxavian Harris, the Canton native and former Germantown standout, appears to be that dude. He was everywhere for the Rebels Saturday, a 6-foot-8, 330-pound force. His fourth quarter sack was one of the game’s biggest plays.

• Kudos also to backup quarterback Trinidad Chambliss, a transfer from Division II Ferris State, who filled in admirably and then some after Simmons suffered a fourth quarter injury. Playing before more partisans than he probably ever did in a full season at Ferris State, Chambliss led the Rebs to a game-clinching field goal on fourth quarter drive. His performance in the clutch was huge.

Don’t know what it is about Kentucky, but the Wildcats seem to play their best against Ole Miss. Bottom line: The 2025 Rebels did what the ’24 Rebels couldn’t, which is survive Kentucky.

Two TVs were necessitated to watch the second half of Ole Miss-Kentucky and the first half of Jackson State-Southern Miss, just the fourth time in history the two Mississippi schools have played one another. The Golden Eagles’ final winning margin, 38-20, is no indication whatsoever of how competitive this game was. Jackson State competed on even terms for most of the contest. T.C. Taylor’s Tigers appear a team that will once again dominate the SWAC and would be competitive in the Sun Belt. 

And Southern Miss, for the second straight week, appeared much improved in its first season under Charles Huff. Transfers from Huff’s Sun Belt champion Marshall team of a year ago were largely responsible for USM’s hard-won victory. Most notably, quarterback Braylon Braxton gives the Eagles a winner at the most important position on the field. Braxton threw for 214 yards and three touchdowns with no interceptions, and he ran for 20 more yards. He will give the Eagles a fighting chance to win every remaining game on the schedule. On the flip side, USM could lose to any team left on its schedule. 

Jackson State battled the Eagles evenly on both sides of the line of scrimmage. Southern Miss was plus-two in turnovers — and blocked a kick for a touchdown — and that was the difference.

A crowd of more than 32,000, fairly evenly divided, attended a well-played game that, clearly, should happen more often.

We save the best for last: Mississippi State’s scintillating 24-20 victory over No. 12 Arizona State. We must wait until later in the season to know whether Arizona State, a playoff team a year ago, is as good as projected. This we do know: Jeff Lebby’s Bulldogs are a whole lot better than almost everyone thought they would be. State, winner of just two games in 2024, will be favored to be 4-0 headed into a Sept. 27 home game with Tennessee.

The Bulldogs had looked much improved a week earlier in a 34-17 road victory over Southern Miss. They proved it a week later, taking a 17-0 lead against the Sun Devils and then fighting off a furious second half rally.

Lebby dipped heavily into the transfer portal and spent millions of NIL dollars to fix what was clearly broken. All indications are that he spent wisely. It helps immensely that Blake Shapen, a terrific, resourceful player, is back and healthy at quarterback. State would not have been 2-10 last year if Shapen had remained fit throughout.

The Bulldogs benefitted immensely from a raucous, cowbell-clanging crowd that had Arizona State unnerved from the get-go.

“Awesome environment,” ASU coach Kenny Dillingham said afterward. “They were loud, really loud, but that’s what college football is supposed to be.”

Dillingham’s team had dominated the second half, taking its first and only lead, 20-17, on a chip shot field goal with 98 seconds remaining.

State needed only 68 of those ticks to respond on Shapen’s 58-yard touchdown strike to Brenen Thompson. Given the situation, it seemed hard to comprehend the Devils did not have a safety playing deep in the middle of the field on the third and nine play. But they didn’t, and they paid dearly.

Thus, it seemed the Bulldogs and their 50,000-plus fans experienced an emotional release of the frustrations of the death of a coaching legend and two long seasons of subsequent futility in a goalpost-dismantling postgame celebration. 

Yes, and a long, but eventful day in Mississippi football was done.

It wasn’t on TV, but Delta State’s 41-9 victory over North Greenville (S.C.) University deserves mention. That’s because, with the victory, Delta State coach Todd Cooley becomes the winningest coach in DSU’s 95 years of football. Cooley, the 19th coach in DSU history, has won 77 games and lost 46 as coach of the Statesmen. He passes the late Horace McCool, for whom the DSU football stadium is named, who was 76-58 over 13 seasons.