Come noon Saturday, we're either going to need multiple television sets or one that has picture-in-picture-in-picture.
That's because of all four of the major college football teams we cover -WVU, Marshall, Ohio State and Ohio -are on television at the same time.
West Virginia and Marshall will play each other for the seventh straight year -and at least for now the final time - in the Friends of Coal Bowl in Morgantown.
When this series was being proposed, I was one of its biggest supporters. It made perfect sense for the state's two major college football programs to annually play one another.
But this series never brought the excitement that we experienced in 1997, when Chad Pennington, Randy Moss and Co. came to Morgantown, where the atmosphere was electric and the game was a classic.
Five of the first six Friends of Coal Bowl games have been blowouts, with WVU winning by 32, 25, 24, 17 and 21 points. Only the 2010 game in Huntington, which West Virginia won 24-21 in overtime, was competitive. Given that the point spread for Saturday's game favors the Mountaineers by 24 points, we may be looking at yet another blowout. West Virginia and Marshall are rivals in basketball, where the Herd has celebrated its share of victories, but you can't have a rivalry when the same team wins every game.
Still, it's the opener for both teams and those who don't make the trek to Morgantown will be watching the game on Fox Sports.
Yet, it isn't the only noon game being televised. That's also when Urban Meyer makes his debut as the head football coach at Ohio State, which opens the season against Mid American Conference member Miami. Not the Hurricanes, the RedHawks.
This one looks a lot like the WVU-Marshall game. In fact, the point spread is the same. Ohio State had a reputation for letting in-state programs hang around for a while when Jim Tressel was running the Buckeyes. Something tells me Meyer will want to send a message that there's a new sheriff in town, not to mention a new attitude.
The Miami-Ohio State game will be televised by the Big Ten Network.
The one noon game that looks competitive will be Ohio's contest at Penn State. The Nittany Lions are a 5-point favorite and many analysts are picking the Bobcats as the most likely team to pull the first upset of the season.
Indeed, I wonder if Ohio actually isn't the best team that will be on the field Saturday at Mount Nittany.
But one simply can't measure the emotion that will permeate that stadium.
More than anything else, Penn State needs to play a football game. ESPN should be able to capture some incredible sights and sounds.
If you're a non-football fan who doesn't like crowds, plan your activity for noon Saturday, when most Mid-Ohio Valley residents will be huddled around their TVs.
Contact Dave Poe at dpoe@newsandsentinel.com
