RCR Picks of the Week, where we Lean Heavily on Favorites in Week One

Football season is back, and with it comes a lot of people on the internet offering overly-scrutinized opinions regarding largely unpredictable events. We at the Cup would like to offer such opinions to y'all every week. We're going to do that by picking seven interesting non-Ole Miss games against the spread every week. This will be a way for you all to disagree with us and tell us how dumb we are. Fun, no?

For week one, we've got Thursday night's openers, including the debut of Jim Harbaugh at Michigan against a pretty good Utah team; Saturday's marquee out-of-conference SEC matchups; and a chance for Virginia Tech to unpredictably go 2-0 against the reigning national champion Ohio State Buckeyes in their home-and-home series. No, it's not the greatest opening week in recent memory, but there's still some damn interesting football to fuss over.

Going forward, it'd be nice if we had, I dunno, some sort of super nifty graphic that could display our picks in a fun and simple way (you know, in case any of y'all felt creative enough to put that together for us or something), but, for now, we're embedding a Google Drive spreadsheet. Here are our picks against the spread for week one:

The crew is particularly divided by the Auburn/Louisville, Michigan/Utah, and Texas A&M/Arizona State games, but outside of that we are leaning heavily on the favorites to cover the spread this week. Charlie Strong is disappointed in us for not being confident in his Longhorns, as he's liable to be all season; a Melvin Gordon-less Wisconsin doesn't really seem like an opponent that should give Alabama much trouble; we don't think Virginia Tech is going to catch lightning in a bottle twice against the Buckeyes; and we believe that South Carolina vs. North Carolina is unpredictable enough (seriously, does anybody know anything about either of those teams this season?) to give us cause to go with Vegas.

[And, a quick administrative note on an RCR Pick' Em league or pool or whatever - we're totally fine with there being one, we just don't want to be in charge of it. It can be a lot to manage and we have to take a few legal steps to make sure we're compliant with our contractual obligations and not overstepping any boundaries, particularly if we were to involve prizes of any sort. This is to say that the commentariat here should feel 100% free to start a Red Cup Rebellion pool (you can even call it "The Ghost of Jay Cutler Sucks"!), just so long as you a) don't call it the "Red Cup Rebellion Pool" or something along those lines and b) make it clear that you're not directly affiliated with us or SB Nation. Again, legal stuff. I'm sure some of y'all are attorneys and probably understand. Or not. Whatever.]