It’s 100 days until kickoff for Iowa, ISU

Today (May 22), we note that it's 100 days until the first college football Saturday.

Which means it's the first Saturday of the College Football Playoff era. Which means that some teams are going to get a leg up on playing in that four-team playoff, some will suffer a setback that may require perfection the rest of the season to shake off, and almost everyonen else will play a game with no impact on it.

Put Iowa and Iowa State in the latter category, as they open the season with FCS teams Northern Iowa and North Dakota State, respectively. Although, a Cyclones win over North Dakota State wouldn't be regarded lightly given a) the Bison are three-time defending FCS national-champions and b) NDSU opened last season with a win at Kansas State.

As always, there is a slew of FBS-FCS matchups of little interest in Week 1. The Big Ten has six such games among its 14 openers. Michigan State is hosting Jacksonville State on the Friday night of Week 1, which isn't quite the same as its Friday opener two years ago, when it opened at home against Boise State.

I will fastidiously avoiding Eastern Illinois-Minnesota, Youngstown State-lllinois, Indiana State-Indiana and James Madison-Maryland.

An interesting opener has Penn State playing Central Florida in Dublin, Ireland. What Ireland's connection is to those two schools, I have no idea. But I'd rather be in Dublin than Orlando. That's just me.

Ohio State starts the season at Navy, which is interesting because the Buckeyes don't make a habit of opening away from Columbus, and because Navy has a reputable program. It has won eight or more games in 11 of the last 12 seasons. A lot of programs would take that.

The Big Ten's Game of Week 1 is Wisconsin against LSU in Houston. Now that's how you start a season.

On Thursday Aug. 28, you get Texas A&M at South Carolina. The SEC understands you put something out there in the first week to get people excited. And then some. The Aggies and Gamecocks will be in the game that matters on the first night that matters.

On Saturday, the league comes back ith that Wisconsin-LSU game, as well as Clemson at Georgia (yowsah!) and a conference game pitting Arkansas at Auburn.

That way, the SEC hides opening-week turkeys like Idaho at Florida and South Dakota State at Missouri.

Idaho played at Florida State last November. The Seminoles slipped past the Vandals, 80-14.

Other awful openers include South Dakota at Oregon and UC Davis at Stanford. That starting-with-a-bang memo didn't reach the Pac-12.

South Dakota was 4-8 last season. It may need to be improved to hang with Oregon for longer than the opening kickoff.

Yes, UC Davis beat Stanford in 2005, but that was pre-Jim Harbaugh Stanford. If Davis beats the Cardinal on Aug. 30, it will be a bigger upset than when Appalachian State won at Michigan in ‘07.

It's 100 days from now until that first Saturday. And 99 days after that, we'll know the field of the first College Football Playoff (yes, capital letters). There will be some hot gas emitted between now and then.