Saturday will be the most unique college football day any of us at College GameDay have ever experienced. The game? Air Force-Army (game time 2 p.m. ET -- College GameDay, ESPN, 10:30 a.m.-noon ET).

Doesn't grab you? The Commander-in-Chief Trophy doesn't interest you? It should. Especially this year. We had been looking at the right situation to take GameDay to one of the military academies since 1995, when we came close to visiting Army's home game with Air Force.

	Air Force coach Fisher DeBerry has far more on his mind than football games these days.

This week seems right. It's a good chance to show our respect for the challenges that soldier/athletes at all of the academies face weekly. The class load and military training are unbelievably demanding. Almost every minute is accounted for. Cadets view football practices as welcome escapes from their other rigors. And these days they have even more to ponder.

The seniors are just months away from perhaps entering combat. Many are spending whatever free time they have pondering whether to pursue that path or a non-combat one. Many have friends and ex-teammates who may be involved in bombing missions over Afghanistan or (perhaps) ground operations as a ranger. No one, not even the rangers' spouses, know for sure when or where a given unit might be shipped.

Many admit this has been the longest, most stressful football season of their lives. Now, Air Force faces its most stressful week of that season. All week, they are reminded by the brass (and fellow cadets) that they must beat Army. They must retain the trophy.

But can the competitive fire still burn quite as hotly? Players are sometimes schooled to dislike guys from rival academies. These days, that kind of divisiveness between military comrades over a football game seems silly. Air Force, Army and Navy personnel are all working together each day and night to fight terrorism. Can their young football counterparts really treat a game the same as in peacetime?

About six years ago, Army arrived on Air Force's field in full-war face paint. The idea was to maybe shake up the "country club flyboys." That's how the Air Force types are labeled by the Army, who in turn have been considered Neanderthal grunts by Air Force.

Those stereotypes and labels seem hollow now, as lame as Army's face-paint tactic -- which did not produce a win, by the way.

Saturday, whether you like Army, Air Force, Navy or even if you have not cared about the teams at any of the academies, I invite you to check out a small slice of life there and join a live audience of strictly cadets, in the high-security heart of the picturesque Air Force Academy grounds.

While these players want to win as badly as anyone, you'll see why the won-loss records of these teams is not a gauge of their more important missions in serving America. Maybe more of us ought to be rooting for these guys each week.

Urgency
OK, so the following games don't seem all that urgent, in the larger context above. In college football terms, though, several teams are really up against it. For them, after a long winter of lifting and running ... spring practice ... two-a-days in the summer swelter ... after all the pain and labor ... their chances at a successful year may depend on 60 minutes this Saturday.

I'm talking about you, LSU, Alabama, Notre Dame and Wisconsin. Not you, Oregon State, Kansas State and Mississippi State. The three "States" are already well past the point of "circling the wagons" (to borrow a Berman catchphrase).

Sure, Jackie Sherrill is trying to rally his guys with talk of winning five straight and climbing into some little bowl at 6-5. But the Bulldogs seem certain to cement their status as the Southern Flop of 2001. Sometimes juco players inject much-needed talent and toughness. Other times they find they're in over their heads and then start hanging their heads. Word is that Mississippi State's transfers have been (collectively) very disappointing. So have the offensive mainstays.

At 1-5, it's hard say how these three debacles should be positioned in the parade of embarrassments: Exhibit A, a 52-0 humiliation at Florida, a team the Bulldogs beat last year; Exhibit B, a home loss to Division I-A rookie Troy State, when the Bulldogs' offense managed just nine points; or Exhibit C, Saturday's lifeless 42-0 shutout by LSU. In four previous SEC games, the Tigers had not held anybody under 25 points.

With a gorgeous new club level and a brand new upper deck expansion at Scott Stadium, which often didn't sell out before, this is not the time for a low-water-mark season. If Mississippi State can't dispatch Kentucky (which has not quit at 1-6), it's a sure sign that they've resigned themselves to the woodshed.

As for Kansas State, the Wildcats' bowl hopes will be just about cooked if they can't win Saturday at Iowa State. A visit to Lincoln is next. After four straight 11-win seasons and eight straight postseason trips, it would have been unthinkable two months ago to predict the 'Cats would be home for the holidays. The team I saw battle Oklahoma to the final seconds looked so impressive "on the hoof" that I thought they had a chance to earn a rematch in the Big 12 title game. Now, with a little luck, their hard-core faithful will be driving right past Big D on the way to Shreveport for the big matchup with, say, LSU.

Can SI's preseason No. 1 actually miss on one of the almost 50 bowl slots? Oregon State also faces a must-win Saturday against another disappointing bunch in the same boat: USC. A fifth loss means the Beavers would have to beat Washington and payback-minded Oregon at Autzen Stadium to be bowl-eligible. Not likely. Like Mississippi State, Oregon State has lots of new faces from the juco ranks who haven't been able to instantly fill the voids as hoped.

By the way, Rice visits ... Fresno State. Remember them? Fresno State's Bulldogs have made the quickest exit from college football's main stage I've ever seen. Losses to Boise State and Hawaii will do that. I give my Thursday night colleague Rod Gilmore credit for predicting this when most others had Fresno headed for 13-0 and the BCS fringe. The tough part for Pat Hill's crew is that they still have five games left.

Irish-Vols
After witnessing Tennessee's 1999 whipping of Notre Dame in Knoxville, I'll be interested to see if the Irish have closed the gap. All Notre Dame holdovers from that beating want to atone for the nationally televised, prime-time de-pantsing. This is a great chance for the Irish to show they have not quit, following a terribly deflating setback at Boston College. Lose this one and a bowl game becomes unlikely for the Irish, with must-win games at Stanford and Purdue closing the campaign.

Tennessee has not really put away anybody since the opener with Syracuse -- a game much closer than the 33-9 score. The Vols rarely allow teams to run on them, and the Irish need the ground game. It's a bad matchup for ND's offense, and unless Travis Henry can be held well in check, the Irish will fall to 3-5.

Cardinal-Huskies
I can't keep Stanford out of my top seven, but now it's a tough visit to Seattle, where it hasn't won since 1975! Cold and rain are expected, but the Cardinal offense should not be as freaked by the elements as a typical California team braving Husky Stadium. Stanford can play smashmouth behind the most underrated offensive line in America, with almost 200 rushing yards per game.

Do you realize that Stanford has just finished a three-game gauntlet against previously unbeaten teams by scoring 39, 48 and 38 points? Only once has the Cardinal been held under 38 points, and that was in a win over USC when they grabbed a 21-0 lead and fell asleep. This offense -- even with mistake-prone but gutsy winner Chris Lewis filling in for Randy Fasani -- is truly outstanding. And mighty fun to watch.

The Huskies, by the way, may not quite match the Yankees for resilience. But they are about as close as any college football team to the never-say-die Bombers. Continuing a trend in the Rick Neuheisel era, Washington has last week's two-point win to go with three wins by three points and one by five points.

Trojans-Terrapins
That's the Trojans of Troy State. Yeah, I thought I'd throw in the more-interesting-than-you-may-think-non-ACC "breather" for Maryland. The Terps are coming off a deflating 52-31 loss at FSU. And even though Troy State's win at Mississippi State is being harped on by coach Fridge this week, it's hard for players still pointing to a conference title that hinges on the next home game with Clemson to throw everything into a no-name opponent.

Troy almost blew a letdown game of its own, against Southern Utah. It'll be interesting to see if they can give the Terps a tussle. Wouldn't surprise me.

This is a shorty column this week, since I'm in Atlanta for the Georgia Tech versus North Carolina affair Thursday night. Back to the normal length next week, if you care. And hope you'll check out GameDay from the Air Force Academy on Saturday morning.

Chris Fowler is the host of ESPN's College GameDay.