100-yard splash

Don’t look now but your Saturday TV schedule from now through January will be plastered with college football — which is money in the bank for the country’s broadcast networks, sports cable networks and for the giant football factory universities.

But if you’re not this type of weekend warrior, you better learn how to fake it. Your standing at the office water cooler depends on it.

Both Sports Illustrated and ESPN magazine, of course, go all out to win your support — but there is no need to buy both titles. Buy SI. It is superior to its rival — despite ESPN producing better writing and better photography in these head-tohead College Football Preview issues.

Take the titles’ dueling fea- tures on USC quarterback Sam Darnold — a favorite for the Heisman Trophy and to become the starting QB for the New York Jets in 2018.

ESPN’s story by Molly Knight is embarrassingly better than SI’s Darnold feature penned by Lee Jenkins. Knight outhustled Jenkins to get better info on Darnold as a kid (getting pulled away from shore as a 5-year-old on a boogie board), as a teen (breaking his hand against a locker after a loss while playing on his school basketball team) and at USC (his, aw, shucks, attitude during a photo shoot).

But ESPN, over 28 pages, doesn’t cover as much ground across the college football landscape or provide as much info as SI does over its 63-page college football section. SI, perhaps, just outgunned its rival. Those are the breaks, we guess.

The Time Inc. title breaks down the college football season week by week, highlighting the best games to watch.

Neither mag goes out on a limb and dares to pick a school not named Alabama to win the national championship — although ESPN’s Brad Edwards files a dissenting opinion in the form of Ohio State defeating the Crimson Tide in the final.

Then again, we’d like to see how the hundreds of pigskin prophets would pick a match-up of Alabama and New York’s best “college” team — the Jets.