Despite a hot start from the Padres at the plate, the Dodgers came out of a high stress NLDS opener with a 7-5 win. Manny homered and Xander Bogaerts came to life. But Dylan Cease struggled, especially against a portion of the L.A. lineup where you can’t afford to struggle. There were massive missed opportunities in the 8th. Machado had a costly error. Jackson Merrill had a rare misplay in the outfield. Mike Shildt walked Mookie Betts with two strikes. Darnay and Fernando digest the loss.

LISTEN: With NBC 7 San Diego’s Darnay Tripp and Derek Togerson behind the mic, On Friar will cover all things San Diego Padres. Interviews, analysis, behind-the-scenes…the ups, downs, and everything in between. Tap here to find On Friar wherever you listen to podcasts. 

The Hawaii Rainbow Warriors led by quarterback Brayden Schager, face the San Diego State Aztecs, led by quarterback Danny O’Neil on Saturday, Oct. 5, 2024 (10/5/24) at Snapdragon Stadium in San Diego, Calif.

How to watch: Fans can watch the game for free via a trial of DirecTV Stream or fuboTV. You can also watch via a subscription to Sling TV.

Here’s what you need to know:

What: NCAA Football, Week 6

Who: Hawaii vs. San Diego State

When: Saturday, Oct. 5, 2024

Where: Snapdragon Stadium

Time: 8 p.m. ET

TV: CBS Sports Network

Live stream: fuboTV (free trial), DirecTV Stream (free trial)

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Here are the best streaming options for college football this season:

Fubo TV (free trial): fuboTV carries ESPN, FOX, ABC, NBC and CBS.

DirecTV Stream (free trial): DirecTV Stream carries ESPN, FOX, NBC and CBS.

Sling TV ($25 off the first month)– Sling TV carries ESPN, FOX, ABC and NBC.

ESPN+($9.99 a month): ESPN+ carries college football games each weekend for only $9.99 a month. These games are exclusive to the platform.

Peacock TV ($5.99 a month): Peacock will simulstream all of NBC Sports’ college football games airing on the NBC broadcast network this season, including Big Ten Saturday Night. Peacock will also stream Notre Dame home games. Certain games will be streamed exclusively on Peacock this year as well.

Paramount+ (free trial): Paramount Plus will live stream college football games airing on CBS this year.

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Here’s a college football story via the Associated Press:

The ebb and flow of the college football season hits a low this week if measured by the number of Top 25 matchups.

The only one is No. 9 Missouri at No. 25 Texas A&M, the fewest since there were no ranked teams pitted against each other during Week 3 last season.

Maybe it’s karma for the weekend we enjoyed last week. Bookending it were the Miami-Virginia Tech did-he-catch-it-or-not ending and that fantastic Alabama-Georgia finish.

Of course, there still are important games this week besides the Southeastern Conference showdown in College Station, Texas.

No. 12 Mississippi, upset by Kentucky at home, is in bounce-back mode on the road against a South Carolina team that beat the Wildcats by 25 points in Week 2.

No. 22 Louisville has a tough follow-up to its loss to Notre Dame when high-scoring SMU visits.

No. 3 Ohio State faces its biggest challenge to date when breakout star Kaleb Johnson leads Iowa into the Horseshoe.

Texas Tech, picked in the bottom half of the Big 12 preseason poll, has won four of five to start the season and gets a measuring-stick game at Arizona.

And don’t forget the Commander-In-Chief’s Trophy series, which gets underway with unbeaten Navy at struggling Air Force.

Best game

No. 9 Missouri (4-0, 1-0 SEC) at No. 25 Texas A&M (4-1, 2-0), Saturday, noon ET (ABC)

Missouri hopes to play like a top-10 team in its road opener. The Tigers had to erase a 14-3 halftime deficit to beat Boston College and had to go two overtimes to get past Vanderbilt. They’ve had a week off to sort things out, mainly uncharacteristic red-zone and third-down struggles against Vandy.

The Aggies have won four straight since a close loss to Notre Dame. Marcel Reed has started the last three games at quarterback in place of the injured Connor Weigman. A&M coach Mike Elko said Weigman would be a game-time decision. Whoever starts, he’ll be going against the toughest defense the Aggies have faced.

BetMGM Sportsbook lists the Aggies as 2 1/2-point favorites.

Heisman watch

Ashton Jeanty is the best player in the Group of Five. How about the best in all of college football?

The folks at Boise State would argue he is, and the betting public is starting to take notice. He’s the No. 4 choice on BetMGM Sportsbook at 10-1 odds to win the Heisman Trophy, still well behind Alabama’s Jalen Milroe, Miami’s Cam Ward and Colorado’s Travis Hunter.

Alabama’s Derrick Henry was the last running back to win the Heisman, in 2015, and no player from a Group of Five school, as it would be defined now, has ever won it.

Jeanty is the nation’s leading rusher and has gone over 200 yards twice in four games. He had 259 yards and four touchdowns against Washington State last week, with 234 yards coming after contact. He forced 17 missed tackles.

He could put up equally prodigious numbers against Utah State’s porous defense Saturday.

Numbers to know

0 — First-quarter points allowed by Clemson.

9 — Mississippi WR Tre Harris’ nation-leading number of plays of at least 30 yards.

38 — Navy has scored at least this many points in its first four games of a season for the first time in the program’s 144-year history.

1971 — Year of Iowa State’s most recent conference road shutout before last week’s 20-0 win at Houston.

1994 — Year Duke last opened a season 5-0.

Under the radar

Rutgers (4-0, 1-0 Big Ten) at Nebraska (4-1, 1-1), Saturday, 4 p.m. ET (FS1)

The Scarlet Knights probably merit more attention for their best start since 2012. They’re coming off close wins at Virginia Tech and at home against Washington. A road win against a Nebraska team on the rise under second-year coach Matt Rhule almost certainly would end their 12-year absence from the Top 25.

The Cornhuskers are looking for their offense to be sharper than it was in an ugly win at Purdue last week. A victory over Rutgers would move Nebraska within one win of bowl eligibility for the first time since 2016.

Hot seat

Florida State’s Mike Norvell has seen his fortunes turn dramatically.

A year ago, the Seminoles were on their way to 13-0 and an ACC championship before they were snubbed by the College Football Playoff committee because of an injury to their quarterback. A 63-13 Orange Bowl loss to Georgia was considered a one-off considering the Seminoles were No. 10 in the preseason Top 25 and predicted to win the ACC.

But here they sit, 1-4 with No. 15 Clemson up next. The offense is averaging just 15.2 points, the passing game has produced just four touchdowns and six interceptions and the run game is the fourth-least productive in the country. Brock Glenn will take over at quarterback for the injured DJ Uiagalelei.

Norvell was rewarded for last season with an eight-year, $84 million contract extension, and the Tallahassee Democrat reported his buyout would be $65 million. That should be enough to make his bosses think twice, or three times, about making a change.

(The Associated Press contributed to this report)

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As the one year anniversary of Oct. 7 looms, Palestinian San Diegans have been counting their dead. The assault on Lebanon has the early patterns that resembles Gaza and the West Bank. I talked to my aunt who lives outside of Beirut. In her 83 years she has seen too much. For her children, now aging themselves, their entire lives have been consumed by war. The numbers of direct family members lost are in the hundreds, perhaps thousands in San Diego County alone.

If that is not enough, individuals and organizations in San Diego have launched rampant bullying campaigns to disrupt and sabotage planned cultural and civil rights events and educational support in San Diego hotels, museums, parks, universities, and schools. Below is a partial list of several incidents and crimes where litigation is pending so few details are able to be disclosed. One is the Council on American Islamic Relations, CAIR San Diego, when their Sept. 14 annual gala’s location was abruptly moved. It resembles a similar incident in Arlington, Va.

The Mingei Museum in Balboa Park in July reportedly postponed a Palestinian Tatreez (embroidery) workshop, indicating threats of protest and violence the week before the scheduled Monday night event.

The San Diego based National Conflict Resolution Center forcibly removed Imam Taha, a board member and recipient of a Peacemaker Award without his consent.

The County Board of Supervisors and mayor Todd Gloria have refused to meet with our community, not only to acknowledge individual and collective traumas, but to remediate recent hostile resolutions and misrepresentations against Middle Easterners and North Africans.

Where is the alarm? Rather, San Diego’s elected officials, civic institutions and colleges accept bullying that limits and sabotages Palestinian Americans’ right to grieve or publicly memorialize the past year of carnage and slaughter, strongly claimed by international law to be a genocide and a scholasticide.

An alternate reality has been concocted to justify extreme actions against Palestinian Americans throughout the country. In San Diego County, the American Jewish Committee and its affiliates such as the Anti-Defamation League have been deemed non-reliable sources by Wikipedia. Palestinian American resources for Oct. 7 are readily available.

Palestinian American students have been the most vulnerable. In Chicago on Oct.14, 2023, 6-year old first grader, Wadea al-Fayoume, was stabbed to death by his landlord. He was unanimously commemorated last month by the U.S. Senate. In Vermont last Thanksgiving, three Palestinian American college students, Tahseen Ali Ahmad, Kinnan Abdalhamid and Hisham Awartani were shot and one, Awartani is permanently paralyzed from the waist down. Nationwide, the increase in hate crimes and incidents have risen to astronomical levels since Oct. 7, 2023.

Threats made to anyone who criticizes Israel creates fear. This perpetuates the dissemination of false information via propaganda. Silencing is already normalized when it comes to Arab, Palestinian and Muslim Americans.

The silence from entities who tally incidents such as the ACLU, FBI and General Attorney’s office have responsibilities to monitor, gather information and begin investigations. Our District Attorney’s office in San Diego and California’s Attorney General in Sacramento are refusing to notice what is threatening our constitutional rights to engage in public debate. After this long period of silence. Our community concludes that they do not care. Prove us wrong.

Our community feels unsafe while it grieves these losses in our home countries. If bullying is not addressed proactively by our civic leaders, it will metastasize and lead to more violence against Arabs, Muslims and all Americans critical of Israel. We expect to practice our constitutional rights without danger and sabotage. We demand that empathy and discussion, ingredients for healing and responsibly constructed resolutions be sought by elected and civic leaders.

Bittar is an artist, writer and community organizer who lives in North Park.