While a variety of conferences kick off this weekend, several prominent college programs are finding a little extra competition outside of the conference structure.

West Virginia looks to rebound from a rough open-subs game against Wheeling Jesuit as the Mountaineers visit Bowling Green. To be fair to WVU, their game against WJU came just after the players arrived on campus and isn’t necessarily representative of how life in the Rugby East will go.

Bowling Green Head Coach Tony Mazzarella, whose team played in a halftime demo with Kent State at a recent Cleveland Browns preseason game, expects his team to be in good shape.

“WVU is a very good team and they’ve moved up to the Rugby East, so we know it will be a challenge,” said Mazzarella. But BGSU had a nice early preseason camp and while the coach is looking for players to step into leadership roles, he has a lot of players to choose from.

“We will be deep,” said Mazzarella.

Further east Dartmouth hosts Boston College in a game between the top team in the Ivy League and one of the three teams that tied at 4-2 in the ECRC last year. BC is a tough, physical team, and Dartmouth is perhaps entering into a rebuilding year. But the Big Green has been able to handle the loss of All Americans before, even if this year it’s the USA 7s team captain. They didn’t have Madison Hughes available much last year, either. Still this will be a crucial time for Dartmouth to see what they have.

Kutztown is not among the Rugby East teams playing conference games, as the Golden Bears instead visit Empire Conference defending champions the Stony Brook Seawolves.

KU Head Coach Gregg Jones said his team will have some work to do. They graduated newly-capped Eagle scrumhalf Niku Kruger and flyhalf Brad Frederick, leaving a void at the playmaking positions. They have some players coming back from injury, David Snead transferring from Arkansas State, and Wes Hartmann emerging as captain, they will still be strong.

But Jones said “we’re rebuilding - well be competitive, but we’re in a rebuilding phase.” We’ll see how that works out.

Notre Dame College has started on fire against Buffalo and University of Notre Dame, and visits Kentucky. NDC is putting together an independent DIAA schedule hoping to, eventually, earn an invitation to the DIAA playoffs. Based on their start, they have an excellent shot.

Tennessee hosts Oklahoma in a non-conference game that has a lot to say. Oklahoma had a very rough 2014-15 year, and is looking to get started early in the hopes of rebounding, putting their messy coaching change story behind them. Tennessee faltered in conference playoff time, and this game is the first step toward putting that memory to bed, also.