Previewing the biggest games on the college football schedule: On the Line
Buckle up for the biggest regular season game in Tennessee and Georgia history. Moving forward, both in this article and for the rest of the season, we'll refer to teams by their College Football Playoff rankings, but we're making an exception for the 25th regular-season AP No. 1 vs. No. 2 game in college football history, and the first for both No. 2 Tennessee and No. 1 Georgia.
In fact, despite claiming three national titles, Georgia has never played in an AP No. 1 vs. No. 2 game, and Tennessee (six claimed titles) has only played in one.
Georgia's arrival here (3:30 p.m. ET, CBS) is not a surprise -- it's the 10th AP Top 5 showdown of the Kirby Smart era, but somehow the first 1-2 game -- while Tennessee's is. According to my research, they're the first team to play a Game of the Century while starting the season unranked since Michigan in 1985.
A win for the Vols would all but guarantee Tennessee could drop a game down the stretch and still reach the Playoff for the first time. Josh Huepel's team would have three wins over the current CFP Top 10 and six of its nine wins could come over foes who were ranked at kickoff. Beat Georgia, Missouri, South Carolina and Vanderbilt and Tennessee is in the CFP, no matter what happens in Atlanta, possibly as the No. 1 seed. Heck, even with a loss and runner-up status in the SEC East, Tennessee may still be in, so long as the Vols don't go all Oregon against the Dawgs.
As for the game, Georgia is more than a touchdown favorite. The various algorithms give the Bulldogs a roughly 70 percent chance to win the game.
When Georgia has the ball
When Tennessee has the ball
Judging by those numbers, the game will boil down to whether Georgia's back end can prevent the same leaks that have sunk every other defense to wage war with the Vols so far this year.
If you're a fan of a team outside the SEC, your ideal scenario is a decisive Tennessee win and your nightmare is a close Georgia win. So, plan on a close Georgia win.
The SEC West may be up for grabs, too. For years, Alabama-LSU was basically the Deep South Super Bowl, garnering Game of the Century (AP 1 vs. 2) status twice in nine years.
Now, though, CBS has passed on this game two years in a row (No. 13 Auburn at No. 14 Texas A&M got the nod last year) due to LSU not holding up its end of the bargain -- but that could change Saturday night.
One of these teams could put the SEC West in a stranglehold on Saturday night (7 p.m. ET, ESPN), and that team is No. 10 LSU, not No. 6 Alabama.
The Tigers have already scored a win over No. 11 Ole Miss (the Tide and Rebels play next week) and have scored 45 points in each of their two games since getting blown out at home by No. 1 Tennessee. The key to those games: Jaydon Daniels, who is a combined 44-of-60 for 597 yards with five touchdowns against no interceptions with 165 rushing yards and six touchdowns since the UT loss.
For everyone assuming Alabama will win because it's Bama, well, you may be right. The Tide have won 10 of the last 11 in this series and are 29-9-2 all-time in Baton Rouge. But Alabama has been shaky on the road this season, and was shaky on the road last season as well.
All the pressure here is on Alabama, a team that started the year No. 1 and an overwhelming favorite to win the national title that would be all but eliminated from national, conference and divisional championship contention with a loss, while LSU is still very much a work in progress that seems to be getting better by the week. An SEC West championship was not even on the radar as recently as Oct. 8.
If you're LSU, get the game to the fourth quarter and put the ball in Daniels's hands with a chance to take the lead, and take it from there.
A grudge match in Fort Worth. Back in July, Texas Tech announced a $25,000 a pop NIL collective for its football players. TCU offensive analyst/recruiting coordinator Bryan Carrington had some thoughts.
That thread quickly made its way to Lubbock, and within a day the cactus emoji was all over Texas Tech Twitter.
That brings us to Saturday. There's familiarity and friendship on both sides of these coaching staffs, each led by a former Texas high school coach. "Sonny Dykes is a good friend," Joey McGuire said this week, "known him forever." Dykes's relationship, of course, goes back even further. Spike Dykes is the most beloved Tech coach ever, leading the Red Raiders to 82 wins from 1987 to 1999. Sonny graduated from Lubbock Coronado High School, attended Texas Tech (he played first base), and spent 2000-06 as a Mike Leach assistant.
That warm familiarity... does not extend to the fan bases. The Baylor/TCU/Tech Triangle of Hate will be the league's best rivalry once Texas and OU leave, and on Saturday No. 7 TCU has all the incentive in the world to beat the ever-loving dog out of Texas Tech.
Despite universal acclaim for the strength of the Big 12 this season, TCU came out as the lowest-ranked of the sixth undefeated teams in the committee's rankings, and the only one below 6-1 Alabama. Committee chairman Boo Corrigan's justification for this: TCU didn't beat No. 13 Kansas State and No. 18 Oklahoma State impressively enough.
“We’re looking for a balanced team, offense, and defense,” Corrigan said. “They’ve gotten behind in games.”
This, despite No. 6 Alabama trailing No. 24 Texas in the final minute and being a completed pass away from losing to 3-5 Texas A&M. The Frogs are also sixth in the country in net yards per play (granted, one spot below Alabama.... but 28 spots above No. 4 Clemson). ESPN's Strength of Record is a metric that attempts to do the committee's job for it. SoR has Tennessee first and Ohio State second, just like the committee, and TCU third.
Fox's Joel Klatt says brand bias is the only reason TCU is at No. 7.
As it happens, Klatt, Gus Johnson and Jenny Taft will be in Fort Worth on Saturday to air Texas Tech at TCU in Fox's Big Noon window. Expect those thoughts to make the air if the Frogs open up a multi-score lead over the Red Raiders.
Additional Games:
-- UTEP at Rice (7 p.m. ET Thursday, CBS Sports Network): These teams at the opposite end of the lower 48's biggest state never met before the 1996 formation of Conference USA, and now meet for the 25th consecutive -- and possibly final -- time, as Rice joins the American next fall. Rice is looking to continue hanging around in the C-USA title race while also recovering from a stunning 33-point loss to Charlotte.
-- Appalachian State at Coastal Carolina (7:30 p.m. ET Thursday, ESPN): Nearly every game in the Sun Belt East is important, a 7-team division with six teams within one loss of first place. Coastal leads the pack at 4-1, while App is one of the five 2-loss teams.
-- UMass at UConn (7 p.m. ET Friday, CBS Sports Network): Someone watch out for Jim Mora's red hot Huskies. Fresh off their first win over BC, UConn now seeks to be 5-5 for the first time since 2015 and its first victory over its oldest FBS rival since 2019. In a series dating back to 1897, UMass leads 38-35-2.
-- No. 23 Oregon State at Washington (10:30 p.m. ET Friday, ESPN2): Both teams are hanging around the periphery of the Pac-12 title race at 3-2 and 6-2 overall, so this will be a battle to cut the thread that the other hangs on. Oregon State hasn't started a season 7-2 since 2012.
-- Air Force vs. Army (11:30 a.m. ET, CBS): We continue one of the strangest traditions in college football -- where Air Force and Army travel to Arlington, Texas, to play in a baseball stadium sitting across the street from two football stadiums. Anyway, Air Force has already beaten Navy, so a win here earns the Falcons the Commander-in-Chief's Trophy for the 21st time overall and first since 2016. Army has won two straight over AFA and two straight CICs.
-- Florida at Texas A&M (noon ET, ESPN): With first place on the line in the SEC East and SEC West later today, we also get this game. Texas A&M looks to avoid its first 5-game losing streak since 1980, while Florida hopes to improve to 4-12 in its last 16 SEC games. Feel the excitement!
-- No. 17 North Carolina at Virginia (noon ET, ACC Network): It's the 127th edition of the South's Oldest Rivalry, tied for second in the FBS with the Deep South's Oldest Rivalry (Georgia-Auburn). UNC won by 20 points last year and holds a 65-58-4 lead.
-- Iowa at Purdue (noon ET, FS1): Iowa scored 33 points last week in their win over Northwestern. If the Hawkeyes can get to 30 again, they'll have accomplished something they haven't done so far this season, and something they didn't do for all of 2021, either.
-- Baylor at Oklahoma (3 p.m. ET, ESPN+): Three things. 1) Depending on what advanced stats you're looking at, this is the biggest toss-up of the weekend. 2) Oklahoma is one win away from "Hey, this team is putting it all together!" status. 3) Here we have a major conference game involving two successful teams banished to streaming. We're told it's the way of the future, but it feels like a slight and very small-time when the Big Ten and SEC are still living in the present with all of their games on real TV.
-- No. 24 Texas at No. 13 Kansas State (7 p.m. ET, FS1): If K-State wins, you can go ahead and write in a K-State-TCU Big 12 Championship, especially if TCU wins earlier in the day. Texas hasn't figured out to win on the road and maintain leads under Steve Sarkisian, and they've now had two weeks to stew on a loss where they couldn't maintain a lead on the road. K-State is coming off its best performance of the year. Somehow, Vegas and the computers have this game as a toss-up.
-- BYU at Boise State (7 p.m. ET, FS2): Would you believe that these two regional powers have only played each other 12 times, and not at all until 2003? BYU makes its seventh, and perhaps last, trip to the blue turf with a Big 12 move coming next season.
-- UNLV at San Diego State (7 p.m. ET, CBS Sports Network): With both teams at 2-2, consider this an elimination game in the MW West. UNLV has lost three straight overall after a 4-1 start.
-- Houston at SMU (7 p.m. ET, NFL Network): These former Southwest Conference and current AAC bunk mates meet for perhaps the final time, leaving SMU and Rice as the only SWC schools not in a Power 5 conference. Led by senior quarterbacks, this is a Last Gasp Game, as the loser will be all but eliminated from the chase for the last conference title in the "original" AAC composition.
-- No. 4 Clemson at Notre Dame (7:30 p.m. ET, NBC): It's a redemption opportunity for DJ Uiagaleilei, who lost at Notre Dame Stadium as a freshman in 2020 and, more recently and more importantly, was last season on the sideline watching Cade Klubnik and Will Shipley engineer a 20-point rally after a 4-turnover performance against Syracuse. For Notre Dame, it's an opportunity to earn the first signature win of the Marcus Freeman era.
-- No. 5 Michigan at Rutgers (7:30 p.m. ET, BTN): In airing on BTN, Michigan snaps a 6-game streak of playing on ABC or Fox. On the year, Michigan has played on a broadcast network seven times, which Ohio State will tie Saturday at Northwestern. Notre Dame will move alone into first place with its eighth game at Clemson, while Alabama and Georgia are at four apiece.
-- Auburn at Mississippi State (7:30 p.m. ET, SEC Network): The (brief) Cadillac Williams era begins. If you're taking an off-the-radar upset this week, might I suggest this one? FBS teams are 4-2 immediately following in-season moves so far this year, and Mississippi State is fresh off a 30-6 loss at Alabama.
-- Florida State at Miami (7:30 p.m. ET, ABC): Florida State and Miami met as ranked teams for 14 straight years from 1981-94, and nine straight years from 1999-06, peaking with a 1 vs. 2 game in 1991. But the 'Canes and 'Noles have met as ranked foes just twice since 2011, and this marks the third unranked meeting in the last four. Neither team is a factor in the ACC title race, and a Miami win would leave both teams at 5-4. This rivalry has seen better days, is what I'm saying.
-- No. 21 Wake Forest at No. 22 NC State (7:30 p.m. ET, ACC Network): Neither team will win an ACC title, but a 10-2 season is still within reach. Which quarterback will show up? Sam Hartman turned the ball over six times in the third quarter in last week's loss at Louisville, while NC State began the MJ Morris era, as the freshman replaced ineffective backup Jack Chambers, going 20-of-29 for 265 yards with three touchdowns and no picks in a 22-21 win over Virginia Tech last week.
Enjoy the games, everyone.
