College Football week 14 Preview

As we head into this championship week of the college football season, plenty of awesome games fill the schedule. The NFL is in full swing, but there’s some fun teams and players to check out on Saturday’s as well. There’s too many games to break down each and every FBS game, but these are the top 10 matchups as determined by College Pick’Em over on ESPN. For that game you not only have to pick the winner but rank them in order of confidence (more points=more confidence). Here’s my picks and breakdown of the 10 games selected to make up the 14th and final week of the competition.

Case Keenum and the Houston Cougars are taking aim at a perfect season this Saturday against Southern Miss. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

10 points: Houston over Southern Miss-Houston has one final hurdle between it and a BCS Bowl which would not only be the first for their school, but also for the whole conference. Conference USA  historically has not been a football powerhouse, but it’s championship game this year will get tons of attention as the Cougars look to complete a perfect season. Case Keenum has this offense rolling at an incredible pace averaging 52.7 points per game (1st in FBS).  The past few years (except last year when Keenum went down) offense has been no problem for the Cougars, but this year it’s being backed by a much-improved defense that has held its last 4 opponents under 20. The spread in this game is 14, but USM is no slouch either, coming into this game at 10-2 and sporting a #24 ranking. In the end though, Keenum and his full accompaniment of offensive weapons are too much for any C-USA defense and it’ll be very exciting to see them play a big-conference D in their BCS game after they take care of Southern Miss this weekend (who should get a decent bowl themselves).

9 points: Wyoming over Colorado State- The Border War between these 2 schools determines the holder of the Bronze Boot (an actual bronzed battle boot worn in Vietnam by a CSU alumnus) and has for the last 42 years. Wyoming has won the last 2 and beat down the Rams last year 44-0. This year the Cowboys have to travel to Fort Collins to face Colorado State. State’s had a rough year and has lost their last 7 in a row. Wyoming has been in much better form lately. Last week, they hung with Boise State, taking the lead to start the game and only trailing 13-7 at half, before losing 36-14. If you look at common opponents it quickly becomes clear that Wyoming has been the better team throughout the season, but it’s always tough to go on the road and win a big rivalry game. I’ll still easily take Wyoming to win, but that’s the one reason I put the Houston game one tick higher.

8 points: LSU over Georgia-LSU won’t drop the ball this close to securing their undefeated run to the BCS championship game. Georgia’s a good team but has dropped both games against highly ranked opponents (Boise State and South Carolina) and hasn’t played nearly the juggernaut of a schedule that LSU has. Les Miles has conditioned his players to playing ranked opponents in difficult conditions so going into Atlanta and beating the Bulldogs won’t be anything new and with that defense shouldn’t be that close.

7 points: Virginia Tech over Clemson-The ACC championship game does have 2 ranked opponents as Frank Beamer’s #5 Hokies take on the #20 Clemson Tigers. Va Tech will be out for revenge for their only loss when they were embarrassed 30-3 by Clemson at home earlier this year. Since then the teams have gone in opposite directions, but not the way you would think as Virginia Tech rebounded from that loss and has been undefeated since including a convincing 38-0 trouncing of rival and overachieving Virginia last week. Clemson meanwhile has scuffled losing 3 of their last 4 behind sophomore Tahj Boyd. Clemson is a young team, and I think Beamer will have his boys ready to roll over the Tigers and get to that BCS bowl (probably the Orange) that’s waiting for the winner of this one.

6 points: Baylor over Texas-If you haven’t watched a RG3 game yet, you owe it to yourself as a football fan to catch his game before he goes pro. Baylor’s defense isn’t anything to write home about, but Texas’s offense lacks a great QB and won’t be able to keep up with Griffin and the high-scoring Bears. Baylor has had a breakout year in football, bookended by knocking off TCU to open the year and Oklahoma last week. They rank #2 in offensive yards but will be facing the top Big-12 defense. RG3 will be able to build on his Heisman campaign  and beat Texas in back-to-back years. Expect Baylor to maximize their home-field advantage and beat Texas to have a chance for getting to 10 wins this season.

5 points:Oklahoma State over Oklahoma-Probably the most intriguing game of the week as the Cowboys of Oklahoma State try to bounce back from their first loss of the season in double OT to Iowa St and have to face their in-state rival Sooners of Oklahoma. Oklahoma has dominated and won the last 9 meetings between these 2 teams by a combined score of 343-178. OK State’s offense has been among the best in the game all season and is 2nd in points scored coming into this game. OU’s offense is no slouch either as they rank just behind the Cowboys in yards from scrimmage (#4, to state’s #3). The deciding factor for me is the way that Oklahoma’s defense looked last week against Baylor, and the fact that the game is in Stillwater (Ok St’s home stadium). It’ll be a fun one to watch to see if State can finally get the monkey off their back and get back into the national title picture (please, please save us from ‘Bama-LSU part deux)…

4 points: Wisconsin over Michigan State-It took a desperate hail mary for the Spartans to beat Wisconsin in these teams previous meeting in the regular season in East Lansing. This time the game’s on a neutral field (Lucas Oil Field) as the inaugural Big Ten Championship game. It’s hard to beat a team the level of the Badgers twice in the same season and Wisconsin will be out for their revenge. Their only other loss was also a last second play by Ohio State, so they’re literally 2 plays from being unbeaten and headed to face LSU. Obviously, those 2 plays did happen so they’re not, but they’re still a very good team. Michigan State’s other loss was an early season setback to Notre Dame. I think it’ll be Wisconsin not allowing the Hail Mary and getting the W and the bid to the Rose Bowl.

3 points: Cincinnati over UCONN- Cincinnati is still alive for the Big East title but need a win here and a little help from USF on Thursday to get that BCS bid. They lost QB and leader of the Zach-attack Zach Collaros (and they’re undefeated Big East season) to a broken ankle 2 weeks ago. The following week they got hammered at Rutgers but bounced back and beat a sliding Orange team (more on them later) in Syracuse 30-13 last week. UCONN had a big weak last week too as they knocked off visiting Rutgers 40-22 and looks to become bowl eligible by pulling out their regular season finale. The game is at Cincinnati so I’ll take the Bearcats. Their new starting QB Munchie Legaux definitely has a top-10 FBS name, but not really top-10 talent. I think he’ll do just enough to get them the win (like last week) but he could implode and hand the Huskies the win (like 2 weeks ago).

2 points: Hawaii over BYU-Hawaii is always good at home and Bryant Moniz leads a potent Warriors offense as a dual-threat QB. BYU is only 2-2 on the road and already assured of playing in the Armed Forces Bowl. On the other hand, Hawaii has to win to be bowl eligible in which case they would host the Hawaii Bowl on Christmas Eve which is always cool to see. I’ll be pullin’ for ‘em and since they’ll be motivated I think they can pull off this upset.

1 point: Syracuse over Pitt-Whoever wins this game is bowl eligible, the loser goes home and doesn’t play again ’til next season. Both these teams didn’t expect to be here as they has promising seasons going before late-season swoons brought them to identical 5-6 records. Pitt’s been bad at crucial points all season, I think this game will be a microcosm of their season and they’ll give it to the Orange at the end with a turnover or crazy penalty.

If picking college games and ranking them in order of confidence sounds like a blast (and it is since then you’ve got something to cheer for in every major game), don’t worry if you missed college Pick’Em this year. We’ll be starting up a Fantasy CPR group in Bowl Mania (also on ESPN) where you can pick your winners and see how you’re doing against the picks and analysis in the columns here on Fantasy CPR. It’s been a great college football season and even though the championship game may be a downer (what else do you call a rematch of a 9-6 game) there’s plenty of great college football to enjoy here at Fantasy CPR, where fantasy sports has no offseason.

Tags: Baylor, bowl eligible, college football, college football picks, college pick'em, Football, Oklahoma State, virginia tech, Wisconsin