College Football Week 15 Thread

Maybe someday Penn State will hire a football coach. But hey, at least they avoided the legend of the scumbag Lane Kiffin, who may be one of the worst human beings ever to coach a football game, and imagine the competition! Meanwhile, I’m sure this mid-major coach will bring Florida back!

This week’s picks for the conference championship games, with rankings from the Athletic’s rankings of teams 1-136, listed in order of game time.

1. #71 Troy vs. #22 James Madison (-23.5), Fri 7, ESPN. The Sun Belt title game should be a massive blowout, as JMU hopes that Duke beats Virginia and it can sneak into the playoffs and lock the ACC (huge LOL if that happens). The line reflects this and is pretty massive. But Troy is also a 4 loss team that was shut out 33-0 by Old Dominion and while I am sure they would like to play spoiler, it ain’t gonna happen. JMU will cover this spread.
2. #70 Kennesaw State v. #69 Jacksonville State (+2.5), FRI 7, CBSSN. Conference USA title here against two evenly matched teams and similar resumes. I think I like Kennesaw here, who has played almost everyone tough this year and almost beat Wake Forest. They have the slightly better defense. Jacksonville did win the head to head, but I’ll take KSU in the rematch.
3. #19 North Texas v. #20 Tulane (+2.5), FRI 8, ABC. The winner here is likely to make the playoffs so this is a big one. Both teams have lost their coaches to bigger jobs but both coaches are also still going to coach through the end of the season. Tulane is good but that North Texas offense is ridiculous and I think will win out here, so I take UNT to win the American.
4. #47 UNLV v. #60 Boise State (-4.5), FRI 8, FOX. I don’t see this as particularly close. Boise has been underwhelming all season and UNLV has looked pretty good. I like UNLV by a touchdown here.
5. #12 BYU v. #4 Texas Tech (-12.5), 12, ABC. It’s a bit hard to respect BYU when Tech given that the schedule was pretty iffy and Tech hammered them. But boy this is a big spread. I think Tech will win, but I like BYU to compete and cover that spread.
6. #98 Miami (OH) v. #76 Western Michigan (-1.5), 12, ESPN. Boy has the MAC become completely irrelevant. It used to be that they’d spawn a big time QB like Roethlisberger or Leftwich, but that’s a long time ago. The Fighting Big Bens are taking on Western Michigan this year. Western seems to be the significantly better team and plus is the home of Bell’s Brewery so hoist a Two Hearted for WMU to cover this spread.
7. #3 Georgia v. #11 Alabama (+2.5), 4, ABC. Is Alabama actually underrated? Especially since they beat Georgia already. But Bama has so many close wins and Georgia has looked better most of the year. I will take Georgia to even the score and cover that spread.
8. #2 Indiana v. #1 Ohio State (-4), 8, FOX. This is a pretty even spread. Maybe people are respecting Indiana. This might be the most interesting of all the title games because everyone is wondering whether Indiana can in fact beat Ohio State. It’s a really hard game to pick and I’m sure I’m wrong anyway like usual, so I will take Indiana cover the spread.
9. #42 Duke v. #18 Virginia (-4), 8, ABC. I’d love Duke to win this game because college football deserves a power conference getting shut out of playoffs because the leagues are so huge and the teams don’t play each other so they have to go ridiculous tiebreakers when you have a league where all the teams have two conference losses. Miami got shut out due to some weird tiebreaker and a 5 loss Duke team got in instead. You know what? Fuck it, Virginia is overrated anyway, I am wishcasting Duke to win. It’s not like thinking through these games has led to me being good at picking them anyway.

Last week I was 4-6, making me 71-73 on the season.