College football Week 8 thread

Below are the most-interesting games. Lines courtesy of Bovada.

Thursday

Miami (-8) at North Carolina, 7:30 p.m. ESPN --- Yawn.

Friday

UCF (+11) at Louisville, 8 p.m., ESPN --- Yawn again.

Saturday

South Carolina (-7.5) at Tennessee, noon, ESPN --- That line seems a little low, Part 1.

Georgia (-8.5) at Vanderbilt, noon, CBS --- I know the Dawgs are banged up, but the ’Dores are favored after giving up 51 at home two weeks ago? As noted below, the Bovada line on ESPN.com had Georgia listed as an underdog. This makes more sense.

Florida (+3) at Missouri, 12:21 p.m., SEC Network --- Should be a dandy. Tigers are on fire, but the Gators have the best defense they’ve played by far.

Auburn (+13.5) at Texas A&M, 3:30 p.m., CBS --- That line seems a little low, Part 2.

UCLA (+5.5) at Stanford, 3:30 p.m., ABC/ESPN2 --- Utes took a little shine off this one, unfortunately.

Brigham Young (+10) at Houston, 3:30 p.m., ESPNNews --- Any reference to a Battle of Cougars would be a violation of BYU’s honor code.

Washington (+3) at Arizona State, 6 p.m., Pac-12 Network --- Latest round of the Holiday Bowl playoffs.

LSU (-7.5) at Ole Miss, 7 p.m., ESPN2 --- Some listings had Ole Miss favored, but that was clearly a typo.

Arkansas (+28) at Alabama, 7 p.m., ESPN --- Give the points, if you dare, Part 1.

Iowa State (+30.5) at Baylor, 7 p.m., ESPNU --- Give the points, if you dare, Part 2.

USC (+3) at Notre Dame, 7:30 p.m., NBC --- Less meaningful than it’s been since probably 2001.

Florida State (+3.5) at Clemson, 8 p.m., ABC --- Easily the game of the week. Clemson’s flown under the radar since the Georgia win, but this one should be fun to watch.

Washington State (+38) at Oregon, 10 p.m., Fox Sports 1 --- Give the points, if you dare, Part 3.

 

Haven't seen Auburn this year, so I don't know what special brand of suck they may or may not be peddling, but the A&M defense doesn't look capable of stopping anyone. So, Auburn will likely be able to put up points.

 

Not sure how many they will give up but Baylor will be back on the 70 point train this week.

 

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that Baylor runs the table in a weak Big 12, Clemson or Florida State and Ohio State each finish perfect and Oregon and Alabama, too. It's looking likely that all of those outcomes could happen. Is that the biggest BCS clusterfuck ever?

 

Since they went to a 12-game schedule, there hasn't been more than three major-conference teams who ended the regular season without a loss (or with only one loss). So the answer to your question is "yes."

But it always seems to work itself out. If it doesn't this year, people will of course raise hell.

But they're changing the system next year anyway, so there's nothing else to be done.

 

Who cares?

 

Nothing I can see in a quick search indicates that Georgia's an underdog. Consensus appears to be about a 9-point favorite.

 

The Bovada line here does:

http://espn.go.com/college-football/lines

But that appears to be a typo. I'll fix it.

 

Yeah I saw that. Either a typo or a really weird outlier.

 

I don't know that there's ever been more than three undefeateds from BCS conferences after the conference championship games. We have the discussion every October, yet it always seems to get sorted out.

Baylor (and Texas Tech) are sort of like Louisville. You only look at them if there are no other clear-cut choices. I'd guess a one-loss team from another conference goes ahead of any of those based on strength of schedule. Neither of those three has played anyone even close to a Top 25 team yet.

 

My prediction is it will be such a clusterfuck, they'll get rid of the BCS next year and go with a committee-picks-a-Final-Four format in its place.

 

Looks like Bovada has the Florida-Mizzou game flopped as well. Gators are a 3-point favorite.