CFB Week 13: Contenders pause for a cupcake
November 22, 2014 | Sports,
By: Nate Gatter, KCOU Sports
The eye of the college football playoff storm is here and Week 13 brings the committee’s top 10 teams a relaxing reset before plunging straight back into the churning uncertainty. While great games abound from ranks 11-25, the top 10 will remain largely untested.
Florida State, Oregon, and Mississippi State, currently ranked in slots two through four, respectively, face three opponents with a combined record of 11-19 while top-ranked Alabama takes on FCS Western Carolina. Florida State remains largely free of ridicule by facing Boston College, the only Week 13 opponent of the aforementioned schools with a winning record, but the Seminoles have been handed the easiest schedule of the current top four by a wide margin.
As far as determining the teams to reach the playoff and their respective seedings, what is Week 13 contributing? While watching Alabama beat down Western Carolina will surely be a joy for all Crimson Tide fans, the only real question is whether the Catamounts can come closer to victory than Texas A&M did when it traveled to Tuscaloosa. Oregon hosts 2-8 Colorado, a team that beat Massachusetts by a mere three points in only UMass’s second game as an FBS program. Of course, it’s always possible that Vanderbilt rolls into “Stark Vegas” and shock the Bulldogs, but, barring the extremely improbable, this week of college football does little but clarify the lesser bowl games.
I’m as excited as anyone to watch Utah and Arizona duke it out while Minnesota and Nebraska do battle in Lincoln, but those games are meaningless in crowning a national champion. Why destroy the ever-growing buzz around the college football playoff with a wasted week? The most playoff-relevant game this weekend features a 6-4 Boston College team, and I consider that downright criminal.
There are still great regular season games remaining, but I would recommend college football fans take in some hoops this Saturday instead of wasting their days away watching Amari Cooper victimize the Western Carolina secondary.
My mother is very fond of telling me that on any given day, any team can beat any other. Not this Saturday; it’s going to be a bloodbath. Wake me up next week.