Any given Saturday, any team is vulnerable. Don’t believe me? Take a look at this past Saturday, where at one point, top ten teams Alabama, Stanford, Baylor, Auburn, and South Carolina all were in dogfights against teams that they were favored to beat handily. Four of them managed to make it out alive, while Stanford succumbed to USC and handed the Pac-12 North lead back to Oregon. It goes to remind you that this is a game played primarily by 18-22-year-old kids. As Lou Holtz is fond of saying, you have a different team every week.

We are now down to six unbeaten teams, four of whom play in AQ conferences. You probably know all about Alabama, Florida State, Baylor, and Ohio State, so let’s focus on the two mighty mites here. Coming in at #15 is Fresno State, with a 9-0 record. The Bulldogs will only play 11 games this year, as their early-season matchup against Colorado was postponed due to the flooding earlier this year throughout the state of Colorado and doesn’t look like it will be made up. Fresno State relies on a potent passing offense; they rank 4th in the nation in passing yards per game and 8th in scoring. They have two games left against teams they will definitely be favored to win against: New Mexico and San Jose State. Their defense will be tested in very different ways in those games. New Mexico is second in the nation in rushing yards per game; San Jose State is 11th in passing yards per game. The best win on their schedule is either a one-point OT win over Rutgers or a one-point win over Boise State. They are currently ranked three slots higher than AAC leader Central Florida, so if the season ended today, the Bulldogs would be going to a BCS bowl game. Then, at #16, is Northern Illinois. The Huskies are no strangers to the BCS – they made it to the Orange Bowl last year. At 10-0, they have two regular season games left against Toledo and Western Michigan. If they get past those two, they will face either Bowling Green or Buffalo in the MAC Championship game. Interestingly enough, they got no push from their one of their best wins of the year, a 21-point win over a then 9-1 Ball State team, actually dropping in the standings one place. (The other best win candidate is a 30-27 victory in their season opener against Iowa.) Given their current standing, they would need some help to repeat as BCS bowl participants, so they might have to settle for a trip to Mobile in the GoDaddy.com bowl.

This week is a strange one, looking at the games. It is the beginning of the season-ending rivalry games, which are always fun. Some of the notable ones on the schedule include Stanford-California and Minnesota-Wisconsin, both of whose rivalry trophies are axes (the Stanford Axe and Paul Bunyan’s Axe, respectively). Another rivalry that is getting started back up towards the end of the season is Texas A&M-LSU. Those teams have played each other 51 times in the past, and starting next season, they will become Thanksgiving day rivals. However, it is also a week a lot of teams use to schedule a supposedly easy opponent before their season-ending rival. Clemson (the Citadel), South Carolina (Coastal Carolina), Alabama (Chattanooga), and Florida State (Idaho) are all doing this. South Carolina and Alabama shouldn’t sleep on their opponents, however: as of this email Coastal Carolina was ranked 9th in the I-AA rankings, while Chattanooga was 18th.

In small-school news, it is rivalry week in I-AA. Bethune-Cookman and Florida A&M play for the 68th time (the game has been known as the Florida Classic since 1978, and is one of the biggest HBCU games in the country). UC Davis and Sacramento State square off in the Causeway Classic for the 61st time (the trophy for this game is made from cement taken from the Yolo Causeway that connects the cities of Davis and Sacramento). Maine and New Hampshire will meet for the 103rd time; the teams play for the Brice-Cowell Musket. Harvard and Yale play for the 130th time. A Yale coach once said to his team: “Gentlemen, you are now going to play football against Harvard. Never again in your whole life will you do anything so important.” Lafayette and Lehigh will play for the 149th time, the most in college football history. In a neat twist, next year’s game, the 150th, will be played at Yankee Stadium.

Congratulations to AUBrian, who takes the week 12 win (their third of the year) with 186 points! Pachyderm and bamaken were tied for second with 185 points, and maestro was one point back with 184.

Standings after 12 weeks (dropping “two worst” weeks):

1st	AUBrian	1843
2nd	Pachyderm	1816
3rd	maestro	1814
4th	bamaken	1798
5th	BritanniaTex	1792
6th	BEVO	1789
7th	The Tradition	1782
8th	Crimson Gator	1780
9th	Allison	1779
10th	DirtyDiaperSlinger	1752

There are 19 games this week, and once again, thanks to #MACtion, we have an early game, so be quick with your picks! The first game is Northern Illinois at Toledo, Wednesday, November 20 @ 8 ET, so be sure to get your picks in by then!

Because of the early games this week, this will need to be an abbreviated version. Please note the early start time of the first game – I think it may be the first time we’ve ever had to pick a Wednesday night game! #MACtion

Congratulations to BritanniaTex, who wins week 11 with 145 points! AUBrian was second with 140 points, and Pachyderm was third with 139 points.

Standings after 11 weeks (dropping two worst weeks):

1st	AUBrian	1657
2nd	Pachyderm	1631
3rd	maestro	1630
4th	bamaken	1613
5th	Allison	1612
T-6th	JagRag	1610
T-6th	BritanniaTex	1610
8th	BEVO	1609
9th	The Tradition	1601
10th	Crimson Gator	1599

The first game this week is Ball State at Northern Illinois, Wednesday, November 13 @ 8 ET, so make sure to get your picks in by then!

In the earliest days of college football, teams played games in bunches. It wasn’t uncommon for a team to take an extended train trip away from campus, playing games on different campuses and cities as they went. For example, 130 years ago, Michigan’s 1883 football “season” was a four-game stretch between November 19 and November 27 that started in Hartford, Connecticut, and ended in Hoboken, New Jersey. (The Wolverines went 0-4 on the trip.) Later, it became clear that having more games on days when classes were not held would make more sense for the student-athletes, and so college football was played almost exclusively on Saturdays. 100 years ago, Michigan’s 1913 season consisted of seven games, all on Saturday. (UM fared much better this time, finishing with a 6-1 record.) Fast-forward several more years, and with the advent of better, faster methods of travel, playing games on other days of the week became viable again. And not only viable, but profitable! Now, we have college football games almost every day of the week once the season gets rolling, but the Thursday night games have especially become something of an institution.

I write all of this to lead up to this bold statement: this might be the biggest non-Thanksgiving Thursday night in the history of college football.

This Thursday, at 7:30 PM (Eastern): #10 Oklahoma at #6 Baylor. Oklahoma has only one loss, is fresh off a win over a top-10 opponent at the time, and is trying to fight its way back into contention for a conference title and a BCS bowl bid. They face Baylor, 7-0, who at 6^th has their highest BCS ranking ever. Don’t forget about their supercharged offense, which is averaging 718 yards and 64 points per game. However, the Bears are only now beginning to face what most pundits would consider the meat of their schedule. They have the inside track to the Big XII championship, but they’re still hoping for more. A top-10 matchup on Thursday night is a treat. Under most circumstances, that would be enough to get millions of eyes glued to the TV. But only an hour and a half later:

Oregon. Stanford. The Pac-12 matchup everyone’s been waiting for. Oregon is third in the country and hasn’t had an opponent finish within 21 points of them all year. They’re averaging 55 ½ points per game. They face the only team that many people give even a slight chance of beating them in the regular season. One major reason why is because they did it last year, and in Eugene to boot. This time, Stanford already has a loss on their record, but has come back to beat back-to-back top-25 opponents. They are fifth in the BCS, and would love nothing better than to spoil the Ducks’ championship hopes for a second-straight season while keeping their own dreams of Pasadena alive. The differences in styles are night and day as well, and I’m not just talking uniforms – it’s the speed and tempo of Oregon versus the power of Stanford. If it’s anything like last year’s overtime thriller, it’ll be one for the ages.

Two top-10 games, one of them a top-5 matchup, on a Saturday is a big deal. To have them both on Thursday night is unheard of. And given how these games have the potential to completely change the national picture this late in the year, I don’t feel out of place standing by my above statement.

Oh, by the way, this little game called LSU-Alabama happens on Saturday. You know, when college football games are normally played?

Congratulations to bamaken, who won a four-way tie of perfect pickers this week to take the week 10 title! Also finishing with perfect scores of 136 points this week: AUBrian, aggiemom, and The Tradition. Just one point back this week with 135 points were DirtyDiaperSlinger, Crimson Gator, and Allison.

Standings after ten weeks (dropping “two worst” weeks):

1st	AUBrian	1517
2nd	maestro	1493
3rd	Pachyderm	1492
T-4th	JagRag	1477
T-4th	Allison	1477
6th	bamaken	1475
7th	BEVO	1473
T-8th	The Tradition	1465
T-8th	BritanniaTex	1465
10th	Crimson Gator	1464

We’re getting down to the crucial last few weeks, so every point’s going to be critical! If you’ve read this far, I probably don’t need to tell you when the first game is this week, but otherwise I’ll feel strange ending one of these emails in a different way, so here goes. The first game this week is Oklahoma at Baylor, Thursday, November 7 @ 7:30 ET, so make sure to get your picks in by then!

November – where championships can’t be won, but they can certainly be lost. In the recent history of the BCS, only 2004, 2005 and 2010 stand out as years when the two teams that started November in the 1 and 2 positions ended there unscathed. Otherwise, chaos tends to reign. Remember 2007? Yes, 1 and 2 at the start of November ended up 1 and 2 in December, but take a look at how they got there! Here are the top 5 BCS standings through the month of November and into December in 2007:

1 2 3 4 5

November 4 Ohio State LSU Oregon Kansas Oklahoma

November 11 LSU Oregon Kansas Oklahoma Missouri

November 18 LSU Kansas West Virginia Missouri Ohio State

November 25 Missouri West Virginia Ohio State Georgia Kansas

December 2 Ohio State LSU Virginia Tech Oklahoma Georgia

Where did LSU go on November 25? All the way down to seventh after a triple-overtime loss to Arkansas. Thanks to craziness afterwards, they made it all the way from 7^th to 2^nd in one week – and the rest is history. Alabama and Oregon probably aren’t resting on their laurels right now anyway, but it pays to remember that steadfastness is the exception, not the rule, when it comes to November.

It’s the matchup ten years in the making! When Miami joined the ACC in 2004, many thought that the annual matchup between the Hurricanes and Florida State would continue to have national implications, and also directly impact the ACC. It hasn’t worked out that way so far, as Florida State has won the ACC only twice since 2004, while Miami has never even been the ACC Coastal Division champion. But the winds of change are blowing (see what I did there?), and the Seminoles and “The U” are again playing in one of the biggest games of the year. It might be the first of two meetings between the ‘Noles and the ‘Canes this year, which wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened. The teams met twice in the 2003 season, with Miami winning both at Tallahassee in October and Miami (in the 2004 Orange Bowl) in January.

Your way too early bowl picture: Believe it or not, Duke and Tulane are already bowl-eligible! Thanks to Duke’s 13-10 upset of Virginia Tech, the Blue Devils will make a bowl trip in consecutive years for the first time in school history. The Green Wave not only are set to make their first bowl since 2002, but have a shot at a Conference USA championship – they’re currently 4-0 in conference play. BYU is not only bowl-eligible, but can book hotel rooms and airfare. After their win over Boise State officially gave them their sixth victory, the Cougars accepted a bid to the Fight Hunger Bowl in San Francisco, making them the first official entrant into the 2013 bowl season.

In small school news: I almost always include an annual mention of Division III Mount Union, and for good reason – they are, in a word, dominant, having won their last 80 regular-season games. The types of performances they have against their competition put Alabama and Oregon to shame. For example, in their 48-0 win over Otterbein this past week, the Purple Raiders allowed one first down. One. They allowed 37 total yards. Except for an early 30-27 scare against Franklin (Indiana), the most points they’ve given up in a game is 14 – and they won that game 84-14. The average final score in a Mount Union game this year is 54-7. Might they meet their match this weekend, when they play fellow-undefeated Heidelberg, who’s only been held under 49 points once all year?

Congratulations to maestro, who wins week 9 with 197 points! Tied for second place were Crimson Gator and Allison, with 195 points. Just behind them were JagRag and bamaken, with 193 points.

Standings after week 9 (dropping two worst weeks):

1st	AUBrian	1363
2nd	Pachyderm	1349
3rd	maestro	1347
4th	bamaken	1339
T-5th	JagRag	1335
T-5th	BritanniaTex	1335
7th	BEVO	1333
8th	Allison	1331
9th	The Tradition	1325
10th	Crimson Gator	1317

Okay, admittedly, this week the pickings are slim. There are sixteen games this week. But any week can make a difference in the overall standings, so remember to pick! The first game this week is Arizona State at Washington State, Thursday, October 31 @ 10:30 PM ET, so make sure to get your picks in by then!

The first BCS standings are out, and with it we find some familiar, and some not-so-familiar, names at the top. No one expected the first BCS top ten to include Missouri, Miami, Baylor, and Texas Tech – none of them were even ranked in the preseason! Missouri’s case is especially incredible, as the Tigers have used back-to-back wins over Georgia and Florida to make a meteoric rise from “also receiving votes” in week 7’s USA Today coaches poll to 5th in the initial BCS standings. Even more amazing, Mizzou didn’t even earn a single point in the preseason poll.

So, how about that SEC weekend, huh? Every SEC game except for Alabama-Arkansas ended in an upset in one of the wildest Saturdays that I can recall. Auburn and Texas A&M combined for 1,217 yards and 86 points – and a defensive stand won the football game. Tennessee literally won their game against South Carolina on the last play. Ole Miss nearly blew a big lead against LSU before winning on a last-minute field goal a week after losing to Texas A&M in much the same fashion. Vanderbilt used a fake field goal for a touchdown at one point to reel off 17 straight points and beat Georgia. SEC aficionados like to say that the conference schedule is a season-long grind, and anyone can beat anyone on any given Saturday. Speaking as an SEC fan: normally, that argument doesn’t seem to hold water. The top six teams in the league were 30-0 last year against the bottom eight. This week bucked the trend – hard – and this year has given us a Missouri team already discussed above and an Auburn team that at 6-1 and 3-1 in conference play, is in control of their own destiny in a year that they were expected to maybe win eight games. Now, it’s looking like ten is a distinct possibility – and Auburn fans aren’t exactly giving up on that 11th win in the Iron Bowl, either…

Four more teams fell from the ranks of the unbeaten this past week, in wildly different fashions. Clemson got ambushed by Florida State at Death Valley in a 51-14 loss. UCLA lost a Pac-12 defensive slugfest (that phrase just feels strange to type) against Stanford, 24-10. Houston lost a shootout to BYU 47-46 as the Cougars in blue rang up 681 yards of offense and 41 first downs on 115 plays (a new I-A record) on the Cougars in red, who picked up “only” 483 themselves. Perhaps the most heartbreaking loss belonged to Louisville, who needed an impressive victory on Homecoming against Central Florida to make an impact on pollsters. Instead, the Cardinals wound up on the wrong side of a 38-35 score when their defense, who had come into the game giving up a nation-leading 7.3 points per game, couldn’t stop the Knights from driving the field in the final two minutes for the game-winning touchdown.

So now we are down to ten unbeaten teams, and thanks to the aforementioned Louisville loss to UCF, one of the more interesting sub-plots of this year has just become “which (if any) non-AQ school crashes the party?” Both Fresno State and Northern Illinois currently have no losses. The rules of the BCS standings specify that two non-AQ teams can’t earn automatic berths (via either being ranked in the top 12 or in the top 16, but higher than an automatic-qualifying conference champion). Before, Louisville was ranked too highly for this to be much of a concern. Now, however, UCF has the inside track to the American Athletic Conference championship, but they are currently ranked behind both Fresno and NIU in the BCS standings. Now for the Bulldogs and the Huskies, style matters. To make a twist on the old joke, they have to outrun each other, but they have to outrun the bear too!

In small-school news, Divison II #2 Northwest Missouri State beat #7 Pittsburg State (KS) 24-15 in their big rivalry game called the Fall Classic at Arrowhead. Held at the Kansas City Chiefs’ Arrowhead Stadium each year, the game is annually one of the highest-attended in all of Division II. Over 17,600 people came to the game (for perspective, that’s about 3,000 more than the combined seating capacities of both universities’ home stadiums). It’s a pretty big deal for D-2: Northwest has gone to seven national championship games (winning three) since 1994, while Pittsburg State has four titles of its own and has won more games than any other program in Division II history.

Congratulations to War Ralphie, who wins week 8 (their second weekly win of the year) with 171 points! AUBrian was second with 169 points, and Pachyderm was third with 163 points.

Standings after week 8 (dropping two worst weeks):

1st	AUBrian	1173
2nd	Pachyderm	1157
3rd	BEVO	1152
4th	maestro	1150
5th	BritanniaTex	1148
6th	bamaken	1146
7th	The Tradition	1143
8th	JagRag	1142
9th	Allison	1136
10th	Enfuego	1135

There is another big slate of 20 games this week. Lots of points are on the line, so you don’t want to forget to pick any games! This week’s first games are on Saturday, October 26 @ Noon ET, so make sure to get your picks in by then!

From Merriam-Webster.com…

upset (transitive verb): to defeat unexpectedly. To force out of the usual upright, level, or proper position. To throw into disorder.

Examples: this past week! This was the first weekend of true upsets this year in college football, and the impact could be felt far and wide throughout the country. In the SEC, Georgia couldn’t overcome the multiple injuries they’d had inflicted upon their team, and were beaten at home by Missouri. In the Big Ten, a plucky Penn State team outlasted Michigan in four overtimes in what was the first 4-OT game in both schools’ history. In the Big XII, Texas took the Golden Hat back from Oklahoma as a double-digit underdog, and in the Pac-12, Utah stunned Stanford at home in the first win by an unranked team against a top-10 opponent this year. I mentioned in last week’s email that this past week might be the week we finally saw some upsets, and a few of the pickers went with their gut (or maybe in BEVO’s case, their heart) on an upset pick and got it right!

This rash of upsets leaves the college football landscape with 14 unbeaten teams. We know that of these teams, several still must play another currently-unbeaten team:
Houston – Louisville
Clemson – Florida State
Florida State – Miami (FL)
Baylor – Texas Tech
Oregon – UCLA
Alabama – Missouri (in the SEC title game if both remain unbeaten in the regular season)

This leaves us with the possibility of as many as eight undefeated teams at the end of the regular season. As we’ve all learned, things tend to work themselves out as the season progresses. But, man…it’d be tough on fans to see, for instance, a 13-0 Ohio State and a 13-0 Florida State left out of the national championship game because Alabama and Oregon ran the table. That playoff can’t come soon enough, can it?

What can you say about an offense where 35 points is an off-day? What Baylor is doing, even in today’s standards of pinball scoring, is just ludicrous. The Bears average 63.4 points – over nine touchdowns per game. They have averaged – averaged – 715.4 yards per game. For perspective, Auburn set a school record for total offense in their game against Western Carolina this past week – with 712 yards. They are second in the country in passing yards per game – and fourth in the country in rushing yards per game. They average gaining more than 1/5 of the field on every pass completion (20.71 yards). They average 14.38 yards gained every time they throw the ball, period. They’ve scored as many or more rushing touchdowns (24) than 61 teams have scored touchdowns in any manner. They were the first team to score 70 or more points in three straight games since 1930. And they’ve only played five games so far. The modern-day I-A record for points in a season is held by the 2008 Oklahoma team, with 716. If the Bears make it to a bowl (exceedingly likely, since they’re currently 5-0) and were to maintain their current average through all of those games, they would finish with 824 points. And they’d have done it in thirteen games, one fewer than that Oklahoma team played. It would be the second-most points any team has ever scored in a season, and the record is held by a team that played 15 games (Pittsburg State, a Division II team, scored 837 in 2004).

Congratulations to AUBrian, who wins week seven (their second weekly win) with 154 points! In second place was verntroyer with 152 points, and Crimson Gator took third with 147 points.

Standings after seven weeks (dropping two worst weeks):

1st	AUBrian	1004
T-2nd	JagRag	997
T-2nd	bamaken	997
T-4th	BEVO	996
T-4th	maestro	996
6th	badgerTime	995
7th	Pachyderm	994
8th	BritanniaTex	989
T-9th	The Tradition	984
T-9th	DirtyDiaperSlinger	984
T-9th	Enfuego	984

There is a big slate this week, with 20 games to pick, including four top-25 matchups! I get the feeling that this week may have a big influence on the standings, so it’s going to be really important to pick wisely and well! The first game this week is Miami (FL) at North Carolina, Thursday, October 17 @ 7:30 ET, so make sure to get your picks in by then!

A note about each team in the current AP top 10:

#1 Alabama gave up 628 yards and 42 points to Texas A&M. They’ve given up 871 yards and 19 points to the other four teams they’ve played combined.

#2 Oregon has not scored less than 55 points in a game this year, nor have they given up more than 16 points in a game. Only one other team in the country can make the first claim (Baylor); only one other team can make the second (Louisville).

#3 Clemson already has 221 points in 5 games. In their 1981 national championship year, they had 338 points in 12 games, and that’s counting an 82-point outburst in one game.

#4 Ohio State has an 18-game winning streak, the longest in the country. Eight of those wins have come by 10 points or less.

#5 Stanford avenged their only Pac-12 loss since 2009 to a team not named Oregon with their win over Washington this past Saturday.

#6 Florida State is 3rd in the country in scoring offense and scoring defense, the only team besides Oregon in the top-10 in both categories.

#7 Georgia is the first team since Alabama in 2008 to beat two top-10 teams before October.

#8 Louisville has Teddy Bridgewater, yes…but they also currently have the #1 scoring defense in the nation, at just 6.8 points allowed per game.

#9 Texas A&M is third in the country in total offense, fourth in scoring offense, sixth in passing offense, and fourteenth in rushing offense.

#10 LSU is currently averaging 291.5 yards per game passing, which puts the Tigers in striking distance of a team record – the current LSU mark for passing yards per game in a season is 298.2 in 2001.

Congratulations to badgerTime, who edged out War Ralphie in the tie-breaker to win week 6! Both finished with 229 points. DirtyDiaperSlinger, Enfuego, Crimson Gator, and mhpugh all finished one point behind, with 228 points.

Standings after week 6 (dropping two worst weeks):

1st	JagRag	835
2nd	AUBrian	834
3rd	badgerTime	832
4th	Pachyderm	831
5th	BritanniaTex	830
T-6th	maestro	828
T-6th	bamaken	828
T-8th	BEVO	826
T-8th	mhpugh	826
10th	DirtyDiaperSlinger	825

This week’s slate of games includes three matchups between top-25 schools, and for the first time all year, there are no non-conference games in the list! Will the season-long trend of “chalk” continue, or is it finally time for the week of multiple upsets? Make your picks wisely! The first game this week is Rutgers at Louisville, Thursday, October 10 @ 7:30 ET, so make sure to get your picks in by then!

This will have to be an abbreviated version, as I was out sick Monday and Tuesday, and there’s an early game this week…

Congratulations to War Ralphie, who wins week 5 with 114 points. In second place was badgerTime with 113 points, and aggiemom and Pachyderm tied for third with 111 points apiece.

Standings after 5 weeks (dropping two worst weeks):

1st	JagRag	610
2nd	AUBrian	608
T-3rd	Pachyderm	605
T-3rd	BritanniaTex	605
T-5th	maestro	603
T-5th	badgerTime	603
7th	bamaken	602
8th	BEVO	600
T-9th	Allison	598
T-9th	rbamarock	598
T-9th	mhpugh	598

This week’s slate of games is huge (21 games) compared to some of the weeks we’ve had recently, so this is an important one to do well in! The first game is UCLA at Utah, Thursday, October 3 @ 10 PM ET, so make sure to get your picks in by then!

Okay, I knew that last week’s slate of games weren’t the best. I knew that there would be a lot of easy wins, and not too many toss-ups. So I figured there would be a few perfect weeks as a result. But fourteen perfect pickers? Uh, no. Didn’t see that coming. So let’s spend a little time digesting the results of our picking prowess, shall we? As far as I can see, since I started keeping records, this week set high-water marks for:

• Perfect weeks (the aforementioned 14; the previous high was nine in Week 1, 2012)
• Percentage of correct picks (442/456 – 96.930%; the previous best was 92.597% in Week 1, 2010)
• Percentage of possible points gained (98.794%; the previous best was 98.091% in Week 1, 2010)

Perhaps the most amazing stat was this: of all the people who picked, there were a total of 4,560 points that could be gained. The number of points we didn’t collect: 55. That is mind-boggling. I’ve missed 55 points by myself on some weeks. Suffice it to say that I’m not sure that we’ll see anything quite like that again anytime soon. So, great job, everyone!

So who’s ready for conference games? Well, such as they are, anyway. It’s still a little strange to look at games like Oklahoma State-West Virginia and Virginia-Pittsburgh and say, “Oh, yeah, that’s a conference game now.” But such is life in the new college football landscape. Rather than get into yet another one of my diatribes on how college football has become one big money grab, let’s take a look at some noteworthy facts about some of these early-season conference games:

• When Florida and Kentucky square off, the Gators will attempt to extend the longest current streak of wins against one opponent in an uninterrupted series. That streak currently stands at 26. It’s still seventeen years away from the all-time record of 43, set by Notre Dame against Navy between 1964-2006.
• The Virginia Tech-Georgia Tech game doesn’t seem like such a big deal on paper, but the winner of that game has won the ACC Coastal Division every year but one since the ACC split into two divisions in 2005. That year? Last year, when Georgia Tech lost 20-17 to Virginia Tech but won the division anyway thanks to North Carolina and Miami both being ineligible. Virginia Tech won their 700^th game in program history last week; Georgia Tech would match that total with a win this week.
• When Arizona visits Washington, it will mark the longest road trip two Pac-12 schools have between each other: 1,532 miles between Tuscon and Seattle (the shortest, of course, is the 14.1 miles between UCLA’s Rose Bowl and USC’s Coliseum). For perspective, when Oklahoma State visits Morgantown for their game against West Virginia, they would “only” have to travel 1,086 miles by road. The teams have only played each other 29 times in the past; they played for the first time in 1978. Not counting the new Pac-12 schools, it’s the least-played conference opponent for each school.

Congratulations go out to JagRag, who won the fourteen-way tie-breaker to claim the week 4 title, their second weekly title of the year so far! The other perfect pickers: DirtyDiaperSlinger, The Tradition, Allison, BEVO, aggiemom, Crimson Gator, Enfuego, bamaken, maestro, Liquid Heat, BrittaniaTex, Rocky Tide, and mhpugh! Congratulations to all of the perfect pickers!

Top ten after four weeks (dropping two lowest weeks):

1st	JagRag	432
2nd	BritanniaTex	431
3rd	AUBrian	430
4th	rbamarock	429
5th	bamaken	428
6th	Pachyderm	426
T-7th	maestro	425
T-7th	badgerTime	425
9th	mhpugh	424
T-10th	DirtyDiaperSlinger	421
T-10th	Allison	421
T-10th	Crimson Gator	421
T-10th	Enfuego	421
T-10th	Liquid Heat	421

There are only fifteen games this week, so it’s going to be really important to allocate your points wisely in order to do well! The first games are Saturday, September 28 @ Noon ET, so make sure to get your picks in by then!

So that Alabama-Texas A&M game was just another boring SEC slugfest, huh? Sixty-two first downs (31 by each team), 1,196 combined offensive yards (798 of it through the air), and 91 points later, one could hardly say that the sixty minutes they had seen represented SEC football of recent years, or Alabama football in particular. In a game Alabama somehow won, they gave up more points in one game since 2003 (a 5-overtime thriller against Tennessee), and more yards than they had ever yielded in a game since records were kept (628). The only thing new about the game to the Aggies was being “held” under 50 points – they had rolled up 52 and 65 in their previous two games.

And yet, these lofty figures still pale in comparison to some of the numbers other teams are putting up. Georgia Tech has played two games and scored 108 points, 70 in one game. We all know about Oregon – the Ducks are again on a tear, averaging 355 yards rushing, 672 total yards, and 61.3 points per game. And then there’s Baylor. Two games into the Bears’ season, they are 8th in the country in rushing yards per game, 3rd in the country in passing yards per game, are averaging 736.5 yards per game (easily 1^st in the nation), and 69.5 points per game. Of course, many of these numbers are still against lesser-quality opponents. As always, judgment is reserved until the proverbial meat of the schedule.

Sometimes it pays to play the big boys, and sometimes it doesn’t. I have a special fondness in my heart for the service academy teams. And Army had Stanford within seven points at the half. But the Cardinal won 34-20, which extended an amazing statistic – Army has not beaten a ranked opponent since 1972. They’ve had 42 chances to do so in that time. On the other side of the coin, don’t play LSU early in the season. The Tigers have won 31 straight games played before October 1, which is the longest active streak in I-A. Admittedly, not every team that they’ve played in that span is a cupcake (see TCU this year), but just know that if you’re playing for a big check early in the year against the Bayou Bengals, you’re not getting a W along with it.

If you’re a fan of the ESPN show College Gameday, you’re probably familiar with the show’s tradition of broadcasting from college campuses, usually at the site of one of the biggest games of the week. So it might surprise you to know where they are headed this week – Fargo, North Dakota. Why? That’s the home of the North Dakota State Bison, the two-time reigning I-AA champions. The Bison also hold a 24-21 win over Kansas State this year, so it would appear that they’re just as good a team this year. Incidentally, this might be the program with the most tradition that no one knows about. The Bison claim twenty-nine conference championships and ten national titles (three in the small-college poll era, five in Division II, and the last two in I-AA). Nothing against their opponent this Saturday (Delaware State), but I suspect that Lee Corso will add Thundar the Bison to the list of mascot heads he’s worn through the years.

Congratulations go out to AUBrian, who won a tie-breaker over BEVO to capture the week 3 title. Both finished with 170 points, only missing their one-point game. Next up was bamaken, with 169 points, and maestro was one point farther back with 168.

Top ten after three weeks (dropping two lowest weeks):

T-1st	JagRag	242
T-1st	Mark1	242
T-3rd	BritanniaTex	241
T-3rd	AUBrian	241
T-5th	rbamarock	240
T-5th	War Ralphie	240
7th	bamaken	238
8th	Pachyderm	237
9th	badgerTime	236
10th	maestro	235

Are you ready for conference play? Well…you’re still going to have to wait one more week for it to fully kick into gear. But there are still some tricky games to consider, so make your picks wisely! The first game this week is Clemson at N.C. State, Thursday, September 19 @ 7:30 PM ET, so make sure to get your picks in by then!