Week 11 of the college football season features a rarity this late in the regular season: three different matchups between top-10 (AP) teams. Given the nature of how this will shape the college football playoff landscape, I thought that it might be interesting to break down each of these games, the teams, and the history of the matchup. (All rankings noted are AP, given that the next College Football Playoff rankings aren\u2019t until tomorrow night.)<\/p>\n
The first game we\u2019ll examine takes us to Auburn, where the 7-2 Tigers, now ranked #10, host undefeated #2-ranked Georgia.\u00a0 This game has a long and storied history; in fact, it\u2019s known as \u201cThe Deep South\u2019s Oldest Rivalry.\u201d\u00a0 The teams have played each other 120 times since 1892, making it the most-played game in the SEC, the fourth-most played in the FBS, and the ninth-most played overall.\u00a0 Georgia holds a 57-55-8 advantage in the series, and has won all but two games since 2006.\u00a0 The game is well-known for producing personalities that have ties to both sides: Georgia\u2019s long-time head coach Vince Dooley played quarterback and graduated from Auburn, and Pat Dye was an All-American offensive lineman at Georgia before becoming head coach at Auburn in 1981.\u00a0 The teams both rank in the top 20 all time in winning percentage (Georgia 13th<\/sup> at .651, Auburn 19th<\/sup> at .632), and wins (Georgia 11th<\/sup> with 804, Auburn 13th<\/sup> with 763).\u00a0 No team has beaten Auburn more than Georgia, and no team has beaten Georgia more than Auburn.\u00a0 The teams have played many memorable games in the past, including the first SEC game to be decided in overtime in 1996 (a 56-49 Georgia win in 4 OT), and the \u201cPrayer in Jordan-Hare\u201d, in which Auburn quarterback Nick Marshall (himself a former Georgia player) threw a Hail Mary pass, tipped by Georgia safety Josh Harvey-Clemons directly into the hands of Auburn receiver Ricardo Louis to give Auburn an improbable 43-38 win.<\/p>\n The next matchup has a much shorter history, but a more acrimonious one to be sure.\u00a0 One-loss #3 Notre Dame takes a trip to South Beach to visit unbeaten #7 Miami in the first game played between the two in the Sunshine State since 1989.\u00a0 The Fighting Irish hold a 17-7-1 lead in the series, having won the last three games. The teams don\u2019t play each other very often \u2013 this is only the fourth game since 1990, and the second true \u201chome game\u201d during that period \u2013 but the teams met annually between 1971 and 1990, with the exception of 1986. Notre Dame won each game in the 70\u2019s, but Miami won seven out of ten in the 80\u2019s. However, they did not win the most famous game in the series \u2013 the 1988 \u201cCatholics vs. Convicts\u201d game. A couple of enterprising Notre Dame students, noting Miami\u2019s penchant for trash talk and intimidation tactics, printed the slogan on T-shirts in advance of the game between the two undefeated teams, and the media took it and ran with it. The Hurricanes, who were riding a 36-game regular season winning streak, scored a late touchdown to pull within 31-30. However, instead of kicking the extra point, they opted to go for two and the win, and the resulting pass was incomplete. Notre Dame finished 12-0 and national champions, while Miami finished #2 in the country with an 11-1 record. In 2005, a poll conducted by Notre Dame resulted in this game being called the greatest win in the history of the Notre Dame football program.<\/p>\n The third top-ten matchup of the week is the least-played of the three: TCU-Oklahoma.\u00a0 Despite being separated by less than 200 miles, the Sooners and the Horned Frogs have only met sixteen times previously. Oklahoma holds an 11-5 edge in the series.\u00a0 The teams played five straight games between 1944 and 1948, then only once between 1949 and 1992.\u00a0 \u00a0With the addition of TCU to the Big Twelve starting in the 2012 season, the game has become an annual matchup; the Sooners have won four of the past five games since TCU entered the league, although the games have been competitive; all of them were decided by a touchdown or less. This year, while the teams cannot clinch a conference title by winning the matchup, they can go a long way towards clinching a berth in the championship game. The Big Twelve takes the two teams with the best records to play in the conference title game, and the winner of this game will be the only Big Twelve team with one conference loss.\u00a0 TCU\u2019s lone win over Oklahoma, a 37-33 win in 2014, helped propel the Horned Frogs to a conference co-championship and final #3 ranking.<\/p>\n In small-school news: trivia question. What two schools have over 900 wins all-time in college football? The answer is Michigan\u2026and Yale, which won its 900th<\/sup> game against Columbia on October 28th<\/sup>. (Notre Dame fans might argue that their program also has over 900 wins, but there are currently 21 wins in a vacated state that haven\u2019t been ruled on by the NCAA yet, so they\u2019re not counted here.)\u00a0 They won their 901st<\/sup> last week against Brown, 34-7. Yale is having one of their best seasons in quite some time. Currently 7-1 and 5-1 in the Ivy League, they are two wins from their first conference title since 2006 (and their first outright Ivy League title since 1980). \u00a0Those two games? Princeton, whom they\u2019ve played 140 times (the second-most played game in NCAA history), and Harvard in \u201cThe Game\u201d.\u00a0 Incidentally, while Yale has been playing football since 1872, the Ivy League has only been around since 1954 (with the first Ivy League football season taking place in 1956).\u00a0 Yale has won fourteen conference championships in that time.<\/p>\n Congratulations to pachyderm<\/strong>, who takes week 10 honors in a tie-breaker over AllySun<\/strong>!\u00a0 Both finished with 186 points.\u00a0 WarTiger91<\/strong> and Crimson Gator<\/strong> were next with 183 points.<\/p>\n Standings after ten weeks:<\/p>\n As I\u2019ve mentioned, there are some big top-ten matchups this week, but they\u2019re only part of the story.\u00a0 There are four other games involving top-25 teams playing each other.\u00a0 Divisions and conference championship game berths are on the line, and as the tension mounts, the games get tougher to pick! The first game this week is Washington at Stanford, Friday, November 10 @ 10:30 PM ET<\/strong> (good luck staying up for this one), so make sure to get your picks in by then!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Week 11 of the college football season features a rarity this late in the regular season: three different matchups between top-10 (AP) teams. Given the nature of how this will shape the college football playoff landscape, I thought that it might be interesting to break down each of these games, the teams, and the history […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":386,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383\/revisions\/386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n\n
\n 1st<\/sup><\/td>\n AllySun <\/strong><\/td>\n 1969<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 2nd<\/sup><\/td>\n Crimson Gator <\/strong><\/td>\n 1967<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 3rd<\/td>\n Paul Herron <\/strong><\/td>\n 1965<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n T-4th<\/sup><\/td>\n AUBrian <\/strong><\/td>\n 1960<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n T-4th<\/sup><\/td>\n Bamarock <\/strong><\/td>\n 1960<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 6th<\/sup><\/td>\n JagRag <\/strong><\/td>\n 1955<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 7th<\/sup><\/td>\n WarTiger91 <\/strong><\/td>\n 1949<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 8th<\/sup><\/td>\n Jeff4Bama <\/strong><\/td>\n 1948<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 9th<\/sup><\/td>\n pachyderm <\/strong><\/td>\n 1941<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 10th<\/sup><\/td>\n bamaken <\/strong><\/td>\n 1916<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n