NCAA Football Week 12: Games that will/won’t suck

We’re getting close to the end of the season, and the quality of games are getting generally better, with the exception of the SEC teams (And this year FSU!) having their annual “bye week” by scheduling an FCS team the week before rivalry week. Lame.  Let’s look at how week 11 turned out:

Suck:

Appalachian State 47, Idaho 20. Suck

Oklahoma State 35, Iowa State 31. Not suck

Navy 55, SMU 14. Definitely suck

Apologies due to the Cyclones fans out there, they hung tough with a Cowboys team as they always seem to do. For some reason Oklahoma State can’t figure out how to play well in Ames.

Not Suck:

Colorado State 49 UNLV 35. Not suck

Houston 35, Memphis 34. Totally not suck, a darn good game.

Marshall 52, FIU 0. Welp… missed that one.

As good as I was on #2 there, I blew it on #3. Woof. Marshall took FIU to the shed.

Now, looking forward to week 12, we have a good slate of games ignoring the aforementioned SEC vs FCS snoozefests. With Kansas and UNT retired from “Games that will/won’t suck”, that leaves us with only 7 games with the teams more than 20 points apart. As always, here are the 3 worst matchups:

Suck

1) Florida vs FAU

Florida, despite their SEC lineage, went out and took a huge risk this year. They scheduled a ferocious opponent in their normal SEC bye week. The mighty Florida Atlantic Owls, who are 2-5 in Conference USA play, and 2-8 overall. Florida, meanwhile, is 7-1 in the SEC and 9-1 in conference. Save the effort. Gators by 28, less than a 2.5% chance of upset.

2)  UTEP vs Louisiana Tech

Hopefully you weren’t planning on watching this game anyway, Louisiana Tech is good***, UTEP is not so good. The good news for La Tech fans is that they can travel out and enjoy dinner in the only city in America where I had a sit down meal for two people with drinks for $13. God bless El Paso. Tech by 22, 20% chance of a UTEP victory.

*** – For Conference USA

3) UConn vs Houston

Houston gonna walk right into the American Conference Championship Game. Houston by 21, 6% chance of UConn upset.

Not suck

1) USF vs Cincinnati

Cincinnati has appeared in a few close games this year. Unfortunately for the Bearcats, they’ve lost most of them. This week the 6-4 Bulls come in, both teams battling for the second place spot in the prestigious American Conference East Division. This is accepted by both models as a nail biter, with a 0.04 point margin given to the Bearcats, while the win model gives the Bulls a 50.14% chance of victory. When this game goes 6 OTs, don’t forget who told you to watch

2) UTSA vs Rice

The Sun Belt continues to appear in the “Games that won’t suck” so I guess this means that if you’re a Sun Belt fan, you’ve been watching some close games all year. For the rest of us, we’re sick of the Sun Belt. Rice by .21 points over UTSA, who has a 34% chance of victory.

3) Wisconsin vs Northwestern

Okay, this one isn’t one of the top 3 closest, but I can’t just be talking about how great these Sun Belt games are going to be every week. This is the closest power conference matchup this week. The models are split, with the points model giving the 4.59 point edge to the Badgers, the win model says the Badgers only have a 40% chance of winning. Added bonus, after narrowly beating Purdue last week, the Wildcats will be inspired to actually try and play hard, as we saw from the Cornhuskers after they lost to the Boilers.

And of course, for us Power 5 fans, here is the full week 11 predictions: