Well, well, well, it’s me: the guy who was extremely wrong about Michigan.

I saw a line that continued to slide to the Wolverines despite massive action for Ohio State and said “no, it is the oddsmakers who are wrong.” I saw a defense that contained Kenneth Walker III a week earlier and thought Jim Harbaugh’s bullyball runs wouldn’t work against the Buckeyes. I looked at the previous five years and defaulted to the typical result.

I was wrong. Exceptionally so.

Michigan boxed up its biggest rival’s College Football Playoff hopes and shipped them back south in a hearse. Suddenly the narrative has shifted from whether or not Jim Harbaugh would be fired to whether or not Ryan Day can win without Urban Meyer’s recruits. These are both very stupid, very extreme narratives, but those are the only takes that can survive in the hostile climate of college football.

With the exception of two games — Army-Navy and a rescheduled contest between USC and Cal that will be hate-watched by several inconsolable Oklahoma fans despite a lack of Lincoln Riley — everything from here on out is a postseason game. This weekend belongs to the conference championships. Then come the bowls. Then comes a months-long, hollowed out existence where you feel nothing but the icy wind blasting your cheeks as you wander solemnly through the bleak months, attempting to make sense of your life.

Savor championship week, is what I’m trying to say. It’s gonna be a cold winter.

All lines are provided by Tipico Sportsbook.

The Roadrunners’ perfect season shattered at their feet in their regular season finale against North Texas. Now bettors are fleeing their foundering ship like it’d been sawed apart without the benefit of a nearby roll of Flex Tape.

UTSA opened as a three-point favorite, only to be suddenly overtaken by a team it beat, on the road, 52-46 earlier in the season. This is a natural consequence of getting your face mushed into Thanksgiving leftovers in Denton, where UNT fought its way to bowl eligibility by rushing for 340 DANG YARDS HOOOOO BUDDY.

There’s clearly a deficiency there — the Mean Green made their intentions clear, ran the ball 60 times, and had three running backs average 110 yards each on the day. The Hilltoppers are riding a seven-game winning streak where they’ve scored at least 34 points every week and 42 or more in six of them … but they don’t have the kind of running attack that slashed the Roadrunners’ Achilles’ last Saturday.

Instead, WKU is going to rely heavily on Bailey Zappe and his mostly insane 52 touchdown passes to light up the sky in contrast to North Texas’s ground game. He threw for 523 yards and five touchdowns (MY GOD) the last time these teams met but was outdone by UTSA’s Frank Harris, who had six of the Roadrunners SEVEN PASSING TOUCHDOWNS THAT DAY HOLY CRAP THIS TITLE GAME MIGHT BE THE GREATEST CONTEST IN CONFERENCE-USA HISTORY.

The Roadrunners had an answer for a sloppy WKU effort back in October, leading by as many as 11 points in the second half before hanging on for a win. The total line of 72 is a huge number but bet the over anyway, since these teams gave us a “four scores per quarter” guarantee the last time they met. I’m going hard on the “UTSA just got a wakeup call” narrative this week. They get to play this one at home, and I’m betting that’ll be enough to cool off a red-hot Western Kentucky.

On Saturday, we pour one out for Dustin Crum’s reign of terror through the MAC. Your shift has ended, DC. You’re free now to terrorize NFL practice squads rather than the fine schools of our beloved Rust Belt conference.

Crum transformed a program that had won 12 games between 2014 and 2018 and led it to its second division title ever. He has torched MAC opponents for 58 total touchdowns in 20 games the past three seasons. He is a dual threat masterpiece who will become your favorite preseason player who gets cut one week before the regular season begins:

Now he gets the chance to lead Kent State to what could be its first MAC title since 1972 in another rematch of an absolutely bananas regular season game. Here’s what Kent State and Northern Illinois heaped upon an unsuspecting public on a Wednesday night in early November:

That, right there? That’s a perfect display of MACtion, and we get to see it again Saturday morning. Crum gets to face the nation’s 118th-rated defense. The Huskies only have one win this season by more than seven points and that came against FCS Maine. They won the MAC West despite an in-conference point differential of -1. Feels like a Kent State kind of day.

Again, this is a high total but a very manageable one. Don’t feel discouraged if there’s a lull at any point. The first meeting between these teams featured this stretch:

And still managed to end with 99 combined points.

Is the only thing holding Iowa back competent quarterback play? The eye test says yes every week, but the numbers … also say yes, emphatically.

Absurd: Over the last two years, Iowa is 14-1 when its QBs manage a passer rating over 100.

100 is terrible! That’s the lowest bar imaginable! Top 120 (which they’ve only done in 8 of 20 games), and they’re untouchable. And they’re still 2-3 when the rating is UNDER 100!

— Bill Connelly (@ESPN_BillC) December 1, 2021

Of course, this neglects the fact any good quarterback under Kirk Ferentz would be reduced to tight end curls and three times as many fullback dives versus vertical passing routes, but it’s still an extremely Iowa stat. Another extremely Iowa stat? The Hawkeyes have only three double-digit losses as a betting underdog since 2016 and every one has been against Wisconsin.

That makes me want to lean Iowa in the face of an 11-point spread, but who is playing better Wisconsin-style football (only more effective) than the team that just ran the ball for 297 yards and SIX touchdowns against Ohio State? What happens when Ferentz begrudgingly has to throw the ball on 3rd-and-6 and Aiden Hutchinson caves Spencer Petras’s chest in as he skips a pass to an open receiver four yards away?

I honestly don’t know. I’m rolling with Iowa just because it would be the funniest possible outcome.

I have said it before and I must caution you again: there is no good way, nor good reason, to bet for or against Pittsburgh football. The Panthers exist only to disappoint you, regardless of whether you’re wagering with them or their opponent. Kenny Pickett’s invaluable arm is merely a veil that covers the face of chaos underneath. The Panthers’ every move is decided by a 20-sided dice roll in a game of Dungeons and Dragons perpetrated by the most neglected lesser Football Gods.

There is no outcome that would shock any Pittsburgh fan. They’re wise enough not to get their hopes up no matter how good they’ve looked. They’re also fully aware this team has the juice to not only get to a New Year’s Day bowl, but also win it. Year in and year out the universe scatters a heap of talent upon the Steel City and dares the Panthers to string it together with dental floss like so much preschool macaroni jewelry. And, year in and year out, this program gets bored halfway through the task and decamps to go eat paste instead.

And so, we’re left with two top-five scoring offenses and equal chances this game ends 17-14 or 55-54. Pitt is an explosive team with zero wins over ranked opponents and losses to Western Michigan and Miami. Wake had its top 10 hopes dashed by a non-conference loss to UNC and a get-right thrashing from Clemson. If you forced me to choose I’d take the Demon Deacons, but the only right choice when it comes to betting Pitt football is not to play.

This is how we close out Championship Week; not with a bang but a whimper. USC, fresh off the triumph of hiring Lincoln Riley away from Oklahoma and sending Norman-based writers into an existential crisis, started as a slight favorite and is now nearly a full touchdown underdog in Berkeley against a 4-7 Cal team.

Saturday’s game isn’t much more than a sigil of how far Southern California has fallen. Neither side is bowl eligible or even playing for a chance to extend its season. The nicest thing you can say about the Trojans’ fall from the top 25 this season is … they played BYU tough? The Golden Bears weren’t good before they were struck with myriad COVID-19 cases, then found a way to lose to hapless Arizona, 10-3, with a bare-boned roster.

And yet, after a feast of conference title games with kids chest-passing footballs into enormous soda cans and fourth quarters with massive College Football Playoff implications, dessert is a platter of gelatin aspics pulled from a late-70s cookbook. But hey, maybe USC gets a bounce from its head coach news?

Either way, Army-Navy’s less than seven days away once this crapfest ends.

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