College football schedule, scores, and more for Rivalry Weekend

(It’s almost like he occasionally needs to stiff-arm people while playing football)

(Left picture: Thearon W. Henderson, Getty Images)

There are two ways to look at the big Championship Week battles.

On one hand, the top four teams in the country are healthy favorites. Oregon and Alabama are two-touchdown favorites, Florida State is favored by four over Georgia Tech, and TCU is favored by a robust 34 over Iowa State. And from a win probability standpoint, Oregon, Alabama, and TCU are picked at 85 percent or higher. (FSU is at a vulnerable 58 percent.)

Judging by the look on his face, I’m going to guess Robinson wasn’t too happy about losing.

Entering this season, Virginia Tech had won the Commonwealth Cup 10 times in a row; entering last weekend, the Hokies had lost four of their last five games. So had Virginia, mind you, but surely some UVA fans thought this would be the year the streak would end. Unfortunately, those fans were wrong, and now is the winter of their discontent, beginning at Streaking The Lawn.

And counting!

School rivalries are heated and fun, but some things transcend their importance. Michigan quarterback Devin Gardner received a letter from Ohio State thanking him for consoling quarterback T.J. Barrett when the Buckeyes QB was injured on Saturday in the teams’ rivalry game.

Photo via Greg Bartram - USA TODAY Sports

In five days, we’ll know the four teams that will play for the College Football Playoff. Actually, in four days, we’ll likely know at least a couple of them.

All Alabama, Florida State, and Oregon have to do is beat really good teams this weekend. Each one that pulls that off and thus wins its conference will be sure to land a spot in the Playoff. The fourth spot’s where the drama is, though upsets along the way could create even more.

Team chaos, thy name is rivalry week.

A week ago, Marshall slipped from the top spot despite still being undefeated. Colorado State seemed firmly in control of its destiny. Boise State, despite being the Mountain Division leader with a win over Colorado State, needed a lot of help to jump into the top spot. It got that help by way of a late Air Force field goal and a WKU offense with hero-syndrome.

Rivalry Week has come and passed, with the usual shenanigans taking place. Seven ranked teams fell this week, including five by the hand of other ranked opponents.

How far will Mississippi State fall after their two touchdown Egg Bowl loss to Ole Miss? Will TCU replace them in the top four, or will Baylor or Ohio State make a run at it? Where does UCLA end up after their loss to Stanford? How high will Arizona rise after their win over Arizona State, before their matchup with Oregon? What about Georgia Tech, upset winners over Georgia, before their game against Florida State?

It’s pretty standard to see an outpouring of tweets from college athletes when their coach gets fired. It makes sense: their mentor, the person who recruited them out of high school, has been taken out of a job and removed from their lives. But the outcry from Nebraska players and former players after the firing of Bo Pelini was a bit more intense and more cutting than usual.

Starting QB Tommy Armstrong:

What did we learn about the bowl picture in Week 14? We learned Mississippi State won’t be going to the Playoff, and that Alabama is therefore the SEC’s only hope, no matter how unlikely two SEC teams in one four-team group looked. We learned the three big favorites remained on course. We learned that TCU is interested in making its case for that fourth spot with force, and that its two competitors both looked beatable and banged-up.

In the season’s final full-ish FBS weekend, we’ll learn which conference champs join early birds Georgia Southern and Memphis, along with excitement like whether Oklahoma State or Temple can become bowl eligible. We’ve got 14 games to go, and while all of them matter in our hearts (even you, SMU-UConn), about a dozen of them also have potential postseason ramifications. That’s a pretty dense weekend.

1. Oregon

They might have only beaten Oregon State in a 47-19 thrashing, but consider just how dodgy every other team looked in their otherwise normally winnable rivalry games. Remember the ease with which Marcus Mariota dispatched Beaver defenders, and, most importantly, note how healthy he looks at the end of the season going into the Pac-12 championship game. It’s handy, too, that they get a title game rematch against the only team to beat them this season, the Arizona Wildcats. This is all very tidy, isn’t it? We all also thought the Egg Bowl would determine the eventual national champion back in October, when we were all younger and full of naiveté. (P.S. WATCH YOUR ASS, OREGON.)

No. 1 Alabama (11-1) 55, No. 15 Auburn (8-4) 44

No kick six this time; merely the highest-scoring Iron Bowl ever. The best program of the BCS era is one win over Missouri from being the No. 1 seed in the first-ever Playoff.

Both Auburn and Alabama have built their offensive identities around the run, even if they approach it differently. The Iron Bowl was different -- it was the passing games that starred on Saturday. Deep pass after deep pass rained down from the sky as star wide receivers Sammie Coates and Amari Cooper traded blows in Tuscaloosa, each topping 200 yards. The Tide won 55-44 in the highest-scoring Iron Bowl in history.

The Tigers were able to move the ball with relative ease in the first half, but struggled as they got close to the Alabama end zone. Their first 12 plays inside the opposing 10 went for a net of two yards, resulting in three field goals and a 14-9 lead for Alabama.

Mariota went over defenders...

...straight past them...

Watch Lane Kiffin at the bottom of a screen. He starts celebrating a TD *as soon as Amari Cooper ends up in single coverage against a safety.*

That’s how unstoppable Amari Cooper is.

He did things like this (via ESPN):

And this:

As if a loss against rival Ole Miss wasn’t bad enough, one of the buses taking Mississippi State football players back to Starkville was involved in a minor traffic accident.

There were no injuries and another bus arrived to pick-up the players.

We’ll be adding throughout the night. All clips via SEC Network.

She never goes below 140 decibels and accuses Paul Finebaum of calling penalties against Auburn:

Indiana won the Old Oaken Bucket for the second straight season, their first Big Ten win of the season. Here’s one-time third-string QB freshman Zander Diamont:

Our awesome Indiana site had fun with this.

That’s the Bears’ head coach after his team’s 48-46 scare against lowly Texas Tech, in which the No. 7 team’s QB, Bryce Petty, left with a concussion. Times are tough all around, and if you’re fixin’ to get comfy in your lil duplex with your lil two-car garage and your lil spouse scrubbin’ your lil dishes for you with lil name brand detergent, you’re just not cut out for what it takes to survive Briles’ world.

If you can’t pick up what Coach is putting down here, he might just fight you, too.

The SEC Network is doing something cool. They’re screening Paul Finebaum and friends watching the Iron Bowl, breaking it down, and having Finebaum’s host of crazy callers chime in from time to time. After a wild sequence to start the game, Finebaum opened the lines up for a fan, who surely would have a wild theory about the screwy slipups to start the game.

NOPE, THEY WANTED TO TALK FORDHAM RAMS FOOTBALL