2018’s Rivalry Week was supposed to mean revenge for lots of teams. Welp

College football hasn’t had an exciting 2018. But coming into Rivalry Week, there was some hope that we’d at least see some teams finally turn the tables on their longtime rivals. Teams like Michigan, Virginia, and Washington State were favored in their Thanksgiving Week games, which hadn’t happened much in recent years. How’d that go?

Washington State came in with a surprisingly promising season and a Pac-12 North title to play for as well as an outside shot at a Playoff. Washington had been underwhelming overall this season. You know what that means.

When you break down why UW won, things start to make a lot more sense.

“They do the same thing year in and year out. This is five years in a row now,” UW co-defensive coordinator Jimmy Lake said. “So it makes it really easy to game-plan when an offense does the same thing every year. Obviously, now with the (snow) conditions, and they can only do one thing — that handcuffs you a little bit. So it was definitely to our advantage. And we took advantage of it.”

Lake said he was surprised Leach hasn’t made any adjustments to WSU’s offensive plan coming into the Apple Cup.

“But knowing what I read about the head football coach here, he does things a little bit different way,” Lake said. “So hopefully he remains here for a long time. That would be awesome.”

At this point, Lord knows how Harbaugh’s Michigan will ever going to beat Ohio State. The Buckeyes weren’t favored even though they were the home team. Ohio State struggles to run the ball consistently, and is prone to big plays. Michigan has one of the best defenses in college football, and it really seemed like this was the year.

It wasn’t.

On Saturday, the Buckeyes reminded everyone how good they could be. It couldn’t have come at a worse time for the rival school up north. Dwayne Haskins threw three first-half touchdown passes as the Buckeyes bolted to a 21-6 lead, and after a special teams miscue allowed the Wolverines to cut the lead to two late in the first half, the Buckeyes put the game away with a 20-0 run. When the Wolverines finally got untracked offensively, it was too late — Ohio State was rolling. Barring a clock-killing drive at the end, the Buckeyes scored on their last six possessions.

Alabama has now won eight of 11 against Auburn, Clemson made it five in a row against South Carolina, Notre Dame reached six of nine against USC, and UCF hit four of six against USF.

The Hokies have beaten Virginia as big favorites, in compelling nail-biters, and boring games that came down to the wire. This year, they did it in the type of game that felt like it was tailor-made for a streak busting.

In Vegas sports books, the Hoos were 4-point favorites at kickoff, after the line moved around slightly during the week. They hadn’t been favored since 2003, making this the most disorienting point spread in a Hate Week chock full of weird spreads.

S&P+ gave them a 61 percent chance to win and projected a 4.6-point margin in Blacksburg, an extra jarring thing in a year in which Virginia Tech has not been Virginia Tech.

Welp.

Utah got down 20-0 against BYU and then roared back at home to win their eighth straight in the series. BYU had a chance to get the job done, and failed on an interesting playcall.

As Holy War history has shown, the game isn’t over, so I’m sure most fans thought Utah [QB] Zach Wilson was going to drive BYU down the field for a game winning drive. It all came down to a 4th and short, and for some reason BYU wanted to run up the gut — into the teeth of Utah’s defense — and they were snuffed in the backfield. Probably should have punted with three timeouts, but that was Kalani’s call.

The Utes got the ball back, scored again and then sacked Wilson to end the Cougs’ comeback bid.

The Sooners showed that they still don’t have much of a defense by conventional standards, but the offense still certainly works just fine. They broke serve enough against West Virginia to get the job done.

Thankfully, in 2019 Bedlam will be played on Thanksgiving weekend for only the second time since 2012, so at least OU will play a shootout in an actual rivalry.

The Dawgs have dominated this rivalry both historically and recently. Tech has only won four times since 2000, three of those were one-score games.

They thought wrong.

This one has nothing to do with the game’s results. It doesn’t matter who wins or loses when we’re talking about the fracases. The Dustups just happen in these games.

The Egg Bowl, for the second year in a row:

NC State-UNC, for the second time in three years:

And Kentucky-Louisville, for the ... this is basically every year:

Florida beat FSU (had lost five straight, and seven of the last eight) and also ended the Noles’ nation-leading bowl streak. Iowa State toppled Kansas State in FARMAGEDDON (had lost 10 straight), and Minnesota beat Wisconsin (had lost 14 straight).

It leaves us at the same place we’ve been all season. The hope is that the Playoff will be compelling, but for now not even rivalry week could save us from the same old, same old.