Welcome back to the latest GCR episode (#445). Last Monday, Montana St (15-1/99) became the last undefeated team to fall as North Dakota St (14-2/133) took an early lead in the FCS championship game and pushed back every comeback attempt. Congratulations Bison for your ten billionth (I didn’t actually count) title with the really fun 35-32 game.
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It’s time to turn our attention to the FBS semifinals. The first game airs tonight at 7:30 Eastern on ESPN from Miami Gardens’ Capital One Orange Bowl. The game features the Notre Dame Fighting Irish (13-1/1) and the Penn St Nittany Lions (13-2/5). Notre Dame is now 9-1 against bowl teams (lost to N Illinois in week 2) and took over the top spot from Ohio St with the romp over Georgia. When on offense, they have an Offensive Efficiency Rating (OER) of 156 (4th best in the country) which means they score 15.6 points for every 10.0 their opponents normally allow. They have a Defensive Efficiency Rating (DER) of 203 (2nd) which means they allow 10.0 points for every 20.3 points their opponents normally score. Penn St is 8-2 against bowl teams with losses to fellow semifinalist Ohio St and to Oregon in the Big Ten Championship Game. When they have the ball, they bring an OER of 134 (24th) and a DER of 170 (7th). Make no mistake, these are really good teams. They had two common opponents. They both beat Southern Cal (ND: 49-35 and PSU 33-30) and Purdue (ND: 66-7 and PSU 49-10). The Irish wins that battle by an average margin of victory of 37.5 to 21. Vegas can’t even decide who should win with a pick at the time of this writing although ND opened-1.5. The GCR has Notre Dame winning 53% of the time.
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That’s it for tonight. See you tomorrow for the Cotton Bowl. On a side note, I’ve been working on a couple of things that I think are pretty exciting. The teaser is once the football season is over, I’ll have some posts explaining them and what they mean for the future of this blog. Thank you for reading and sharing with others, G
| Time | Bowl (Location) | Team | Team | Vegas | GCR Win | GCR Cover |
| 7:00 | FBS Semifinal at the Orange Bowl (Miami Gardens) | Notre Dame (13-1/1) | Penn St (13-2/5) | pick | ND 53% | ND |
