Greetings College Football Fans! It’s Championship Week!!!! Also the FCS Playoffs are in round 2! What a great week. 19 games and every single one of them is…I was going to say important, but all games are important to the teams playing in them, at the very least, so how about substantially important. 11 conferences are hosting their championship games (don’t forget the SWAC) and 16 teams are still alive in the FCS Playoffs. 18 of the games are on Saturday, but the Pac 12 starts us off Friday night at 8:00pm (all times Eastern) with Utah playing what could be its biggest game in its history. The weekend ends with Austin Peay traveling to face Sacramento State to see who the last team in the semifinals will be, starting Saturday at 9:00pm. The Big 10 end the FBS week kicking off at 8:00pm Saturday from Indianapolis with Wisconsin trying to giant kill Ohio State.
Just like last week and all the way through the CFP Championship game, I’ll publish the GCR predictions for every game. For the FCS, I’m picking 3 upsets out of 7 (2 games don’t have betting lines). Albany is a 9.5 dog at Montana State, but the Great Danes will take the game. Illinois State is a mere 1 point favorite over C Arkansas, but will be upset as the Bears advance. The FCS upset of the week is Kennesaw State (13 point underdogs) will beat Weber State in Utah.
For the FBS, out of 10 games, I see 2 upsets. Cincinnati and Memphis are replaying last week’s game down to the location. While Memphis won that game, has home field advantage, is the darling for the Group of 5 New Year’s Six spot, and is the Vegas favorite -9.5, I have the Bearcats in a close upset winning 53.9% of the time. The upset of the week is Baylor over Oklahoma. The Bears (seems to be a bear/bearcat kind of focus in upsets this week) are 9 point underdogs, but I have them winning 71.5% of the time. To date, games the GCR picked at 70-80% were correct 80% of the time (76 out of 95). The only games with higher pct to win for a team this week are App State over ULL (in Boone) 74.9% and Boise State over Hawaii (in Boise) 71.5%. If Baylor wins convincingly and Utah wins (assuming LSU wins against UGA which, as you see in the table below, not a given), that 4th spot will be up for lots of debate. Here’s this week’s picks. I wish you well and hope you enjoy the weekend. Next Sunday morning or very late Saturday night, I’ll post G’s Evaluation (or GCR Ranking from 1-256 for those who are new). I’m traveling Sunday for work, but will post a new projected final playoff set that night. Thank you as always for reading – please comment, question, challenge, but most importantly, please share with your fellow fans so that we can grow the blog. G’s out/
