As usual, all times Eastern and all predictions wrong.

Friday

7:00:

• Kennesaw State @ Jacksonville State (Conference USA Championship Game; CBSS): The primetime action gets started with a surprising season by the Owls. They’re genuinely good, but one of the revisit the site of one of their defeats a month ago. The conventional wisdom is that “it’s hard to beat a team twice”, which, yes, but I still like the Jacksonville (Alabama) State to do it again.
• Troy @ James Madison (Sun Belt Conference Championship Game; ESPN): This is easily the biggest mismatch of any of the champ games, and anything other than a JMU blowout would be a shocking result.

8:00:

• North Texas @ Tulane (American Conference Championship Game; ABC): North Texas has one of the most prolific offenses in FBS. I don’t think that the Green Wave can move the ball well enough to keep up.
• Nevada-Las Vegas @ Boise State (Mountain West Conference Championship Game; FOX): About the only advantage for Boise here is the game being in Boise. Otherwise, I think UNLV is an all around better team. They took care of business last week in Reno, so I don’t think cold conditions will bother the Runnin’ Rebels too much.

Saturday

Noon:

• Brigham Young vs. Texas Tech (Big 12 Conference Championship Game @ Arlington, TX; ABC): BYU is good enough to prevent this from being a complete mismatch, and again, it’s hard to beat the same team twice. But the way Texas Tech has been beating everyone, including BYU this first time around, makes me think it won’t be much of an issue for the Red Raiders.
• Miami vs. Western Michigan (Mid-American Conference Championship @ Detroit, MI; ESPN): Yet another rematch! That said, unlike most of the other ones, the team that lost last time is the favorite: WMU blew a 17-9 lead on the road to lose 26-17 back in October. Unfortunately for the Redhawks, they proceeded to lose their next two MAC contents to contenders Ohio and Toledo, while WMU finished out the rest of the MAC slate unblemished. This one is effectively a coin flip to me, but I’ll follow the odds and slightly prefer WMU.
• South Dakota @ Mercer (NCAA Division I Second Round; ESPN+)
• Villanova @ Lehigh (NCAA Division I Second Round; ESPN+)

1:00:

• North Dakota @ Tarleton State (NCAA Division I Second Round; ESPN+)
• Illinois State @ North Dakota State (NCAA Division I Second Round; ESPN+)
• Abilene Christian @ Stephen F. Austin (NCAA Division I Second Round; ESPN+)

2:00:

• Prairie View A&M @ Jackson State (Southwestern Athletic Conference Championship Game; ESPN2)
• Yale @ Montana State (NCAA Division I Second Round; ESPN+)
• South Dakota State @ Montana (NCAA Division I Second Round; ESPN+)

3:00: Rhode Island @ California-Davis (NCAA Division I Second Round; ESPN+)

4:00: Georgia vs. Alabama (Southeastern Conference Championship Game @ Atlanta, GA; ABC): Finally, a game where it might actually be difficult to beat the same team twice. Especially given how Bama has beaten Georgia the past few years, which follows the same script: come out with something the Georgia defense hasn’t seen before, build a lead off of that, and then hold on for dear life. I don’t think that’s a formula that will allow the Tide to stave them off once again. On the Georgia side, there’s a lot of folks worried about their offense after we held them to season lows in points and yards last week. I assure you: don’t worry. Georgia had a very conservative, vanilla gameplan and really took their foot off the gas after getting up 10-3. Would they have preferred to score a couple more touchdowns? Sure. But they knew they didn’t need to. A great example is at the end of the game when they punted the ball back to us instead converting a 4th and short for the win. I will bet you if that situation arises in this game, Georgia goes for the win. That said, I think the main thing that will be interesting about this game is how Bama loses, especially if they lose in a way that puts their playoff status in jeopardy.

8:00:

• Virginia vs. Duke (Atlantic Coast Conference Championship Game @ Charlotte, NC; ABC): Among all of the other dumb things about this, naturally of the teams in the jumbled mess at the top of the ACC is that these two actually did play each other in the regular season. The result? Virginia won handily. As I’ve said many times in this post, it’s hard to beat a team twice, and this is going to be on a neutral field. I still like the Hoos here.
• Indiana vs. Ohio State (Big Ten Conference Championship Game @ Indianapolis, IN; FOX): Finally, the game of the century of the day. Ohio State finally makes it back to Indy, and Indiana, well, this is just unprecedented. Ohio State’s defense will finally face a team that will make them work. (Speaking of great examples from last week: Ohio State thought so little of Michigan’s offense that they declined a holding penalty to make it 3rd and 5 around midfield instead of 2nd and 15.) Indiana is definitely going to get theirs., I believe this is a game much more likely to be about who fails to hold serve than anything else. Indiana has blown out basically everyone, but their defense is largely untested. This gives the Buckeyes a slight edge, but again, I think this is really anyone’s game. This feels like it’s going to be must-see TV.