What to look forward to down the stretch of the college football season

Alabama has four games remaining on the schedule, plus probably the SEC championship game and probably the College Football Playoff. Will the Tide lose any of those games? First off, understand that they can lose a football game. They head to LSU for their next matchup, which is a huge game pitting two top-five teams. That game is at night as well, which is a setting that favors the Tigers. If the Tide get by that, they'll have Mississippi State, The Citadel and Auburn remaining — all at home. Auburn is their rival, and you never know what can happen during the Iron Bowl. But Alabama is the much better team. The SEC title game (Georgia, Florida or Kentucky) should still end up with an Alabama win. Once we get to the playoff, who knows? Just remember that in only one of Alabama's five championship seasons during the Nick Saban era has the Crimson Tide went undefeated.

Notre Dame is the most storied program in college football. The championships, Heisman trophies, legendary coaches, players and games. It has been 30 years since the Fighting Irish won a national championship, which is rather stunning. The conference structure plus the exposure every program now enjoys that once only Notre Dame did have led to this drought. However, the Irish are right back in the thick of it this year and realistically have a shot to win it all. They are currently undefeated, including wins over Michigan, Stanford and Virginia Tech. There are some landmines left on the schedule (at Northwestern, Florida State, Syracuse and at USC), but they have no championship game to deal with. The Irish in the College Football Playoff would not only be a boon to the postseason but would also kick out another Power Five conference. If the Irish find success, it only boosts college football.

Last year, UCF went undefeated and beat Auburn in the Peach Bowl. The Knights weren't invited to the College Football Playoff, so they decided to name themselves national champions. (Auburn beat both CFP finalists, Alabama and Georgia, during the season.) They are still undefeated and have three home games before taking on South Florida in Tampa for their finale. If they win the AAC title game, would the playoff committee dare keep them out again? 

There's not much more in sports that is both as meaningless yet prominent as the College Football Playoff rankings. Each week until the end of the season, these rankings will be dissected and scrutinized as if any of the weeks before the last one means anything. We love rankings, however, so it gives us something to hold on to: a report card of where we are, even though it can and will change constantly. Why is this team ahead of that team? Whose loss was worse? Whose wins are better? Who do you think deserves the four playoff spots? Let the debates begin. 

It's that time of the year when we start getting all those MAC football games during the week. In November, there will be 15 Mid-American Conference games that will take place on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday or Friday (and just four will be played on Saturday). The league has been doing this for quite some time and it has brought it exposure (hey, Tuesday football!), which also brings in money. For those of us who just love wall-to-wall football, having the MAC fill our week is a blessing.

For the past few years, we've seen a lot of the major conferences have one division lording over the other division. This year, there are great races in the other divisions as well. The SEC East has a three-team race between Georgia, Florida and Kentucky, as the West has its normal race of everyone trying to topple Alabama. In the ACC Coastal division, Miami, Virginia and Virginia Tech face off in the final weeks to determine who will (probably) play Clemson in the ACC title game. The Pac-12 North has been amazing with Washington, Washington State, Oregon and Stanford battling it out, while no one is out of the South race. The Big Ten East will come down to Michigan-Ohio State, while the West is a four-team fight of solid teams. In this era of large conferences, having a lot of tight division races is meaningful and, honestly, so much fun.

Right now, the Heisman is Tua Tagovailoa's to lose. However, we've seen in the past that things can change in the last month of the season. Tua is having a sensational season for the best team in the country. There still is time for Kyler Murray, Dwayne Haskins, Will Grier and Jonathan Taylor to make a strong run at Tagovailoa, and there are plenty of landmines in Tua's way to trip him up and bring him back to the pack.

One of college football's most fascinating charms are all those rivalry trophies. There are victory bells, kegs of nails, various cannons, jugs and cups. On the line are awards like Paul Bunyan's Axe, the Golden Boot, the Bronze Boot, the Old Oaken Bucket, Little Brown Jug, the Wagon Wheel, the Golden Egg, Chancellor's Spurs and a Shillelagh. The winner of the Iowa-Minnesota game used to get a live pig. (Now it is just a pig trophy.) The winner of the South Alabama-Troy game gets a championship belt. How cool is that? 

UTEP went 0-12 in 2017 and is currently 0-8 this season. The Miners haven't won since they beat North Texas in the 2016 season finale. So can UTEP break its 20-game losing streak? Yes, it could. The Miners have Rice and Western Kentucky coming up on the schedule, and both of those teams are down in the Conference USA standings. UTEP does have to go on the road for both of those games but will host Middle Tennessee and Southern Miss as well. Since getting shutout by Tennessee in September, the Miners have been competitive in nearly every game. It's just a matter of time, but will it be this year?

Look at the top of the rankings: Alabama; Clemson; Notre Dame; Michigan; Texas; Georgia; Oklahoma; Ohio State; Florida; LSU. These are all power programs with great histories, and each has a legitimate shot at winning a national championship. We all like the Cinderellas such as UCF, but when big-time schools are battling it out for a chance at a playoff spot, it's that special and great for the sport. Heck, we could even get the fourth straight season of Clemson-Alabama in the playoffs. 

One of the quirks of the College Football Playoff is that at least one of the Power Five conferences will be left out of the dance. Another quirk manifested last year when two of those power conferences, the Big Ten and the Pac-12, found themselves out of it. And yet another quirk is that twice already a team that didn't win a conference championship found its way into the playoff. In 2016, Ohio State made it over Big Ten champ Penn State, and last year Alabama joined SEC champ Georgia in the playoff and ended up winning the whole thing. This year, we could see three of the Power Five leagues out of the playoff, while two SEC teams get in as well as Notre Dame, leaving four conferences vying for the final playoff spot. That doesn't even take into account the possibility of UCF going undefeated and again finding itself on the outside looking in. If that happens, you may hear the conference commissioners cry to expand the tournament to six or eight teams. 

Barring some crazy things happening all over the country, the Pac-12 isn't getting anyone in the College Football Playoff (sorry, Washington State fans). That doesn't mean that the league won't be fun to watch. The North division — the stronger division — has already been a blast. Washington State, Oregon, Washington and Stanford are having quite a battle in the standings, with the Apple Cup at the end of the season possibly determining the winner. Down South, pretty much everyone outside of Tempe has a great look at it, and there's a lot of head-to-head games remaining. So if you're up late and want to see some fun football, check out the Pac-12.

Since the College Football Playoff has come around, the Big 12 has had difficulty adjusting to it. After missing out in the inaugural event in 2014-2015, the league has tried different ways to ensure that doesn't happen again. It now holds a conference championship game despite not having two divisions. A couple of years ago, the conference was strongly looking at adding two or four more schools via expansion. The Big 12 could find itself out again for the third time in five years and may look to make more drastic moves. Would the conference that many feel is holding on by a few strings attempt to make yet another big change? Could expansion be back on the table? With schools like UCF, Houston, Cincinnati and South Florida having good seasons and BYU still sitting out there, it could be tempting.

All of those things take time and wouldn't really happen until the offseason, but keep a careful eye on the league as the season winds down. West Virginia heads to Texas on Nov. 3, while Oklahoma heads to West Virginia on the Friday after Thanksgiving, and those are the schools that will likely fight to play in the Big 12 title game. But if the Big 12 sits out of the playoff again, who knows where the league will turn.

Last year, Florida State barely made it to its 35th straight bowl game. Sure, that stat loses some shine since now there are so many bowl slots to fill. But it is still amazing that over all this time the Seminoles have yet to crater out. Well, to make it to a 36th straight bowl, they will have some tough work ahead of them. Sitting at 4-4 after a humiliating loss to Clemson, the 'Noles are looking at games at NC State and Notre Dame before hosting a dangerous Boston College and their rival, Florida. Florida State would have to win two of those games to qualify for a bowl (though a 5-7 mark could get the Seminoles in if things completely broke their way). After that horrible home loss to Clemson when head coach Willie Taggart said some of his players quit, it doesn't look good in Tallahassee. 

Thanksgiving Day is rather light on college football this year (just Colorado State-Air Force and the Egg Bowl, Mississippi State-Ole Miss), but you'll have a lovely slate of games on Black Friday as you relax after shopping and heating up leftovers. Oklahoma heads to West Virginia in what could be an elimination game for the Big 12 title tilt. Same could be said for the Washington-Washington State game in the Pac-12. The sleeper game of the day could be UCF at South Florida. Saturday is loaded (Michigan-Ohio State, Auburn-Alabama, LSU-Texas A&M, Notre Dame-USC).

There could be a ton on the line in this game. For one, both the Wolverines and Buckeyes have one loss now and that could stay the same by the time this game rolls around. If that is the case, the Big Ten East division championship would be on the line and with that a possible Big Ten championship. That would mean this game would also have a College Football Playoff berth hanging in the balance. Beyond that, both coaches are in a weird situation as they both have had a lot of success yet their jobs could be on the line. There have been whispers that this could be Urban Meyer's final season at Ohio State after a season filled with scandal and some health issues. Jim Harbaugh, frankly, needs to beat Ohio State. He hasn't done so since arriving in Ann Arbor, and he's felt the heat for that.

On Dec.1, the SEC Championship Game will be played in Atlanta's Mercedes-Benz Stadium. This game has been crucial not only in determining who gets into the College Football Playoff (CFP) but in the seeding as well. This year shouldn't be any different. Alabama is bulldozing its way through the season but has big games with LSU and rival Auburn remaining. The West Division is really up in the air with Kentucky, Florida and Georgia all fighting for the lead. Last season, Auburn lost to Georgia in the SEC title game, knocking the Tigers out of the CFP and putting Georgia in. (Alabama would also get in.) This is the biggest of the championship games.

The SEC hosts the biggest of the conference championship games, but it isn't the only one that will make a large impact on who plays for the national championship. That same Saturday, the Big 12, Big Ten and ACC championship games will be played. Friday night will be the Pac-12 championship in Santa Clara. The non-power conferences also get in on the fun with the MAC title on Friday, and the Conference USA, American Athletic, Mountain West and Sun Belt championship games on Saturday. 

The head coaching hot seat is firing up, and we will start seeing coaching changes as the season winds down. This year, it isn't just the schools at the bottom of the standings that could look to a new direction. Big-name schools like Auburn, Louisville, BYU and, yes, even Ohio State, could be searching for a new head coach this December. 

The Army-Navy game is one of sport's greatest treats. The atmosphere of having all the service men and women in the stands, the pageantry, the players who are there for the love of their country...and football — the ghosts of how large the game was long ago when both academies were near the top of the rankings. Even if both schools entered the game 0-11, it is still a great event. Army is on a current two-game winning streak after ending Navy's 14-game run. 

Christian McCaffrey and Leonard Fournette set off a firestorm when they decided to sit out their teams' bowl games and instead concentrated on getting ready for the upcoming NFL Draft. It was met with both criticism and support. But after Notre Dame's Jaylon Smith tore his ACL during the previous Fiesta Bowl, there was an honest debate about the merits of sitting out. Smith's injury cost him millions of dollars, as he dropped in the draft. It hasn't become the norm as some predicted, but there are guys like Oregon's Royce Freeman and Florida State's Derwin James who did it last year. There will be a few who will do it this year, too, to protect their own investment in a lucrative career rather than risk it all for a meaningless game in which only the school gets paid. 

Every year there are those people who complain about how many bowl games there are. These aren't playoff berths, so it is quite a neat thing that these players get to play one last game at a locale that celebrates their season. It all starts on Dec. 15 with five bowl games that span from Orlando to Las Vegas. All of the pre-New Year's bowls (excluding the two playoff semifinal games) may not feature the best of the best. But they are fun and display civic pride in the communities that host these bowls but also for the fan bases and alumni of the teams that play in the games. There are also office pools that help pique your interest in those 39 bowls and the national championship game as well. Enjoy them!

I get that sponsorship allows for these bowl games to happen, but it still feels sleazy when an old bowl changes its name to that of a corporate sponsor. One of the worst was when the Peach Bowl turned into the Chick-fil-A Bowl. That was corrected a couple of years ago, as the Peach Bowl yearned to be part of the College Football Playoff. Another one that is coming back is the Gator Bowl. For the last four seasons, the Gator Bowl was unfortunately named the TaxSlayer Bowl. Ugh. Is there anything more soulless? 

There are few days in sports that are up there with New Year's Day in college football. As you are crawling to your couch after a night of ringing in the New Year, a slate of five great games will be waiting for you. The Outback, Citrus, Fiesta, Rose and Sugar Bowls are among the best of the 39 bowls, and while none will have an impact on who becomes the national champion (the semifinal games will be played on Dec. 29), they all will feature some fantastic matchups. Start the day with the Tournament of Roses, and end it with a Sugar Bowl champion.

For the next six weeks, we will be spending so much time arguing about who should be in the tournament that we will forget that no matter who the four teams are, we should get some good games. OK, so the semifinal games tend to be duds. Of the eight held so far, six have been blowouts (with two being shutouts). But we did get that great Georgia-Oklahoma game last season, which was one of the best bowl games ever. The championship games have been a blast. Aside from the first one, the last three have gone to the wire with the last two essentially being walk-off wins.