Following the release of Tuesday night's first College Football Playoff rankings, we have never seen a weekend with this many top-end games inside the top 25 coming down the stretch. Captivating matchups within the SEC, Big Ten and Big 12 lead the docket, along with unbeaten and top-ranked Miami's trip to No. 11 Notre Dame, where the Fighting Irish will try to post their first ranked win of the campaign. There are six games involving top-25 teams, tying for the most-ever on Saturday, and we've included all in our Week 10 predictions.
You can toss the AP poll out the window moving forward, since all that matters now is the CFP selection committee's cluster of teams, their metrics and which squads are battling for at-large spots in the 12-team bracket. With auto-bids going to the four highest-ranked conference champions and the Group of Six's highest-ranked team, teams on the bubble or outside their respective league title races are vying for seven spots to fill out the bracket. Season results: Brad Crawford (53-28 straight up, 39-41-1 ATS); Chris Hummer (58-23 straight up, 41–39-1 ATS) This college football picks season feels like a scene in a movie where you trip walking through a cafeteria and everything on your tray crashes violently to the ground in a chaotic mess.
I'm cleaning up my food again after another 4-6 weeks of wild results, which was surprisingly one game better than my colleague. Ahead of college football's most impactful weekend of the campaign, I'm bringing a boxed lunch. Hummer (Iowa +1.5): Iowa's turned the ball over eight times this season.
Six of them have come in the Hawkeyes' two losses. So, in many ways this comes down to which version of Iowa we see. The traditional ball-control, defense-first Hawkeyes can go on the road and win this game.
A turnover-prone unit that coughs up the ball to an aggressive Wildcats defense (13 forced turnovers) could struggle. Give me Iowa in this one. The Hawkeyes are better along the lines of scrimmage and should be in the right spots to slow down Aidan Chiles. … Iowa 24, Northwestern 21.
Crawford (Iowa +1.5): I whiffed on the Hawkeyes last week, and I'm not going to make the same mistake again. Had Iowa beaten Minnesota on the road two weeks ago, Kirk Ferentz's team would be entering the final month of the season in control of their own Big Ten and CFP destiny. Instead, they're hanging on to a shutout win over Wisconsin as their best of the season and have a shot at another quality victory against Northwestern in Evanston.
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