College Football Watching Guide: RIVALRY WEEK 2024
Salt, disrespect, bad blood – you know the drill.
It’s time for that most storied of all regular-season weeks, where after we share a feast of thanks with those we love, we turn all our animosity, our vitriol, against eleven guys wearing some other school’s uniforms.
Why? No reason. On that day, we just don’t like ‘em.
Rivalries are the beating, bleeding heart of college football, the primal wound that gets scraped open every year at the end of a hard-fought campaign. Held within many of these matchups, there’s literal centuries of history. Jobs have been preserved, economies have been sustained, and entire works of fiction woven with these yearly tilts at their center.
So let’s revel in the rivalry games, and all their attendant stakes. Check them out below!
FREE SLATE
None
Sorry, folks. If you didn’t get your adventuring and chore-ing done earlier this year, you’re out of luck. There’s great football on all Saturday, with at least one banger every Slate. Sit back, relax, snack on some two-day-old Thanksgiving leftovers.
FRIDAY
Oregon State at Boise State
12:00pm/11:00am (FOX)
No rivalry here yet, just a good game. The Beavers somehow skated past Washington State to capture the Pac-12 crown last week, ending a really awful five-game skid. Ben Gulbranson actually looked competent, and Anthony Hankerson continued putting up solid numbers at tailback. The Beavers need to radically improve on defense before next week, though, especially their 103rd-ranked run-stoppers. Ashton Jeanty’s salivating at the thought of leading the Broncos to a Playoff berth, and this would be another feather in his Heisman cap. Even on the blue field, though, Boise State’s Achilles heel is their secondary. There’s an opening for victory if the Beavs can figure it out.
Mississippi State at Ole Miss (Egg Bowl)
3:30pm/2:30pm (ABC)
WEIRD. Every year the Egg Bowl is just so gosh-darn weird. Some of the most hilarious things to ever happen in college football occurred in this series. The Bulldogs are nothing to write home about on offense and they do not have a defense. They have won twice: against Eastern Kentucky and UMass. They are altogether bad. But in a rivalry game, you throw the records out. Ole Miss’s Jaxson Dart looked vulnerable last week against Florida, not like the leader of the nation’s best passing attack. The defense held up, but couldn’t keep their opponents down. After falling out of the Playoff, the Rebs will be angry, but can they channel it?
Georgia Tech at Georgia (Clean Old-Fashioned Hate)
7:30pm/6:30pm (ABC)
Love this rivalry’s name. Love the Yellow Jackets’ chances here a slight bit less. How to make sense of a team that beat Miami and NC State but lost to Notre Dame and Virginia Tech? They’re mid, folks. That bears itself out in nearly every statistical category. Georgia Tech excels at nothing, but fails at nothing either. That makes them a serious trap game for the Bulldogs, who need to win to make the Playoff. Carson Beck’s passing has much improved, and the defense grew a spine during the year. Georgia’s slightly one-dimensional on offense though, and if Beck gets rattled, who knows which way this game goes.
SATURDAY
EARLY SLATE
Big Screen
South Carolina at Clemson (Palmetto Bowl)
12:00pm/11:00am (ESPN)
Can everyone stop pretending that South Carolina’s a potential Playoff team? They have three losses. I don’t care that they were against LSU, Ole Miss, and Alabama. The Gamecocks are still really, astoundingly good though, and all they can do now is win. Raheim Sanders stampedes downhill on offense, opening up passing lanes for LaNorris Sellers. Then the defense puts immense pressure on opposing fronts. They’re fired up, and they think they have a chance at the sport’s biggest prize. That makes them dangerous.
Clemson should be worried. Yes, their offensive output has been scary, but they still haven’t beaten a Top 25 team, they struggled against skilled ACC opponents like Pitt and they fell short against Louisville. The weakness is all defensive. That unit’s underachieved across the board all year. One more loss and the Tigers miss the Playoff. Is this the moment they falter?
Small Screen
Kansas at Baylor
12:00pm/11:00am (ESPN2)
Yeah, I could’ve said The Game, but let’s be honest, the Buckeyes will wipe the floor with Michigan. This tilt’s got way more intrigue. The Jayhawks have rounded into form and are hot at the right time, but is it too late? They need a win to reach bowl eligibility after pulling off improbable wins over Big 12 favorites Iowa State, BYU, and Colorado. They’ve done this mostly through ball control and the bruising run game of Devin Neal. The defense has weak points but Kansas will be all the way up for this game.
Baylor, also improbably, has a shot at the Big 12 championship should a bunch of things bounce their way. They’ve gradually improved from the early season, much like the Jayhawks. Their run-to-open-up-the-pass balanced Bear Raid has a single weakness: it scores TOO quickly. That’s not good when your defense is mediocre to woeful, depending on the set of downs. The Bears would love a win to end a tough season and possibly catapult them into a high-tier bowl. They’ll need to fight hard to get it.
Watch The Score
Tennessee at Vanderbilt (12pm/11am, ABC)
Michigan at Ohio State (The Game) (12pm/11am, FOX)
MIDDLE SLATE
Big Screen
Auburn at Alabama (Iron Bowl)
3:30pm/2:30pm (ABC)
Ask me a few weeks ago and I wouldn’t have said this game had stakes. But it does, and they’re all about Auburn. The Tigers squeaked out an OT win over the Aggies last week, and need a victory here to reach a bowl. They’ve gradually improved, with Payton Thorne throwing and Jarquez Hunter running at a respectable pace, though failing to score a ton or hold onto the ball for long enough. The issue is a difficulty to stop long passes. If the secondary can limit the Tide, War Eagle can blaze a trail to the postseason.
The Tide will not be an easy win. Kalen DeBoer is desperate to avoid another loss that triggers Bama’s high-standards fan base. They’re already going to miss the Playoff, but they’d like to slot into a decent bowl. That largely hinges on which Jalen Milroe we get: the do-no-wrong field commander, or the pick-prone flopmeister? The defense needs to show improvement in QB pressure and run stoppage too. This edition of the South’s saltiest rivalry hinges on who fixes their issues.
Small Screen
Miami at Syracuse
3:30pm/2:30pm (ESPN)
The Canes just want to avoid a mishap at this point. Thanks to a soft schedule where their toughest test was Louisville (did I say that out loud?) they sit atop the ACC with a clear path to face SMU next week. And while their offense has done what it should and racked up points under the watchful eye of Cam Ward (who is inexplicably not in the Heisman conversation), good gravy, does their defense have holes. It allows far too many points and passing yards to pass championship muster.
Hopefully, Cristobal’s got those defensive issues fixed, because pretty much all Syracuse does is pass the football. Kyle McCord will rain pigskins on your head from every conceivable angle, and that’s a good thing, because the Orange’s defense leaves something to be desired—a consistent pass rush and run defense, to be specific. It’s the ol’ outscore-everyone playbook for New York’s finest ACC team, and knocking out Miami would be huge for their program.
Watch The Score
Notre Dame at USC (Jeweled Shillelagh) (3:30pm/2:30pm, CBS)
NIGHT SLATE
Big Screen
Texas at Texas A&M (Lone Star Showdown)
7:30pm/6:30pm (ABC)
AT LAST. Words cannot describe how excited I am for the return of this classic rivalry. It’s Texas’s version of The Game, or the Iron Bowl. Ever since A&M picked up its ball and left for the SEC, it’s been on hold, and now it’s FINALLY back. But with it comes uncertainty. Texas has a blistering offense anchored by Quinn Ewers’ passing. As of the writing of this newsletter, though, I have no idea whether he’s playing after suffering an ankle injury last week. Will that be an issue for the Horns? Probably not. Arch Manning exists, and they’ve probably got the best overall defense in America.
Never count out desperation, though. The Aggies are out of the Playoff after last week’s embarrassment against Auburn, guilty of looking ahead to this rivalry tilt. A&M’s offense is ground-based, focusing on controlling time of possession with a healthy dose of Marcel Reed scampering around on designed QB runs and Amari Daniels bulldozing his way through opposing fronts. The defense is lackluster for the SEC, and especially struggles to handle pass-first attacks—like, I don’t know, the one Texas boasts. The Aggie faithful better hope Mike Elko’s figured out the Horns this week in practice. When Georgia handed UT their only loss this year, it was by running the ball, dominating the line of scrimmage, and capitalizing on mistakes.
Small Screen
Virginia at Virginia Tech (Commonwealth Clash)
8:00pm/7:00pm (ACC Network)
Laugh all you want, but the winner of this rivalry game goes to a bowl, and the loser’s season is over. Those are serious, prime, Grade A stakes, and stakes in a rivalry matchup are worth your time. The single bright spot for the Cavs this year was a five-point win over Pitt. Everything else has gone poorly. They are horrifically bad at everything besides passing and stopping the run, both of which they do moderately well. Maneuvering into the postseason would be helpful for recruiting, which is likely where the coaching staff’s focused, even now.
Same deal for the Hokies. Their best win? Georgia Tech. Yikes. William Watson III, a redshirt freshman, may be the guy under center as standout Kyron Drones has been sidelined with a nagging injury and their backup just got injured last week. Bhayshul Tuten is the offense’s lone bright spot, a fantastic downhill runner. And the defense isn’t awful, just overwhelmingly fine. Two struggling teams against each other with stuff on the line usually makes for great football, so sign me up!