College Football’s Week 12:
DG’s “Pick Six” Taps #7 Tennessee (8-1) at #12 UGa (7-2),
#20 Clemson-Pittsburgh, Boston College-#14 SMU, More
By David Glenn
North Carolina Sports Network
Each week during college football season, we offer a “Pick Six” package of intriguing matchups — three “local” games that include one or more North Carolina-based team and three “national” contests that involve the Atlantic Coast Conference and/or the most prominent intersectional games.
Week 12: Top “National” Games
Game One
#7 Tennessee (8-1) at #12 Georgia (7-2), Sat., 7:30 pm (ABC/ESPN+)
Latest Betting Line: Bulldogs a 10-point favorite
The Tennessee part and the Georgia part of this matchup are separately intriguing, for different reasons, as the Volunteers try to revisit the upper echelon of college football, while the Bulldogs attempt to stay there.
Something’s gotta give.
The Volunteers seem to be on the cusp of being nationally relevant in a manner that hasn’t happened often since coach Phillip Fulmer led them to the national championship in 1998.
Since Fulmer’s firing in 2008, Tennessee has had only one season with 10 or more wins and only one that ended with a national top-10 ranking. Both of those things — along with an Orange Bowl victory — happened during its 11-2 campaign in 2022, just two years ago, in what was coach Josh Heupel’s second season in Knoxville.
Now the Volunteers have a chance at something special again, including a shot at the SEC championship, something they haven’t been able to capture since their legendary 13-0 campaign in 1998.
Right now, the only one-loss teams in the SEC standings are Tennessee, Texas and Texas A&M, and the Aggies and Longhorns play each other later this season, so those are the only three SEC teams that have their league title hopes entirely in their hands.
Of course, beating Georgia in Athens recently has become a monumental task for the Volunteers, who have won only one of their last eight games between the hedges. The Vols have been inconsistent offensively this season and, although they expect talented redshirt freshman quarterback Nico Iamaleava (upper-body injury) to play, they are a 10-point underdog on Saturday night.
The Georgia half of this matchup is fascinating, too.
This is coach Kirby Smart’s ninth season with the Bulldogs. His teams captured the national championship in both 2021 and 2022, at a school whose most recent title had been way back in 1980, when legendary running back Herschel Walker was leading the way.
If the 12-team version of the College Football Playoff had been in place during Smart’s first eight years with the Dawgs, his teams would have made the field seven consecutive times, with his only miss being in 2016, during his first year on the job after being coach Nick Saban’s defensive coordinator at Alabama for a long time.
Here in 2024, though, the Bulldogs are hanging by a thread in the national picture. They’ve already lost twice — at Alabama and at Ole Miss (just last week) — and it’s likely going to be difficult for any team to make the expanded playoff with three defeats.
The rule of thumb with the four-team playoff format was that a team wouldn’t get in if it lost twice or more, and in fact no two-loss team ever made that smaller version of the postseason bracket. There likely will be a three-loss team in this expanded playoff format at some point, but that’s a highly risky route to take, to say the least.
At this point in the season, the Dawgs have played four tough teams — Clemson, Alabama, Texas and Ole Miss — and they’re only 2-2 in those games. If they lose to Tennessee, too, on their own home field, no less, that probably would be, and maybe even should be, the end of their 2024 playoff hopes.
If the Dawgs can win out, though, they would have one of the most compelling 10-2 resumes in the entire country … and a great chance at an at-large playoff invitation.
Game Two
#20 Clemson (7-2) at Pittsburgh (7-2), noon (ESPN)
Latest Betting Line: Tigers a 10-point favorite
This game will provide an interesting litmus test for Clemson, for a couple different reasons.
First, the Tigers have played only two above-average opponents so far this season; they were embarrassed by a 34-3 margin versus Georgia in their opener, and they fell 33-21 to Louisville at Death Valley.
Meanwhile, if you look at the records and resumes of the seven teams Clemson has defeated — App State, NC State, Stanford, Florida State, Wake Forest, Virginia and Virginia Tech — you’ll realize that there’s not a high-quality victim anywhere to be found in that bunch. At 7-2, Pittsburgh offers a chance for Clemson to post its best win of the entire season, especially with the Tigers on the road.
Second, consider this striking contrast from the lengthy tenure of 16th-year Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney.
From 2011-20, if there had been this newly expanded 12-team College Football Playoff in place at the time, the Tigers would have made the playoff nine times in that 10-year period — seven times as the ACC champion, and twice as an at-large selection. Compare that to these past four years, when the Tigers would have made it only once, in 2022, as the ACC champion.
This year’s Tigers are not entirely out of the picture for either the ACC title game or the College Football Playoff, although because of tiebreakers they need Miami or SMU to slip up down the stretch to make it to Charlotte.
Obviously, if the Tigers sneak into that title game and win it, they can punch their ticket to the playoff that way. If they fall short of the ACC championship game, though, they could make an intriguing at-large candidate for the playoff, but only if they beat Pitt this week and they take care of South Carolina at Death Valley in their regular-season finale.
The Gamecocks are 6-3 under coach Shane Beamer and ranked #21 nationally. With the Tigers at #20 in the CFP committee’s rankings, they would have a chance to creep up toward the national top 10 if — and only if — they can go from zero to two quality wins by taking out both the Panthers this week and the Gamecocks later.
With just one more loss, though, the Tigers almost certainly would finish outside the national top 10 for the fourth year in a row, in the immediate aftermath of making the top 10 for an amazing six years in a row.
Game Three
Boston College (5-4) at #14 SMU (8-1), 3:30 pm (ESPN)
Latest Betting Line: Mustangs a 19-point favorite
Since SMU is new to the ACC this year, some quick background on the Mustangs is definitely in order, because their story has become one of the most remarkable in all of college football.
This is a program that, since it was hit by the NCAA’s so-called Death Penalty for a bunch of extreme rules violations back in the 1980s, has changed its conference affiliation four times just in the past four decades.
After the scandal-ridden Southwest Conference imploded in the mid-1990s, the Mustangs joined the Western Athletic Conference. In 2005, they jumped from the WAC to Conference USA. In 2013, they left CUSA to join the newly created American Athletic Conference. Most recently, of course, they departed the AAC and became official members of the ACC this summer.
During that tumultuous period, in the aftermath of SMU’s glory days and national championship-caliber teams with the “Pony Express” of Eric Dickerson and Craig James in the early 1980s, the Mustangs actually weren’t even allowed to field a team for a couple years in the late 1980s as part of the Death Penalty-related fallout.
Eventually, SMU went almost four decades without having even a single season in which the Mustangs ended up in the national Top 25. That’s about as incredibly steep and as lengthy a fall from the proverbial mountaintop as there has been in the history of college football.
Fast forward to 2023 and 2024.
Under head coach Rhett Lashlee, a former Miami Hurricanes assistant now in his third season leading SMU, the Mustangs had their first Top 25 campaign in 39 years just last season, when they went 11-3 and captured the AAC title in their final year in that league.
Now, in their first season in the ACC, the Mustangs will play in their new league’s championship game as long as they win out against a very manageable remaining schedule: 5-4 BC this week, at 5-4 Virginia next week, then 5-4 Cal in Dallas to complete the regular season.
If the Mustangs finish this regular season 11-1, which seems very attainable, there’s at least a chance that they will end up in the College Football Playoff whether or not they win the ACC crown.
Why? Because SMU’s only loss right now is to a 9-0 BYU team that’s #6 in the CFP committee’s rankings, and the Mustangs’ best wins include at Louisville (currently #19 in the committee rankings), at Duke, and against Pittsburgh. All three of those teams have spent a lot of time in the national Top 25 this season.
This SMU team is no fluke. It’s #2 in the ACC in scoring offense, at about 40 points per game, and it’s #2 in the ACC in scoring defense, at around 22 points per game. The Mustangs regularly have run the ball well, and they consistently have stopped the run. They’re not truly elite offensively, but they’re very good on defense and very solid on special teams.
The Mustangs must get to 11-1 and the ACC championship game to make this a true dream season, but they have everything it takes to get there, especially with their most difficult regular-season games already behind them.
NOTE: For the complete Week 12 schedule (including television/streaming options) for all ACC and state of North Carolina teams, please click HERE.
