Florida State-Miami, Michigan-Penn State and More High-Stakes Week 11 CFB Games

Conference championship races are getting down to the wire for some teams, while others are making a desperate push to salvage their hopes of just making a bowl game. Here’s the intrigue and drama to look for during the Week 11 games:

Wyoming at UNLV (Friday, 9:45 PM Eastern, Fox Sports 1): When UNLV beat Wyoming in 2016, it had to gain 653 yards of offense and score 69 points (17 of them in overtime) to pull it off. The Cowboys defeated UNLV twice since then and have walked away the winner in 10 of the last 13 games between these teams. If UNLV comes out on top, that gives it eight regular-season wins for the first time since 1984 and keeps them in contention to play in the Mountain West championship game. A Wyoming victory puts Craig Bohl exactly at .500 (59-59) over his ten years in Laramie.

Michigan at Penn State (Saturday, 12:00 PM Eastern, Fox): The first marquee test of the year for Michigan is also Penn State’s last chance to prove it can beat one of the top teams in the sport. No passer the Wolverines have faced this year has reached 200 yards through the air, and no offense has scored multiple touchdowns. Michigan’s also riding a 20-game winning streak against Big Ten opponents, but if Penn State can end that, the Big Ten East gets a lot more complicated down the stretch, to the point where the winner of the division might be decided by how things shake out in the Big Ten West. Who wouldn’t want to leave fate in the hands of that group?

Texas Tech at Kansas (Saturday, 12:00 PM Eastern, Fox Sports 1): If the Red Raiders can’t beat the Jayhawks, they’ll have to sweep UCF and Texas to make a bowl game. That would make Joey McGuire the first Texas Tech coach since Mike Leach to reach a bowl in his first two seasons. 7-2 Kansas hasn’t won eight games in the regular season since 2007 and is aiming to win its third-straight conference game, which also hasn’t happened since that year. The Jayhawks have only beaten Texas Tech once in their last 16 meetings.

Georgia Tech at Clemson (Saturday, 12:00 PM Eastern, ABC): Here’s a sentence I did not expect to write before the season started. The winner of this clash between 5-4 programs will make it to bowl eligibility. Here’s another: Georgia Tech needs this win to maintain a very slim hope of making the ACC championship while Clemson has no path to Charlotte. For all the trouble the Yellowjackets can cause other teams in the conference, the Tigers have not usually been one of their victims. Clemson’s won eight straight and hasn’t lost to Tech at home since 2008.

Arizona at Colorado (Saturday, 2:00 PM Eastern, Pac-12 Network): The free-falling Buffaloes have lost three games in a row to drop to 4-5, with the Wildcats, Washington State and Utah left on the schedule. Lose out, and the debut of Deion Sanders doesn’t look a lot better, at least record-wise, than many of his predecessors; Karl Dorrell, Mel Tucker and Mike MacIntyre each won at least four games in their first seasons. Get to a bowl game, and it’s the best start to a coaching tenure since Gary Barnett led the 1999 Buffs to seven wins. Arizona, meanwhile, just won its third-straight Pac-12 game, which the Wildcats hadn’t accomplished since 2017. They’d need a lot of help to get there, but the Wildcats are still alive in the Pac-12 championship game hunt as well. 

Miami at Florida State (Saturday, 3:30 PM Eastern, ABC): The Hurricanes haven’t played a ranked FSU team since 2016, and the last time the Seminoles were a top-five team heading into this game was in 2014. Both games ended up with narrow FSU wins on the road. To find the last time Miami beat a ranked FSU, you’ve got to go back to 2009 when the No. 18 Seminoles opened the season with a home loss to the Jacory Harris-led Canes. A win would give Florida State its eighth 10-0 start to a season in program history, and maybe beating a six-win Miami is enough to earn the Seminoles some points with the Playoff Committee. 

Utah at Washington (Saturday, 3:30 PM Eastern, Fox): The Huskies and Utes have played nine times since Utah joined the Pac-12, and somehow only three of those games took place in Salt Lake City. Regardless of location, this matchup frequently ends up being competitive; five of the last six have been decided by one score. Given Washington’s position just outside the top four of the Playoff rankings, it can’t afford a slip-up here, even if it’d still be in position to make the Pac-12 title game. Utah’s path to the conference championship is much trickier, but Kyle Whittingham only needs three wins this year to hit double-digits for the eighth time as head coach of the Utes. 

Texas State at Coastal Carolina (Saturday, 3:30 PM Eastern, ESPN+): As James Madison continues to push the NCAA to give it full FBS status and privileges, Coastal Carolina quietly sits to the side leading the non-Dukes contingent of the Sun Belt East by half a game. After a tricky start to the year, the Chanticleers have won four straight. Texas State, at 6-3, can match the program’s highest-ever win total with a victory. That would also be a third road win for a team that went 0-6 away from home last season. 

Ole Miss at Georgia (Saturday, 7:00 PM Eastern, ESPN): In our world, Ole Miss won its last game against Georgia, a 45-14 stomping in 2016 where the Bulldogs didn’t score until the Rebels had already accumulated the entirety of their 45 points. In the NCAA’s world, that game did not happen and Georgia has won the last 10 editions of this series. Both worlds, at least, can agree that Ole Miss hasn’t won in Athens since 1996, when Kirby Smart was on the Georgia roster. The 8-1 Rebels are just sort of quietly hanging around, ranked just behind Alabama at No. 9 in the rankings. Beat Georgia in its house and they’ll assuredly jump, and possibly get into playoff position even if they don’t win the SEC West. Georgia’s sitting on a handful of bonkers winning streaks: 26-straight games overall, 16-straight against SEC opponents and 24-straight in Athens.

West Virginia at Oklahoma (Saturday, 7:00 PM Eastern, Fox): After back-to-back losses, things might be unraveling for Oklahoma. A loss to the Mountaineers would give them a very difficult road to the Big 12 championship and give them at least three conference losses for the second year in a row after the Sooners went seven straight years without more than two in a season. With three games left to play, 6-3 West Virginia has already equaled its highest win total in a season under Neal Brown. A win over No. 17 Oklahoma would be the first defeat of a ranked opponent for the Mountaineers in six tries. 

Florida at LSU (Saturday, 7:30 PM Eastern, SEC Network): There are good explanations for Florida entering this game with four losses and LSU with three. Both teams have faced challenging schedules and dealt with critical injuries, and while there are some disappointing losses on the ledger, there’s nothing truly shocking. That shared perspective could make this game a bonding opportunity, where two fanbases can come together to consider the large— obviously, none of that’s going to happen in the slightest. LSU has the chance to win a fifth-straight game against the Gators, which has never happened in the history of this series for the Tigers. Florida needs one more win to get to a bowl game, and No. 18 is the lowest-ranked opponent left, with No. 16 Missouri and No. 4 FSU remaining. 

Duke at UNC (Saturday, 8:00 PM Eastern, ACC Network): The winner of this game gets to effectively knock the loser out of any realistic path to the ACC championship. UNC needed a long touchdown drive late in the fourth quarter last season to come from behind and beat Duke 38-35; that also kept its winning streak alive against the Blue Devils, which now stands at four games. A Duke victory would give the Blue Devils two wins against ranked (at the time they played) opponents this season; they haven’t accomplished that since 2013. UNC can still pull off a second nine-win season in a row, and that last happened in 1996 and 1997 — the final two years of Mack Brown’s first go-round in Chapel Hill.