For whatever reason, the top teams all seem to get ranked opponents at home this weekend, with a few exceptions, including Ohio State hosting Minnesota, Wisconsin travelling to Iowa, VA Tech playing perhaps its toughest foe to date, Pittsburgh, Notre Dame renewing its rivalry with BC (for some reason, they always seem to play the week after the Irish face FSU), and Oklahoma squaring off against Colorado in Norman.

At the beginning of the season, one could have listed about four or five games on their conference schedule that would have been viewed as most critical in determining whether or not consensus Pac-10 favorite Washington State would reach the Rose Bowl: USC, Oregon, Washington, UCLA, even Stanford. But one match-up that would have seemed on paper to be a breather for the Cougars was this weekend's battle with Arizona State, with the winner being in commanding position to claim the conference championship. On the other hand, games that looked great on paper at the beginning of the season that have almost no buzz now would be the post-adolescent drink-a-thon in Jacksonville surrounding the battle between undefeated Georgia and unimpressive Florida, and what had been a great rivalry in the '90's, Texas and Nebraska.