Wisconsin @ #21 Michigan State

ORSON, QUASI-RATIONAL: It would be intellectual dishonesty to say that these are anything but two perfectly average teams playing perfectly average football: numbers do not lie in either case. Wisconsin in particular has little to say about suddenly changing a game in either direction; they don’t pick off passes, they don’t change games with special teams, and they can be dick-deficient in the passing game. Michigan State is at home, and therefore will likely win in a game reminding you of everything bad about Big Ten Football (to wit: ACC football, but colder.)
HOLLY, IRRATIONAL: My streak of picking coaches for their perfectly trapezoid-shaped heads ends with you, Bieleieleielma. Spartans.

Michigan @ Purdue

ORSON, QUASI-RATIONAL. Purdue is one big snowball of suck rolling downhill without their starter Curtis Painter, who is likely out with a separated shoulder. Michigan has been demonstrably awful by both the standards of casual assessment and Brian Cook-bot obsession, but they are not Purdue-bad. Close, but not quite there. Diabeetus 10, Brundlefly Michigan larvae-team 17.
HOLLY, QUASI-RATIONAL IN THE FACE OF BLINDING HATRED: Purdue is so, so bad. This is science. So bad I can’t even pick them over Michigan, which is a team losing lots and lots of games and which produced He Who Must Not Be Named, But Who Is Very Fat And Has No Super Bowl Ring. Wolverines, grudgingly.

West Fuckin’ Virginia @ #25 Connecticut

ORSON, QUASI-RATIONAL: The run doth not trouble the 3-3-5; passing does, and UConn hath not the potential to handle this. Also, our very own favorite football term ever–”gold frontz” speed–comes in reference to Noel Devine, and the term itself emergeth from our preferred Fat White Guy, who writes:
Saying WVU’s defense is unique is like saying superman was “gifted.” The 3-3-5 is like a mid-season migraine for all offensive coordinators: seven previous weeks of Lombardi-esque basics and all of a sudden someone is rocking the boat.
Unpredictable micro machine migraines FTW.
HOLLY, QUASI-RATIONAL: Not that Connecticut can pass even against non-mutant defenses. WFV FTW, but if this late-season display of competence saves Bill Stewart’s job I’ma have some very strong and stabby words for the higher-ups in Morgantown.

Miami @ Virginia

ORSON, TOTALLY IRRATIONAL. We’ve picked against Virginia three games in a row, and yet the Meh-mperor sits with his Cavaliers atop the ACC Coastal division. Having awakened to this fact is a sure sign Groh-mentum ends here, and UVA Cavs RB Cedric Peerman suffers a down game, and that it all goes pear-shaped if we bet on UVA. Therefore, Canes and Robert Marve, the qb with more “he’s improving! Really!” stories tacked to him, will prevail even if Marve doesn’t play, since Lieutenant Winslow don’t lie, motherfucker: Jacory Harris is the balls.
HOLLY, IRRATIONAL BUT NOT WRONG: In which we place our trust, however misguided, in a fledgling but fanged Miami squad over giving Al Groh the opportunity to break our hearts.

Kansas State @ Kansas

ORSON, SEMI-RATIONAL. K-State is bad. They lose football games. LALALALA Todd Reesing rules. Also, this:

If you want more rational than that, you’re in denial. Kansas wins for the baby Mangino.

HOLLY, COMPLETELY HORRIFIED AND STRUCK DUMB BY THE ABOVE PHOTO. Kansas. God. Just scroll down so I don’t have to look at DEAR GOD WHAT IS THAT THING.

Auburn @ Ole Miss

ORSON, IRRATIONAL: Ole Miss, because GIGGITY BOTUNKUS BARFLACUS!!!
HOLLY, IRRATIONAL: Ole Miss, because this Auburn skid is the college football equivalent of googling “backyard wrestling accident” and giggling for four hours at bones and bits of shattered picnic tables poking through skin. (What?)

#15 Florida State @ Georgia Tech

ORSON, QUASI-RATIONAL. A vintage Florida State defense meets a struggling GT offense incapable of topping 24 points. The skies darken over downtown Atlanta; a car crash is heard; a mascot in Chuck Taylors is blown out at home by a vastly improved Seminoles team. Did you know that 1 out of 6 Tech graduates are allegedly millionaires? And will be fans of a losing football team this Saturday, because this is year one of the flexbone and no one’s still exactly sure how to manipulate the apparatus to maximum effect yet?
HOLLY, QUASI-RATIONAL: “Fifteenth-ranked Florida State.” Say that without shuddering. No, try it. That sensation? That’s your skin trying to crawl off your body and skitter away in the wake of the wheel of fortune spinning ‘Noleward once more. FSU, rising. Miami, rising. Nebraska, in no way rising LOLZ. It’s unnatural as it is unavoidable.

Tennessee @ South Carolina

ORSON, QUASI-RATIONAL. South Carolina. With the scrap parts he’s working with at South Carolina, Spurrier the White is 1-2 against his former rent-a-whore, Fulmer. Tennessee scored points and a dominant victory against Mississippi State, the football equivalent of the odd can of tuna found in the desert consumed just days before getting even more lost and then dying in the arid wastes. Gamecocks trump them anyway because they can actually score points.
HOLLY, TALK RADIO RATIONAL. I swear to you, the Music City Bowl will piss off Knoxville more than sitting home in January. If we even rate the Music City Bowl. Oh, god.  Still:  Whatever.  We got this.

#1 Texas @ #7 Texas Tech

ORSON, QUASI-RATIONAL. Texas. If Colt McCoy has a bad day, he only completes 70 percent of his passes. This is still seventy percent of his passes. Also, Mike Leach has only beaten Texas twice in his tenure there, Brian Orakpo is the most menacing pass rusher the Red Raiders have faced, and the clock rules now favor Texas–slowing budding a running game now–in a clock situation.
HOLLY, IRRATIONAL WITH VISUAL AIDS:

Pictured: Mike Leach, bringing guns to a cannon fight.  Longhorns roll.

#5 Florida vs #8 Georgia

HOLLY, RATIONAL AND SCARED:
Florida, unreservedly.  Oh, they’re fast.  Oh, they are so fast and I don’t know where they found their real football team but I’m just glad it’s not us.  I have advance survivor’s guilt and it’s not even my team rolling into Jacksonville to die.  So. Fast.

ORSON: COMPLETELY BONKERS AND IRRATIONAL.

Ka Mate! Ka Mate!
Ka Ora! Ka Ora!

Tenei te ta ngata puhuru huru
Nana nei i tiki mai

Whakawhiti te ra
A upane ka upane!

A upane kaupane whiti te ra!
Hi!!

Life is good. Life is good. Death is good. Death is good. Come win or loss, we’re past the point of rationality on this game. The frenzy revives. The violence sustains. The marrow sings with the sound of twenty-two bodies firing at full force at once. Get your war paint on. It’s time to dance.

Into the sun that shines, into the sun that shines. Go. Gators.