The 5 Biggest College Football Matchups of Week 4

We're almost a month into College Football and the Stats Insider CFB Model already has some big wins under its belt. Week 4 brings us a wide range of exciting match-ups, let's look at the weekend's biggest games.

1. UTAH at USC - 11 am (AEST) on Saturday (Friday night in the United States)

If you want a historical pattern, try this: Utah has not beaten USC in Los Angeles since 1916. True, Utah hasn’t played USC continuously for those 103 years, but it has played USC eight times in five separate calendar decades and not won once.

Does that mean Utah will fail again?

If you have been following USC football in recent years, you shouldn’t be confident that the Trojans will stop the Utes this time.

USC head coach Clay Helton just watched his former athletic director, NFL legend Lynn Swann, exit the program. USC has to hire a new athletic director (AD) and that AD will have no loyalty to Helton.

If you were to gather 100 USC fans in a room and ask them what should happen if the Trojans get blown out by Utah, at least half would want Helton to be fired immediately after the game. USC has plenty of talent, but no coach has been able to re-create what Pete Carroll established at the start of the 21st century.

Helton might not be coaching his last game, but it is widely felt that he needs to win here to have a realistic chance at keeping his job.

USC’s two games after Utah: at Washington and at Notre Dame. The Trojans will be underdogs in those games. They could be 2-4 through six games.

Helton would be a dead coach walking if that happens.

Yes, this is a pretty big game.

2. MICHIGAN at WISCONSIN – 2 am (AEST) on Sunday (early Saturday afternoon in the States)

There is a lot of pressure on Wisconsin to win this game after the Badgers failed to win the Big Ten West Division title last year as Northwestern won it. Wisconsin’s quarterback play suffered last season. Jack Coan has taken over at the quarterback spot and played well in his first two games.

The cautionary note: Wisconsin has played very soft opposition early in the season.

Michigan is not soft.

This game will reveal how tough and how good Wisconsin is, an early-season measuring stick for the Badgers.

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Yet, for all the pressure on the Badgers’ shoulders, the Michigan Wolverines bear the far greater burden in this game. It is not even close.

Jim Harbaugh was hugely successful at Stanford and with the San Francisco 49ers. He played at Michigan in the 1980s, so when he came home in 2015, it seemed just a matter of time before Michigan became a college football giant once again.

Early in his fifth season in Ann Arbor, Harbaugh has been modestly and occasionally successful, nothing close to being a superpower. He was hired to dominate, not to be a B-plus coach.

If he loses to Wisconsin, a tidal wave of doubt and anger will envelop the Michigan program. The Wolverines face a moment of truth two months before playing Ohio State.

3. AUBURN at TEXAS A&M – 5:30 am (AEST) on Sunday (mid-afternoon on Saturday in the States)

Auburn and Texas A&M played only twice before Texas A&M moved from the Big 12 Conference to the Southeastern Conference in 2012. In the seven years Auburn and A&M have played as SEC West Division rivals, only once has the home team won: last year, when Auburn won at home. From 2012 through 2017, the road team won every game.

Does this mean you should pick Auburn, though? It is not an easy call.

This is a game in which the quarterbacks might decide the outcome not by the big plays they make, but by the mistakes they either make or avoid. Auburn’s Bo Nix and A&M’s Kellen Mond have been shaky early in the season. 

The significance of this game: The winner gets to stay in the SEC West conversation. The loser will already be done in late September. Neither team appears likely to sweep Alabama and LSU; the winner will try to split those two games and see if it can win a division tiebreaker at the end of the season. The loser will have no realistic path to the division title.

4. NOTRE DAME at GEORGIA – 10 am AEST on Sunday (Saturday night in the States)

I wrote about this game earlier in the week at Stats Insider. Very simply, the winner goes to the head of the line in the national championship chase. The loser will have to run the table the rest of the way.

5. OREGON at STANFORD – 9 am AEST on Sunday (Saturday evening in the States)

This was the Pac-12 Conference’s signature rivalry in the first half of this decade. Oregon won the Pac-12 (formerly the Pac-10) in 2010, 2011 and 2014. Stanford won in 2012, 2013 and 2015. Now, both programs are trying to climb back to the top after three years (2016-2018) in which neither school has won the conference championship.

Oregon has top-tier potential, but the Ducks made a boatload of huge mistakes against Auburn in a crushing Week 1 loss. The Ducks are in must-win mode here.

Stanford needs to win just to survive and stay in the Pac-12 race, but with starting left tackle Walker Little out for the season, and other injuries limiting the Cardinal’s depth, it is a huge ask to expect Stanford to merely keep this game close, let alone win it.

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