Before Week 13 of the college football season, I present a collection of short notes on teams and coaches across the country. At Stats Insider, you get a piece every week from Dane Roy on the college football games to keep an eye on. This week’s obvious showdown is Penn State-Ohio State. I will focus on a lot of the games which will go under the radar while the elite teams in the United States pursue the College Football Playoff.

Let’s open the notebook:

Michigan’s huge rivalry game with Ohio State is next week, but the Wolverines better not overlook Indiana, a seven-win team which has played Michigan well in recent years. Michigan hasn’t lost to Indiana since 1987, but many UM-IU games are competitive. If Jim Harbaugh doesn’t take care of Indiana first, he is looking at an 8-4 season for Michigan, which – in Michigan – is cause for alarm.

When Oklahoma State visits West Virginia, keep in mind that Oklahoma needs Oklahoma State to maintain a top-25 ranking when the two in-state schools meet next week. If Oklahoma State loses to West Virginia, that will not happen.

Similarly, Oregon and Utah – at the top of the Pac-12 Conference – need USC to beat UCLA in the Battle of Los Angeles so that the Trojans preserve their top-25 ranking.

SMU at Navy is a battle to see which team will stay alive in the three-team race for the American Athletic Conference’s West Division championship. The SMU-Navy winner or Memphis will play Cincinnati in the AAC Championship Game on December 7.

Pittsburgh and Virginia Tech both have three losses, and yet the winner of this game on Saturday will have a chance to make the prestigious Orange Bowl game. How is this possible? Good question. It makes no logical sense, but there is an answer: The bowl system has a bunch of “tie-ins” which bind certain conferences to specific bowl games, including the elite bowls played every postseason.

Those six bowls are called the New Year’s Six: the Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Orange Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, Cotton Bowl, and Peach Bowl. Conferences whose members make these bowl games get more payouts (the players don’t get the payouts, but the conferences get them and share them with their member schools).

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Very simply, the Atlantic Coast Conference – which has Pittsburgh and Virginia Tech as members – has a contractual provision that if its champion makes the College Football Playoff and the Orange Bowl is NOT part of the playoffs in that season, its second team goes to the Orange Bowl. This season, the Orange Bowl is not a playoff game, so the contractual provision applies.

A similar contract applies to the Big 12 and the SEC with the Sugar Bowl. In recent years, a four-loss Auburn team (2016) and a four-loss Texas team (2018) got a Sugar Bowl bid instead of a more objectively deserving team. This year, the ACC could have a three-loss team. Pitt and Virginia Tech are in that race. The winner stays alive with Virginia and Wake Forest in the pursuit of that Orange Bowl bid.

Syracuse (at Louisville) and Duke (at Wake Forest) need to win to have any chance at a bowl game. If they lose this week, they will not be able to reach the six-win threshold normally needed to get a bowl bid. Once in a great while, a five-win team can get a bowl bid, but only if there is a shortage of six-win teams.

Other teams which need a win this week to have a chance at a bowl game: Texas Tech (vs. Kansas State), West Virginia (vs. Oklahoma State), Michigan State (at Rutgers), Purdue (at Wisconsin), Nebraska (at Maryland), Colorado State (at Wyoming), Fresno State (vs. Nevada), San Jose State (at UNLV), Stanford (at California), Colorado (vs. Washington), UCLA (vs. USC), Arizona (vs. Utah), Coastal Carolina and Louisiana-Monroe (playing each other).

Memphis goes to South Florida, intent on preserving its lead in the AAC West. Memphis is tied in the conference standings but has head-to-head wins over both Navy and SMU.

California (Berkeley) and Stanford, two academic powerhouses, play their big rivalry game this weekend. California has not beaten Stanford since 2009, and Stanford has a losing record this season. Cal, however, has been ravaged by injuries and Stanford is a favorite. This game is very personal to both teams – Cal because it wants to snap this long losing skid, Stanford because it wants Cal to continue to suffer.

Cincinnati hosts Temple, trying to stay in the hunt for the Group of Five championship and a berth in the Cotton Bowl, one of the New Year’s Six bowls. The Group of Five winner gets the Cotton Bowl bid this season under the 2019 bowl structure. (Last year the Fiesta Bowl hosted the Group of Five champion. In 2017, the Peach Bowl was the game with a Group of Five team.)

Boise State visits Utah State trying to represent the Mountain West Conference in the Group of Five title chase.

San Diego State at Hawaii is a battle for the lead – and likely title – in the Mountain West’s West Division. Boise State will play the winner in the Mountain West Championship Game on Dec. 7.